Human Rights Foundation’s Post

On Monday, #Rwanda will hold presidential elections that are being billed as #RwandaDecides, but with dictator Paul Kagame’s most serious political opponents excluded, the only real choice is for the man who has been in power for roughly three decades. Kagame is expected to claim another landslide victory with Stalinist numbers, in the fashion of his previous 98%, 93%, and 96% wins. He has said he might get 100%, just like Kim Jong-un or Saddam Hussein before him. Talk about impressive! Help us predict the “victory” percentage Kagame and his subservient electoral apparatus will claim 🫠:

Syrians on Monday voted for new parliament members in an election expected to hold few surprises and has been labeled a farce by political groups opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s Baath party. Assad has been in power since July 2000. The vote is the fourth since the country was gripped by anti-government protests in 2011. The election excludes rebel-held northwest Syria and the country’s northeast under US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic forces. Over 5 million Syrian refugees in the diaspora are ineligible to vote for legislators; 1,516 regime-approved candidates are running for the 250-seat People’s Assembly, with two-thirds of the seats reserved for Assad’s Baath party. Syria faces high inflation and little foreign investment amid a plethora of western sanctions, absent political progress, ongoing violence, and a worsening humanitarian situation. Some 8,151 polling stations were set up in 15 voting districts in government-held areas. HRF stands with the Syrian people's rights to free and fair elections unmarred by the Assad regime.

Fifteen years ago, on July 15, 2009, Natalya Estemirova, a prominent Russian and Chechen human rights defender, was kidnapped and murdered by the regime of Kadyrov in Chechnya. She was 51 years old. Estemirova moved to Chechnya in 1992 and became known for her efforts to free hostages during the Ossetian-Ingush conflict. During the First Chechen War, she reported on the conditions of detainees and POWs. As a witness to the Second Chechen War, which started with Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in 2000, Estemirova reported and provided evidence of Russian attacks on civilians. In the early 2000s, she began working with @novaya_gazeta and @MemorialMoscow. Estemirova investigated the mass killing of civilians by Russian troops in Novye Aldi in 2000. In 2002, she secured a trial for Russian army captain Eduard Ulman, who had ordered the execution of six Chechen civilians in the Shatoy area. Together with Anna Politkovskaya, she investigated the murder of Zelimkhan Murdalov in 2001, resulting in the prosecution of the police officers responsible for the crime. It was the first instance where a Russian policeman was jailed for human rights violations in Chechnya. During her work in Chechnya, Estemirova collected thousands of testimonies from victims of human rights abuses committed by Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime. Kadyrov, who came to power in Chechnya in the late 2000s, established a brutal regime in the republic. Kadyrov began to threaten her for her human rights work. Not long after, she was kidnapped while leaving her apartment. She was later found with gun wounds to the head. Her colleagues say the reason for her abduction and murder was her work on the extrajudicial execution of Rizvan Albekov and his connection to Ramzan Kadyrov. HRF laments the loss of Natalya Estemirova, a brave woman and devoted human rights defender. The Russian regime uses murder to silence and intimidate activists and human rights defenders. It's crucial to remember these activists’ work so that their legacy lives on. https://buff.ly/3WmJFJc

On Monday, nearly two-thirds of lawmakers in The #Gambia’s National Assembly voted to reject the controversial Women’s Amendment Bill 2024, which proposed to overturn a 2015 ban on the harmful practice of female genital mutilation (#FGM). https://buff.ly/3WpfAc1 2/ The vote defeats months of pressure from conservative Islamic groups and some Gambian lawmakers to relegalize FGM. https://buff.ly/3Vgw71u 3/ In March, The Gambia’s parliament took an initial step to repeal the FGM ban, with a vote of 42 in favor and four against, to forward the bill to a committee for further examination before its third reading.

The mitigation hearings for 19 defendants among the 47 Hong Kong Democrats in a landmark national security case have been delayed by almost a month due to “unforeseen circumstances.” The court is set to hear mitigation pleas in groups in late August and early September. The defendants are among the 45 convicted of conspiring to commit subversion, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, for taking part in an unofficial primary election intended to help the pro-democracy camp secure a legislative majority. The Hong Kong 47, aka #HK47, are a group of pro-democracy politicians, lawyers, scholars, and journalists charged under the National Security Law for their involvement in the 2020 pro-democracy camp. Most of them have been detained since their 2021 arrest. HRF continues to condemn the arrest of pro-democracy activists and the suppression of opposition voices in Hong Kong.

A regional court in Yekaterinburg, Russia, has expedited the trial of @WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich by moving the trial from Aug. 13 to July 18. Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg on March 29, 2023, during a work trip. He faces trumped-up charges of espionage. Evan pleaded not guilty. He is the first American journalist to be arrested on spying charges in Russia since the Cold War. He faces up to 20 years in prison. The trial is held behind closed doors. The Kremlin uses US citizens as leverage for political pressure. In addition to Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage charges, and Alsu Kurmasheva, an RFE/RL journalist, are also being held in Russian prisons. Kurmasheva was arrested in Kazan in October and accused of failing to register as a “foreign agent.” She is also charged with spreading “fake news about the Russian military” and faces up to 10 years in prison. Another US and Russian citizen, Ksenia Karelina, was arrested in February for donating $51.80 to the Ukrainian charity @razomforukraine back in 2022. She faces life imprisonment for treason. HRF deplores the Russian regime’s tactic of using foreign journalists as de facto hostages in order to get concessions from foreign governments and calls on Russia to immediately release all those illegally detained. #IStandWithEvan

Chinese officials forcibly shut down the Gangjong Sherig Norbu School, the most popular school for Tibetan students from all three regions of Tibet, in "accordance" with Chinese Communist Party (#CCP) policies. Founded in 1994 in Tibet's Qinghai province, the school is renowned for offering lessons in Tibetan language, culture, tradition, religion, and medicine. It's recent closure underscores the CCP’s continued efforts to dismantle Tibetan language and culture as part of its larger strategy to erase Tibetan cultural identity. In response to the CCP’s relentless crackdown in Tibet, on July 12, @POTUS signed the "Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act” to advance a peaceful resolution to the long-standing dispute between Tibet and the CCP through constructive dialogue. HRF strongly condemns the #CCP for its ongoing and systematic efforts to undermine the identities of ethnic minorities, including the deliberate and ruthless campaign to erase Tibetan cultural and linguistic heritage.

On Monday, a High Court judge in Swaziland — where the judiciary is fully subservient to the regime of King Mswati III — sentenced former lawmakers Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube to heavy sentences for their democracy advocacy. Judge Mumcy Dlamini ordered a 25-year jail term for Mabusa and 18 years for Dube based on trumped-up charges of terrorism and murder in retaliation for the pair’s support of pro-democracy protests in 2021. Mabuza and Dube have been imprisoned since July 2021 for joining popular demonstrations against police brutality and the absence of democracy. The Swazi regime’s harsh crackdown on the protests sparked deadly unrest. In June 2023, Judge Dlamini convicted Mabusa and Dube of baseless charges that likened the former MPs' call for peaceful protests to terrorism and pinned on them the responsibility of deadly riots sparked by the regime’s crackdown on the demonstrations. HRF condemns the harsh sentences against Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube at the end of a politically motivated travesty of justice. Mabuza and Dube should be released immediately.

On July 12, #Rwanda’s dictator Paul Kagame ominously predicted a grim future for opposition leader Victoire Ingabire—his most serious political opponent who is barred from today’s #RwandaDecides general elections—as he baselessly smeared and vilified her. Earlier this month, Kagame said @VictoireUmuhoza was the “small woman of a genocidaire” during a televised meeting with social media influencers committed to the regime’s propaganda apparatus. In the same meeting, Kagame also launched more baseless smears against the @FbdnStories consortium of 50 international journalists from 17 countries behind the #RwandaClassified transnational investigative dossier. A study by @ClemsonHub published this month documented Kagame’s regime’s orchestration of a campaign of propaganda, disinformation, and smears in the lead up to this week’s general elections. HRF condemns dictator Paul Kagame's baseless smears and chilling threats against critics, along with the sustained campaign of disinformation his regime is orchestrating. HRF will hold Kagame’s regime responsible for any harm done to Ingabire.

Pakistan plans to ban the opposition Pakistan Terheek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party, citing allegations of inciting protests, leaking state secrets, and illegal foreign funding. The government will also file a legal reference against party leader Imran Khan and two aides for high treason. This announcement follows the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the PTI, which declared them eligible to take their share of reserved seats in parliament, effectively preventing the ruling coalition from attaining a two-thirds majority. PTI leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was ousted in 2022 and jailed last May, was acquitted of several politically motivated charges during the past month, including one concerning his unlawful marriage, but remains detained due to new arrest warrants. HRF expresses concern over Pakistan’s ongoing prosecution of the political opposition and urges the government to ensure a level playing field so that all political contenders may participate in democracy equally.