Human rights

On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted three resolutions on human rights issues in Belarus, Iran and Nigeria.Subcommittee on Human Rights Source : © European Union, 2024 - EP

It feels like housing is at a tipping point in the city of Edmonton. There have been four main events highlighting the situation:
These events should be understood within ongoing settler colonialism and a housing crisis endemic in Canada’s broader housing system.

Housing in Canada

• The state of housing both in Canada and globally is worsening, but the housing crisis is not new.
• Read more:
  Two-thirds of Canadian and American renters are in unaffordable housing situations

  While affordable housing policies in Canada emerged following the Second World War, colonialism is foundational to housing policy, evidenced by the high rates of housing vulnerability that Indigenous Peoples face.

Encampment sweeps violate human rights

• This isn’t happening, apparently, when it comes to encampments, which are both a site of human rights violations and of human rights claims.
• The coalition argued human rights were violated during encampment sweeps.
• Domicide is applicable to the encampment sweeps in Edmonton, the historical domicide that enabled the settlement of Edmonton in the first place, and the laws that governed the unsuccessful lawsuit launched by the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights.

Coming together in colonialism

• When authorities make reference to “public safety” concerns about encampment, unhoused people are positioned as dangerous.
• The destruction of those encampments simply drives people who are unhoused further to the margins.
• But punitive approaches like encampment sweeps perpetuate settler colonialism and prioritize the perceptions and preferences of the ruling class.

Katie MacDonald receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

• Bulk interception involves the surveillance of electronic signals, including communication signals and internet traffic, on a very large scale, and often on an untargeted basis.
• If intelligence agents misuse this capability, it can have a massive, negative impact on the privacy of innocent people.
• The court found that there was no law authorising the practice of bulk surveillance and limiting its potential abuse.

The dangers

• This is regardless of whether they are suspected of serious crimes or threats to national security.
• Their intention is to obtain strategic intelligence about longer term external threats to a country’s security, and that may be difficult to obtain by other means.
• The court rejected this argument because the act failed to address the regulation of bulk interception directly.

What the Constitutional Court said

• The 2021 Constitutional Court judgment did not address whether bulk interception should ever be acceptable as a surveillance practice.
• The court indicated that it would want to see a law authorising bulk surveillance that sets out “the nuts and bolts of the Centre’s functions”.
• The court would also be looking for detail on
  how these various types of intelligence must be captured, copied, stored, or distributed.

What the amendment bill says

• The amendment bill provides for the proper establishment of the National Communication Centre and its functions.
• A parliamentary ad hoc committee has set a deadline of 15 February 2024 for public comment.
• The fact that the judge would be an executive appointment also raises doubts about his or her independence.

Inadequate benchmarking

• These require that a domestic legal framework provide what the European Court of Human Rights has referred to as “end-to-end” safeguards covering all stages of bulk interception.
• How to restore its credibility

  The European Court has stated that a domestic legal framework should define

the grounds on which bulk interception may be authorised
the circumstances
the procedures to be followed for granting authorisation
procedures for selecting, examining and using material obtained from intercepts
The framework should also set out
the precautions to be taken when communicating the material to other parties
limits on the duration of interception
procedures for the storage of intercepted material
the circumstances in which such material must be erased and destroyed
supervision procedures by an independent authority
compliance procedures for review of surveillance once it has been completed.

• Incorporating these details in regulations would not be adequate on its own, as the bill gives the intelligence minister too much power to set the ground rules for bulk interception.
• These rules are also unlikely to be subjected to the same level of public scrutiny as the bill.

Jane Duncan receives funding from the British Academy and is a director of the non-governmental organisation Intelwatch.

• The Chinese-Australian academic and writer, Yang Hengjun, has been detained in China for five years on suspicion of spying for Australia.
• A secret trial was held in 2021 with no family, friends or Australian consular officials permitted in the courtroom.
• Today, his fate has finally been made clear: Yang received a suspended death sentence which can be commuted to life in prison after two years of good behaviour.

Yang’s background

• Yang was born in China and previously worked in the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of State Security.
• He later moved to Australia, where he became a citizen in 2002, and then to the US where had been a visiting scholar at Columbia University from 2017.
• Yang had been detained in China previously in 2011, but was quickly released ahead of a visit to China by then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

How frequently is the death penalty used in China?

• China has a notorious record of imposing the death penalty for a number of different offences.
• While there has been a downward trend in the number of countries that retain the death penalty and actually carry out executions, reliable data on China is impossible to attain.
• As such, Amnesty no longer includes any Chinese figures in its annual Global Death Penalty reports.

Does Yang have any rights left under international law?

• Yang can still appeal his sentence through the Chinese legal system, which effectively provides him with certain levels of protection until his appeals have been exhausted.
• Diplomatically, though, this would be a basis for Australia to continue to advocate for his release on humanitarian grounds.

Is there anything Australia can do for Yang now?

• This is significant as convictions for a capital offence in China are typically followed quickly by an execution.
• Yang’s Australian citizenship will have no doubt have been taken into account in this instance.
• Any formal efforts by Australia to provide Yang with diplomatic protection under international law are constrained while his legal case is still playing out.

Has China treated Yang with procedural fairness?

• Australia had very few options to ensure Yang was being afforded these rights in China.
• China has respected some of the minimum entitlements under this agreement, which has enabled consular staff to meet with Yang and monitor his wellbeing, though China restricted access during the peak periods of the COVID-19 lockdown.
• And as Amnesty International notes, China has not put forth any evidence to support its assertion that Yang was, indeed, a spy.

Donald Rothwell receives funding from Australian Research Council