In an effort to combat what has been described as “modern-day slavery,” the Trump administration announced Tuesday it has opened a new Center for Countering Human Trafficking, the Daily Caller reports. The Center has been operational since early September and is being run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said.
The U.S. State Department has condemned Iran’s reported flogging of a former Muslim-turned-Christian for drinking Communion wine.
Advocacy groups have reported that around 1,000 girls of Christian and other minority faith groups in Pakistan are being raped by Muslim extremists in purported forced conversions to Islam every year, WND reports.
China and Russia were among 15 countries elected to the UN Human Rights Council on October 13, drawing sharp criticism from rights groups and the United States over their abysmal human rights records.
In contrast to a low-key stance it has adopted in the past, China is now pushing hard for leadership posts in United Nations agencies, frequently resorting to bribery and economic coercion in doing so, the Washington Times reported on Sunday. As one of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, China has veto power.
The United Nations has confirmed the names of most of the candidates running for seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council in elections tentatively set for next week, and the expected return of the likes of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba will draw attention once again to the justification given by the Trump administration in 2018 for its decision to withdraw.
Armenia says it is ready to discuss a ceasefire in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in recent days has killed dozens and left scores wounded. The announcement comes amid international calls to end the most significant escalation in years.
According to a new Right-to-Privacy Index (RPI), Asia has become the world’s worst region for mass surveillance privacy violations, the Thomson Reuters Foundation reports. Published by British-based risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, the RPI cites Pakistan, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, India and the Philippines as among the worst offenders.
The European Union’s executive has rejected a demand by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to dismiss its top rule of law official for comments about Hungary’s ‘ailing democracy.’
The pastor of a house church in China’s southern Fujian province was summoned to appear in court earlier this month because he and his wife have chosen to home-school their children, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports. According to ICC, the Chinese government is not only continuing its crack-down on churches but is now also impeding parents from home-schooling their children.
The Trump administration announced Monday that its sanctions on Chinese companies which use Muslim Uighur slave labor could affect up to $250 million worth of goods that come from the Xinjiang region of China, the Western Journal reports.
Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has spoken to the United Nations Human Rights Council despite Belarussian efforts to prevent her and other critics from giving speeches. During Friday’s turbulent session of the Geneva-based U.N. body, she demanded that the country’s authorities end violence against protestors and organize a free and fair presidential election.
European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen has given her first State of the Union speech with angry words about Britain’s plans to renegotiate its divorce deal with the EU.
A career nurse who worked at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia has registered an official complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alleging an extraordinarily high number of hysterectomies have been carried out on Spanish-speaking detainees at the facility, Forbes reports. Dawn Wooten’s complaint was filed with the DHS Office of the Inspector General by four Georgia advocacy groups on Monday.
The beheaded body of a Mexican journalist was found near a railway track in Veracruz, Mexico last week: local police believe Julio Valdivia Rodriguez was assassinated for reporting on a local cartel. This was the fifth known killing of a journalist in Mexico this year, the Washington Examiner reports. Ten journalists were killed in Mexico last year.
As talks were underway between the Vatican and Belarus, reports emerged that Belarusian authorities detained dozens of pro-democracy protesters.
Hungary’s government-controlled media authority has ordered one of the country’s last independent talk radio stations to cease broadcasting in February next year. The Media Council said Budapest-based Klubrádió was responsible for “multiple breaches of media law” after earlier fining the network as a pretext for discontinuing the frequency license. In a statement obtained by Worthy News, Klubrádió said it would “fight with every possible legal and other means” to preserve it’s right to broadcast.
The Trump administration moved to block substantially more imports from the Xinjiang region of China, where approximately 1 million Uighur Muslims are forced to manufacture goods in “concentration camps,” according to homeland security officials.
Several devoted Christians in and around Sudan’s main cities are reportedly prevented from worshiping by authorities and angry mobs despite government pledges to end over three decades of hardline Islamic rule.
Top U.N. officials warned Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated discrimination and other human rights violations that can fuel conflict, and its indirect consequences are dwarfing the impact of the virus itself in the world’s most fragile countries.