Month: February 2021

Michelle Bachelet, The United Nations Human rights chief has expressed concern over the restrictions on communications and clampdowns in civil rights activities in the Kashmir valley. Bachelet referring to the Farmers protest in India said that there was a need to ensure laws and policies are framed and based on meaningful consultations with those concerned. She said, “Raids against human rights defenders in Kashmir exemplify the continued restrictions on civil society resulting impact on the rights of the people of Kashmir to impart and receive information, and to engage in free, open debate on Government policies affecting them”. Bachelet made these remarks during the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). “Though the internet restrictions have been removed in K...

Thousands of people staged protests across Yemen against the Saudi blockade and closure of Sana’a International Airport, according to reports. The Saudi blockade has made it impossible for food and medical supplies to reach the poor in war-torn Yemen Yemen has the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 80 percent of the people in need of help. Mark Lowcock, The United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs said some 16 million people in Yemen were going hungry and five million of those people are just one step away from famine, Some 400,000 children under the age of five are severely malnourished, he said. Pertinently Saudi Arabia and its regional allies launched the war against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of the former pre...

The United States has launched deadly airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, targeting facilities near the Iraqi border used by Iranian-backed militia groups. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the war in Syria, said 22 fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries that includes Kataeb Hezbollah, were killed. Meanwhile, an Iraqi militia official reported Friday that one of their militiamen was killed and a number of others were wounded. The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops.

The government of Sri Lanka in the month of March 2020, had imposed regulations announcing that the bodies of COVID-19 victims could only be cremated stating that the virus could spread by contaminating groundwater. On the eve of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Visit a group of Muslim parliamentarians urged Pakistani Premier who was visiting the country to take up the issue with the Sri Lankan political leaders. Thanking his Sri Lankan counterparts for the policy change Imran Khan tweeted “I welcome the Sri Lankan govt’s official notification allowing the burial option for those dying of Covid - 19,”. The chairperson of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Michelle Bachelet, referred to the issue in a statement on Wednesday after the 57-member Organizations of...