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Tag: Amnesty International

  • Amnesty Details ‘Shocking’ Allegations of India Targeting Reporters With Pegasus Spyware

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    A woman uses an iPhone in front of the building of the NSO Group, developer of the spyware Pegasus, on August 28, 2016, in Herzliya, Israel. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs,” said one advocate.

    Amnesty International on Thursday demanded transparency from the Indian government regarding its contracts with surveillance companies, including the Israeli firm NSO Group, after the rights organization joined The Washington Post in publishing what it called “shocking new details” about the use of spyware to target journalists in India.

    Amnesty’s Security Lab revealed that a round of “state-sponsored attacker” notifications that were sent to Apple customers in October by the tech company went to more than 20 Indian journalists including Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, South Asia editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP).

    The Security Lab ran a forensic analysis of the two reporters’ devices and found evidence that the NSO Group’s highly invasive Pegasus spyware, which is capable of eavesdropping on phone calls and harvesting data, had been installed on phones owned by Varadarajan and Mangnale.

    In Mangnale’s case, the journalist appeared to have received a “zero-click exploit” via iMessage on August 23, allowing the individual or group who sent it to covertly install Pegasus spyware on his phone without requiring Mangnale to take any action, such as clicking a link.

    At the time of the attempted attack, said Amnesty, Mangnale was working on a story about alleged stock manipulation by a major Indian multinational firm with ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The journalist told Agence France Presse that his phone was targeted “within hours” of his sending interview questions to the company.

    The timing of the attack—and the fact that NSO Group has said it only licenses Pegasus to governments and security agencies—was “a hell of a coincidence,” Mangnale said.

    “Targeting journalists solely for doing their work amounts to an unlawful attack on their privacy and violates their right to freedom of expression,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty’s Security Lab. “All states, including India, have an obligation to protect human rights by protecting people from unlawful surveillance.”

    The Indian government was previously accused of targeting journalists, opposition politicians, and activists with Pegasus in 2021, when leaked documents showed the spyware had attacked more than 1,000 phone numbers.

    India has fallen 21 spots to 161 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index since Modi took office in 2014. In addition to the alleged use of spyware by the government, journalists have been arrested and detained while covering anti-government protests, and reporters have been targeted by coordinated social media campaigns inciting hatred and violence.

    Varadarajan was the subject of an earlier report by Amnesty, which documented how he had previously been targeted by Pegasus spyware in 2018.

    This past October the same email address used in the Pegasus attack on Mangnale was identified on Varadarajan’s phone, confirming he was targeted again.

    Varadarajan toldThe Washington Post that at the time of the most recent covert spyware installation, he had been leading public opposition to the detention of a news publisher in New Delhi.

    “Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” said Ó Cearbhaill.

    The group called for the Indian Supreme Court to immediately release the findings of a technical committee report on Pegasus, which was completed in 2022 but has still not been made public.

    “Despite repeated revelations,” said Ó Cearbhaill, “there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

  • Pressure rises for Biden to drop military aid to Israel

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    Original article republished from Peoples Dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

    After over two months of genocide, support for the US’s usual policy of unconditional aid to the Zionist state is dwindling

    Image from demonstration outside of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s house on Christmas morning, protesting US policy in Israel

    Since October 7, Biden has added to Israel’s massive US-made military arsenal and sent more weapons to Israel as it carries out its genocide in the Gaza Strip, even bypassing Congressional review to do so. After nearly three months of war, however, support for the US’s usual policy of unconditional aid to the Zionist state is dwindling.

    Some of the most bloody attacks against Palestinian civilians have been made possible with US-made bombs, such as the attack that leveled an apartment block in the Jabalya refugee camp, killing over 100 people.

    Many of the atrocities perpetrated by Israel with US-made weaponry and funded by US money have been broadcast internationally across communications channels for even the people of the US to see. As a result, mass protests have erupted in the streets for months, often disrupting major commercial centers and events throughout the busy holiday season. 

    A recent poll shows that popular support for US aid to Israel has dropped since November. According to a poll from Quinnipiac University released on December 20, less than half (45%) of registered voters support sending “military aid to Israel for their efforts in the war.” This is a significant drop from the results of Quinnipiac’s previous poll from a month ago, in which 54% of voters expressed their support for military aid to Israel. A comparison of the two polls reveals that support for aid to Israel has dropped among voters in both the Republican and Democratic parties. In the November poll, 71% of Republicans and 45% Democratic voters said they were in favor of further military aid to Israel. Those numbers dropped in December, with 65% of Republicans and only 36% of Democrats supporting more US aid to Israel.

    The dwindling support for US support to the Zionist state follows the trends of other polls in the growing popularity of the Palestinian cause, such as an early December Date for Progress poll which found that 61% of voters support calls for a permanent ceasefire—including nearly half, 49%, of Republicans. 

    Pressure for the Biden administration to shift its policies on Israel has also been coming from within Congress itself—not even necessarily from the most progressive elements of the legislature. Six members of security-oriented committees of the House of Representatives, including the Intelligence, Armed Services or Foreign Affairs committees, none of whom are known progressives, penned a letter to Biden on December 18, calling on the President to “use all of our nation’s leverage to shift the Israeli military’s strategy.” 

    “The mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis are unacceptable and not in line with American interests,” the letter reads. The representatives also reference the history of “America’s war on terror” as a warning for the future, stating, “We know from personal and often painful experience that you can’t destroy a terror ideology with military force alone. And it can, in fact, make it worse.”

    Several prominent humanitarian organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders USA, Oxfam America, and Amnesty International, have also penned a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, urging him to halt military aid to Israel. The organizations urge the Pentagon to “withhold U.S. assistance, in accordance with U.S. law and policy, that would facilitate violations of international humanitarian law.” 

    Biden himself has not responded to any of the outside pressures against his Israel policy, and has only dug his heels in. As his administration told CNN earlier this month, the US has no plans to place conditions on Israel aid as it carries out genocide in Gaza.

    Original article republished from Peoples Dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

  • ‘Disgraceful’: US Abstains After Watering Down UN Gaza Resolution

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    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    U.S. United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstains during a vote on a Security Council resolution on Gaza, on December 22, 2023 in New York. (Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Given the staggering death toll—with more than 20,000 killed in over two months—and the horrifying scale of destruction and devastation in Gaza, this is simply unacceptable,” said the head of Amnesty International.

    The United States on Friday abstained from voting on a U.N. Security Council resolution that it repeatedly stonewalled and lobbied to weaken in the face of intense international opposition as Israeli forces continue to kill hundreds of Palestinians daily.

    The newly passed resolution—which was introduced by the United Arab Emirates—calls for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access.”

    Thirteen Security Council members voted in favor of the resolution. Russia joined the U.S. in abstaining.

    The resolution calls for “urgent steps… for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities,” language that’s weaker than an earlier draft’s call for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

    “Biden’s changes will help ensure that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza continues while minimizing the U.N.’s insight into what increasingly appears to be a genocide.”

    Also removed from the final version was language condemning Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed, wounded, or left missing during 77 days of Israeli onslaught.

    The vote came just after Russia proposed an amendment that would have restored language calling for an “immediate cessation of hostilities” to the resolution. The U.S. vetoed the amendment.

    Earlier this month, the U.S. vetoed a separate Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire. That resolution was later approved by the U.N. General Assembly in a 153-10 vote.

    “It is disgraceful that the U.S. was able to stall and use the threat of its veto power to force the U.N. Security Council to weaken a much-needed call for an immediate end to attacks by all parties,” Amnesty International secretary-general Agnès Callamard said in a statement.

    “This is a much-needed resolution—all efforts to address the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza must be welcomed—but it remains woefully insufficient in the face of the ongoing carnage and extensive destruction wrought by the government of Israel’s attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip,” Callamard continued. “Nothing short of an immediate cease-fire is enough to alleviate the mass civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

    “Given the staggering death toll—with more than 20,000 killed in over two months—and the horrifying scale of destruction and devastation in Gaza, this is simply unacceptable,” she added.

    In a statement giving a “qualified welcome” to the resolution, Mary Robinson—a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights and Irish president who currently chairs The Elders—said: “Agreement on this weak and overdue U.N. Security Council resolution is better than another U.S. veto. But the test of the resolution’s success will be how many lives are saved.”

    “This is a much-needed resolution—all efforts to address the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza must be welcomed—but it remains woefully insufficient in the face of the ongoing carnage and extensive destruction wrought by the government of Israel’s attacks in the occupied Gaza Strip,” Callamard continued. “Nothing short of an immediate cease-fire is enough to alleviate the mass civilian suffering we are witnessing.”

    “Given the staggering death toll—with more than 20,000 killed in over two months—and the horrifying scale of destruction and devastation in Gaza, this is simply unacceptable,” she added.

    In a statement giving a “qualified welcome” to the resolution, Mary Robinson—a former U.N. high commissioner for human rights and Irish president who currently chairs The Elders—said: “Agreement on this weak and overdue U.N. Security Council resolution is better than another U.S. veto. But the test of the resolution’s success will be how many lives are saved.”

    Lamenting that the resolution “became increasingly meaningless” as U.S. President Joe Biden “managed to delete the call for suspension of hostilities,” Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said on social media Friday that “Biden’s changes will help ensure that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza continues while minimizing the U.N.’s insight into what increasingly appears to be a genocide.”

    “Biden is effectively running war crimes management for Israel,” he added.

    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Comment by dizzy: The United States under President Biden has repeatedly succeeded in frustrating attempts to stop and has thereby facilitated Israel’s Fascist-like genocidal atrocities and war crimes in Gaza. We need to stop Israel’s war crimes and remove this ability from the United States at the UN Security Council.

  • Dutch Court Hears Case Accusing Government of Complicity in Israeli War Crimes

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    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Protesters hold signs denouncing genocide during a demonstration in solidarity with Palestine in Amsterdam on October 15, 2023. (Photo: Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

    “When military goods can contribute to human rights violations or international humanitarian law, that export is strictly prohibited,” said one campaigner. “It is incomprehensible that, despite clear warnings, the government has knowingly deviated from this.”

    A Dutch court on Monday heard opening arguments in a case brought by four human rights organizations that have accused the government of the Netherlands of being complicit in Israeli war crimes due to its export of military supplies as Israel kills thousands of civilians in Gaza.

    Supplying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with parts for F-35 fighter jets, which are stored in a warehouse in the Netherlands, puts the Dutch government at risk for “becoming complicit in violations of international humanitarian law,” the director of the Dutch branch of Amnesty International , one of the plaintiffs, said when the lawsuit was announced last month.

    Amnesty is joined by Oxfam Novib—the Dutch chapter of Oxfam International—The Rights Forum, and PAX in the case, which is expected to result in a judgement around December 15.

    The groups filed the lawsuit after government documents showed the Netherlands had allowed at least one shipment of reserve parts for F-35s since October 7, Al Jazeera reported .

    The Dutch Defense Ministry wrote in a letter to Parliament that “it cannot be established that the F-35s are involved in grave violations of the humanitarian laws of war,” but with nearly 16,000 people killed in Gaza in less than two months—including more than 6,600 children —the human rights groups aim to test that claim in court.

    “The state must immediately stop its deliveries of F-35 parts to Israel,” lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld said Monday at the Hague District Court. “That is its obligation under… Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, it is its obligation under the Genocide Treaty to prevent genocide, and it is its obligation under export law.”

    Martje van Nes, PAX’s director of organization, pointed out last month that “the Netherlands has a very concrete assessment framework for arms exports.”

    “When military goods can contribute to human rights violations or international humanitarian law, that export is strictly prohibited,” said van Nes. “It is incomprehensible that, despite clear warnings, the government has knowingly deviated from this. This makes them responsible for the deployment of the equipment.”

    PAX noted on Monday that the call for the Netherlands to end shipments of any supplies that Israel could use to continue its massacre of Palestinian civilians—in retaliation for an attack by Hamas in October that killed 1,200 Israelis—”is all the more urgent” considering the end of a temporary cease-fire on Friday. More than 800 people have been killed since the pause in fighting ended last week, and Israel was stepping up its ground attacks on Monday.

    “As far as we are concerned, the government must take action now to protect citizens,” said PAX on social media. The group has demanded a permanent humanitarian cease-fire.

    Dagmar Oudshoorn, director of Amnesty International in the Netherlands, said that as the host country “of both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court,” the Dutch government “likes to present itself as a champion of international law.”

    “Our government is losing all credibility right now,” she said. “Evident violations such as food, water, and fuel blockade, the forced displacement of the population, and the bombing of schools and hospitals, are not mentioned. And by supplying armies, the Netherlands runs the risk of becoming complicit in violations of international humanitarian law.”

    The Netherlands has maintained since October 7 that Israel “has the right to defend itself” and has called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to adhere to international law, but the groups said the IDF is clearly not doing so and should lose the support of the country.

    “This complicity must stop now,” said Gerard Jonkman, director of The Rights Forum.

    Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Venture Fund Set to ‘Take Control’ of Telegraph Has Fossil Fuel Investments

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    Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.

    The group, which reportedly has UAE state backing, is leading the race to buy the British newspaper.

    The Daily Telegraph front page. Credit: Steven May / Alamy

    The investment fund that has reportedly reached an agreement to buy the Telegraph Media Group has stakes in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can report. 

    U.S.-based RedBird Capital has entered into a joint venture to take control of The Telegraph alongside International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 

    The two groups have reportedly agreed to provide loans to The Telegraph’s existing owners, the Barclay family, to allow them to pay off their £1.16 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group. The family lost control of The Telegraph and the Spectator magazine, which is also part of the media group, earlier this year due to this outstanding debt. 

    News reports suggest that the deal is being backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as the deputy prime minister of the UAE, the head of its state-owned investment company, and the owner of Manchester City football club.

    Conservative MPs have voiced concerns over the potential purchase and the danger of foreign influence, asking the UK government to use national security laws to investigate the agreement. Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has echoed these concerns, warning that the deal could undermine “free expression of opinion” and prevent the “accurate presentation of the news”.

    The UAE is a petrostate that has the world’s largest oil expansion plans. The state-owned energy company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), intends to increase its oil production by more than any other fossil fuel firm in the world, according to data from the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (Gogel). Adnoc said that Gogel’s data and assumptions were “incorrect and misleading” but has not provided its own figures.

    RedBird-IMI has said that, under its proposal, The Telegraph and Spectator will be managed by RedBird Capital “alone” and IMI would be a “passive investor”.

    RedBird Capital trades in a number of core investment sectors, including energy. The firm’s website states that it holds investments in at least six fossil fuel firms: Aethon United, CapturePoint, FireBird Energy, Four Corners Petroleum, Lambda Energy Resources, and Tally Energy Services.

    All of these companies are based in the U.S., with a majority operating in Texas.

    Aethon United was listed by Enverus Intelligence Research as one of the most prolific private oil and gas producers in the U.S. in 2023. It was reported in 2022 that the firm was considering a public listing that would value it at more than $10 billion.

    CapturePoint specialises in carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), a favoured technology of the fossil fuel industry that it claims will help to limit global warming. The RedBird website claims that CapturePoint is “building out a carbon capture network on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest”.

    There is limited evidence of the efficacy of CCUS at scale. DeSmog recently analysed 12 large-scale CCUS projects around the world and found countless missed carbon capture targets, as well as cost overruns, with taxpayers picking up the tab via billions of dollars in subsidies. Meanwhile, captured carbon is often merely used to extract more oil. 

    “If this deal goes through, it will pollute our press and the UK’s fight against climate breakdown,” Alexander Kirk, fossil fuels campaigner at Global Witness, told DeSmog.

    RedBird Capital also holds an investment in Majority Strategies, a political strategy firm that claims to have worked for every official Republican presidential nominee since 2000. Majority Strategies received more than $27 million during the 2022 election cycle, including $9.2 million from the Republican Senate Leadership Fund. 

    Responding to media speculation about The Telegraph’s future ownership, the paper’s editor Chris Evans sent an internal memo earlier this week. Seen by Politico Playbook, the memo read: “You’ve been asking me how we can be confident that editorial independence would be protected. At the moment I know no more than you will have read.”

    Polly Truscott, a foreign policy adviser at Amnesty International UK, told The Times that: “Any Emirati state ownership of the Telegraph may have serious implications for press freedom in the UK and should be carefully scrutinised by the government. In the UAE, anyone who dares to speak out against the Emirati authorities is likely to be at serious risk.”

    The UAE ranks 145 out of 180 in the 2023 Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.

    Other sources claim that the bidding process for The Telegraph and the Spectator is still ongoing and that no deal has been finalised. Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, is also reportedly interested in buying the titles. DeSmog revealed in October that Marshall’s hedge fund has $2 billion in fossil fuel investments. 

    RedBird Capital and the Telegraph Media Group did not respond to our request for comment. 

    Climate Attacks

    A new DeSmog analysis has found that eight in 10 opinion pieces from The Telegraph on environmental issues downplay the climate crisis. 

    Our analysis, for the six months ending 16 October, found that of the 171 articles covering environmental issues, 85 percent were identified as “anti-green” – attacking climate policy, downplaying climate science and ridiculing environmental groups.

    Of the 1,930 opinion pieces published by the paper during this period, nearly one in five (17.6 percent) featured an attack on climate science, policy or environmental groups. Ten writers linked to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group, wrote a total of 144 opinion pieces for The Telegraph during the period. 

    The Telegraph’s print circulation at the end of 2019, when it last released the data, was over 300,000. It had an online audience of 13.5 million in September this year. 

    World leaders next week gather in Dubai, UAE, to negotiate how to reduce emissions and limit global warming. The COP28 summit is being led by Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of Adnoc, which is the world’s 11th largest oil and gas producer. Al Jaber has claimed that fossil fuels should “continue to play a role in the foreseeable future” – a statement labelled as “very dangerous” by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.

    The UAE has also attempted to emphasise the importance of CCUS in capturing emissions. However, according to an analysis by Global Witness, based on Adnoc’s carbon capture plans, it would take 343 years for the firm to capture all the CO2 emissions it will produce in just the next six years. This week, the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition also revealed that at least 7,200 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN-led climate over the last 20 years.

    Total trade between the UK and UAE exceeded £25 billion in the year ending Q2 2023, an increase of 47.3 percent compared to the year before. The Gulf state has also pledged to invest £10 billion in “priority” UK industries. 

    In the year following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the UK imported £2.5 billion in fossil fuels from the UAE. The average monthly value of fossil fuel imports from the UAE increased from £84.4 million in the year to February 2022, to £195 million the year after. 

    In total, UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3 billion in the year following the invasion – an increase of more than 60 percent. 

    Original article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.