Free Republic

The United Nations has urged the U.S. to stop using what critics say is excessive force on protesters and journalists during ongoing demonstrations in cities, including Portland, Ore. “There have been reports that peaceful protesters have been detained by unidentified police officers and that is a worry because it may place those detained outside the protection of the law and may give rise to arbitrary detention and other human rights violations,” Liz Throssell, a U.N. human rights spokeswoman, said at a news briefing in Geneva on Friday. “The authorities should ensure that federal and local security forces deployed are properly...

The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed new visa restrictions on employees of Chinese state-controlled tech firms, including tech giant Huawei, which the United States accuses of serving as a spy tool for the communist regime. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the restrictions would impact employees of Chinese technology firms that "provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights abuses globally." The measure will prevent certain employees of the company from traveling to the United States. "Telecommunications companies around the world should consider themselves on notice: If they are doing business with Huawei, they are doing business with human...

Thirty-nine House Democrats defected and voted for a House GOP motion on Wednesday to restrict Chinese access to American infrastructure projects if those Chinese companies commit human rights abuses. (...)

Today, I have signed into law S. 3744, the “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020” (the “Act”).  The Act holds accountable perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses such as the systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghurs and other minorities in China.  I note, however, that section 6(g) of the Act purports to limit my discretion to terminate inadmissibility sanctions under the Act.  In some circumstances, this limitation could be inconsistent with my constitutional authorities to receive as diplomatic representatives certain foreign officials under...

  On Wednesday, June 17, 2020, the President signed into law:S. 3744, the “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020,” which condemns gross human rights violations of specified ethnic Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region in China and other purposes, including specified authority to impose sanctions on certain foreign persons. The White House

Disney is one of the corporations and major Hollywood studios giving full-throated support to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. But the company has time and again been impotent on human rights, silent when it was time to confront the Communist government of China. It’s backed down from support for the Hong Kong democracy movement and oppressed minorities like Tibetans, Uyghur Muslims (they’re quite literally in concentration camps), and, yes, even black people (just months ago). Disney is also one of numerous media companies noted for self-censoring its content to avoid angering the regime in Beijing. The Hulu streaming service...

MADISON – Aaron Rodgers has faced some of the most ferocious defensive linemen the National Football League has ever unleashed on professional football fields. The Green Bay Packers quarterback has passed his way to the top of his game, becoming among the most accurate, respected and highest paid players in NFL history. Now, Rodgers is taking on a much more brutal enemy: The murderous warlords of the Democratic Republic of Congo in command of a civil conflict that has claimed more than 3 million lives. Green Bay’s QB has signed up as a celebrity front man for Raise Hope for...

Political activist Arundhati Roy accused the Indian government on Friday of exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims. She told DW that this alleged strategy on the part of the Hindu nationalist government would “dovetail with this illness to create something which the world should really keep its eyes on,” adding that “the situation is approaching genocidal.” […] Roy claimed the government was exploiting the virus in a tactic reminiscent of one used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. “The whole of the organization, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist group — Editor’s note]...

Two developments in the past few weeks suggest that America’s China policy is on a cusp.The more publicly discussed event involves the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Dewey, which conducted a freedom of navigation operation near Mischief Reef in the Spratlys island group.This is the first freedom of navigation action conducted by the Trump administration. It is the first true freedom of navigation conducted since at least 2012.By contrast, the Obama administration had undertaken a handful of “innocent passage” activities in the South China Sea, which failed to demonstrate the critical issues at stake.The actions carried out in the previous administration...

Vice-president Dick Cheney stepped up America's war of words with North Korea yesterday by calling it a police state run by an irresponsible leader indifferent to the fate of his malnourished people.His words came just 48 hours after the Pentagon announced that it was sending 15 F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers to South Korea, a US ally, for an undetermined period. The aircraft crews, trained to seek out targets with precision weapons, needed to familiarise themselves with the Korean terrain, the air force said. Speaking to CNN in an interview broadcast last night, Mr Cheney described North Korea's leader, Kim Jong...

As 1968 began, Paul Ehrlich was an entomologist at Stanford University, known to his peers for his groundbreaking studies of the co-evolution of flowering plants and butterflies but almost unknown to the average person. That was about to change. In May, Ehrlich released a quickly written, cheaply bound paperback, The Population Bomb. Initially it was ignored. But over time Ehrlich’s tract would sell millions of copies and turn its author into a celebrity. It would become one of the most influential books of the 20th century—and one of the most heatedly attacked. The first sentence set the tone: “The battle...

[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

Long before the coronavirus made international headlines, China’s Communist Party, which rules the country with unchallenged authority, had an image problem. Image has always been a key element of Beijing’s plan to rise to global greatness. It has worked assiduously to carve a reputation as an unstoppable power wading well into the midst of world affairs. Today, however, that carefully crafted image is badly tattered. It’s worse than it was just one year ago when nations that eagerly participated in China’s Belt and Road Initiative began to realize that Chinese “aid” was a two-edged sword. No one has done more...

No person in the United States would look approvingly upon a few inches transforming a piece of property devoid of human rights into a person to be protected and cherished by society. If you leave New York City and travel north a few hundred miles, you will eventually come to a line across the landscape. To the north of the line lies Canada, and to the south, the United States. The line has no geological significance; its importance is entirely derived from political agreement between the United States and Canada. Step across the line and your status changes. If you...

DAVOS, Switzerland—President Donald Trump said China’s human rights record and the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong are part of phase two trade discussions with China, in response to a question from The Epoch Times on Jan. 22. At a press conference in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Trump said “we would like to see we can do something” about the issues in China and Hong Kong. “We are discussing that already,” he told reporters. “We’re doing a trade deal, and it’s a very big deal. Phase one is done, phase two...

UN demands that British army send more women for defense against jihad in Mali DEC 25, 2019 11:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS “The United Nations has placed strict gender quotas on a British Army peacekeeping deployment to Mali in west Africa, demanding more females are sent under the auspices of a special bureaucratic directive….The call for more female UK soldiers to be included is part of a wider set of directives drafted by the U.N. that mandates strict quotas for female personnel in the name of equal opportunity.” The UN is forcing the issue of more women in the British...

Nearly two and a half centuries ago, American colonists broke free of a tyrannical monarchy and rose from the shadow of oppression, creating a new Republic predicated on liberty and the rule of law. Innate to the identity of this new Nation was a revolutionary commitment to the preservation of individual rights. The Framers drafted a Constitution that would ensure the God-given rights of the people. Nevertheless, some of them believed more was needed and insisted upon the enumeration of a set of rights that would be protected from government interference. As a result, the United States ratified 10 Amendments...

As Democrats champion anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community and Republicans counter with worries about safeguarding religious freedom, one congressional Republican is offering a proposal on Friday that aims to achieve both goals. The bill that Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart plans to unveil would shield LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in employment, housing, education, and other public services — while also carving out exemptions for religious organizations to act based on beliefs that may exclude those of different sexual orientations or gender identities. Stewart’s bill counts support from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Seventh-day Adventist...

China has threatened to respond after the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to approve a strongly worded bill paving the way for sanctions against Chinese officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In a statement, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the bill “deliberately defames the human rights situation in Xinjiang and discredits Beijing’s efforts to fight against extremism and terrorism in the region”. “The core of the Xinjiang issue [in China] is not human rights, ethnic minority or religion; instead, the core is anti-terrorism and anti-separatism,” the statement said. “We warn the US that Xinjiang...

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday the U.S. has “sinister intentions” and its “plot” is “doomed to fail,” after President Donald Trump signed two bills supporting Hong Kong protesters into law. State media also published a statement from the Hong Kong liaison office, emphasizing its commitment to defending its “one country, two systems” policy. “We are officially telling the U.S. and the handful of opposition politicians in Hong Kong who follow America’s lead to not underestimate our determination to protect Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, don’t underestimate our belief to protect the ‘one country, two systems policy’ and don’t...