So… what is your cause?

The new striking sound is being made by causes’ supporters all around the world, as several thorny issues are unrelentingly emerging everywhere, which might lead off massive revolution.

Firstly, with the supervening rise of awareness among populations  and the affluence of the sense of responsibility, many people are actively aligning themselves with sponsoring a cause, and they subsequently devote time and money in the interests of humanitarian, religious or cultural issues. In addition, as citizens are involving themselves in backing a cause they primarily become privy to access and pour out pieces of information (they have never known before) as well as airing their grievances out.

Moreover, plugging the gap is the fundamental incentive factor to act on such unmade road. In others words,  even though causes’ supporters would grievously risk life and climb, they remain chiefly uncompromising and undeterred over threatening and menaces encountered hints. Personally speaking, the release of political prisoners is the cause which I am captivated to support. In fact, It is highly palpable that a gigantic proportion of prisoners throughout the world are forfeit of their freedom because of an article they have written in a newspaper to lay bare a hidden truth , or a speech they have performed in public expressing unbiasedly their own opinion about a certain matter! they haven’t got nobody’s blood on their hands to be entangled behind bars.

All in all, although truth is not always palatable, we should all act and react actively in order to emancipate innocent prisoners, so as to attain real democracy in our country; otherwise, we would get out of frying pan into the fire and be given strident criticism.

Younes E,

Universiaty International de Rabat

Amnesty Morocco

Immigration rights and reality in the EU

Germany is often cited as a role model for democracy, freedom and the protection of minorities. Yet, what often goes largely unnoticed in the Middle East is the failure of putting laws into practice. A most dramatic illustration is asylum law. Even though the images of overcrowded boats at the coastline of Lampedusa are still burned on people’s retinas, the most appalling cases in Germany have remained behind the scenes.

            In 2010 approximately 50.000 refugees applied for German asylum making Germany the second largest immigration country in the European Union. Its management of asylum flows therefore sets a benchmark for other EU state’s immigration policies.  However, Germany’s struggles to fully live up to Human Rights conventions (EHRC) in terms of managing immigration flows.

            With Serbia’s EU candidacy in 2009 and the dampening of visa regulations, an influx of Serbian refugees to EU-27 states took place. Roma originating from Serbia are the largest group of applicants in Germany that are denied asylum. European boarder control shows rigidity by rejecting 98 percent of applicants. Here, Germany aligns herself with the public vindication that the refugees are fleeing from poverty and therefore are not eligible for asylum. They base their argumentation on the Convention relating to the status of refugees (CRSR). This Convention states that asylum is to be granted only to those who are in humanitarian need or persecuted for their race, religion, nationality, and membership of a particular social group or political opinion. NGO’s like ProAsyl doubt that each application is considered in its own right. The high number of similar applications gave rise to prejudices that have manifested itself systematically. Then again, this blinds the German system to the fact that apart from the inhumane economic conditions of Roma in Serbia, they also frequently face serious harassment by nationalistic groups while police forces fail, or refuse to, give the Roma the needed protection. Therefore, with the planned expulsion of 10.000 Serbians in 2011, Germany breaches the thin line of transgressing international Human Rights conventions.

            Particularly unsettling in a moral and legal sense is the situation of Serbian children refugees in Germany. Of the Serbians seeking asylum in Germany, 40 percent are children. In German asylum law, these children are not entitled to special treatment. This means that they are treated as equals with adults. In other words, they also fall under certain provisions of German immigration regulation that are highly controversial. These include compulsory residence in collective housing camps and restrictions of free movement in the city or state. This flies in the face of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which stipulates a child’s entitlement to special protection and assistance provided by the state if the child is deprived of his or her family environment (Art 20.1). The evident lack of protective clauses for children in German asylum law strikingly portrays the dark sides of how Germany treats its Asylum seekers. This clear discrepancy between international conventions and German asylum law invokes the principles of the Human Rights conventions to pay attention to this alarming issue.

            The case of asylum seekers in Germany is a point in case for the many serious gaps in European refugee law. Europeans but also the international community need to raise awareness of these fundamental breaches and act upon the calls of international organizations. We need to seal the gaping inconsistency to bring rights and reality closer together. Germany has to put its actions where its mouth is. Only then can Germany constitute a more true and honest example for developing democracies in the Middle East. 

Madita Weise 

Amnesty Netherlands

New Trends in a Networked World

"The Innocence of Muslims" and the Battle for Human Rights

  

When it comes to human rights, the “The Innocence of Muslims” has proved to be a divisive paradox. On one hand, the video is an act of expression protected by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; on the other, it has led to repeated violations of Article 3, which enshrines everyone’s “right to life, liberty and security of person.” The clash between these articles is a new one, and in our increasingly connected world (thank you, Internet), it would seem to signal the beginning of a wholly new pattern in which we defend freedom of speech, extremists take advantage of the resultant frustrations, and innocent people lose their lives.

Never before has a video, regardless of content, been able to reach such a broad audience. From 2000-2011, world Internet usage is estimated to have increased by a factor greater than five. In the Middle East and Africa alone—the two regions with the highest numbers of Muslims—there has been an estimated 2,244.8% and 2,988.4% increase in Internet usage, respectively, over the same period (see more stats here). As levels of Internet usage have ballooned, so have the amount of people able to see the insults leveled at Islam in “The Innocence of Muslims”.

Dangerously, those insults have unusual potential to stir up trouble. Much of the reason is that in Islam, an attack on one is not an attack on all. Rather, an attack on all (however nebulous or nonviolent it may be) is felt by whoever hears or sees it, and they tend to act as one in response. This explains why an effective method of assaulting Islam is not through murder—a strategy that is inherently too focused on particular individuals to elicit a large response—but through verbal attacks assailing the entire religion. This also explains why, given the recent growth in Internet access in Muslim regions of the world, we have witnessed such a widespread response to “The Innocence of Muslims”, a prime example of just such an attack. Adding flames to the fire is the fact that this inflammatory film is one protected by Article 19.

That conundrum left state leaders with a choice: Defend the filmmakers’ freedom of speech and risk the potential violence that would result from it, or prioritize peace and risk limiting freedom of speech. In other words, choose between Article 3 and Article 19. Quite simply, Article 19 won. Western officials, led by the Obama Administration, condemned the video in the strongest terms but stopped short of disciplining the film’s creators. Arab officials followed suit, knowing full well that they risked incurring the wrath of their civilians, with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt even cancelling its planned protest to the film out of fear of the violence that would ensue. But try as these leaders might to stem the violence, they could not have it both ways.

By electing not to punish the creators of the film, they added the last straw to the proverbial camel’s back. Consider the litany of factors already feeding many Muslims’ frustration, particularly with the U.S.—anger at the invasion of Iraq, images of abuse from Abu Ghraib, the burning of the Koran by troops in Afghanistan, detentions without trial at Guantanamo Bay, the deaths of Muslim civilians in American drone strikes (see more in-depth analysis in a piece written by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times)—and then consider what was added on to that: A slight against Islam and a non-aggressive official response to it. Arithmetically, that’s a lot of anger plus a lot more anger, the sum of which is exactly the type of fury that violent extremists (the type that prefer murder to online videos) thrive upon. Unsurprisingly, thrive they did, killing scores throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, including the American  Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. Their victory, and Article 3’s loss, was a direct byproduct of worldwide defense of Article 19.

Yet that is not to fault such a defense. There is a reason that freedom of speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and not the Nineteenth, why the West decided to preserve that right over the one to guaranteeing security and life: It is the cornerstone of democracy. But saving innocent people's lives isn't so bad either, and if we want to be able to defend those at the same time, leaders must take extremist attacks on the Internet far more seriously because, whether we like it or not, they're here to stay.

-Benjamin Tumin