Tell Turkey: free Amnesty’s Idil Eser and other rights defenders | Amnesty International

Tell Turkey: free Amnesty’s Idil Eser and other rights defenders | Amnesty International

Tell Turkey: free Amnesty’s Idil Eser and other rights defenders. Police have detained the second Amnesty International Turkey leader within the space of a month.

On the morning of the 5th July, police arrested eight human rights activists, including Idil Eser, and two trainers who were attending a workshop in Istanbul. For over 24 hours, they weren’t allowed to contact their families or see a lawyer - and no one even knew where they were.

Idil and the others were doing nothing wrong.  They are now being investigated on suspicion of "membership of an armed terrorist organisation": a ridiculous and baseless accusation.This kind of attack on Human Rights Defenders is becoming more frequent. The Turkish government is abusing its power, deliberately making the country a dangerous place for people who speak out for human rights.

The ten human rights defenders detained are İdil Eser (Amnesty International), İlknur Üstün  (Women's Coalition), Günal Kurşun (Human Rights Agenda Association), Nalan Erkem,(Citizens Assembly), Nejat Taştan (Equal Rights Watch Association), Özlem Dalkıran (Citizens’ Assembly), Şeyhmuz Özbekli (lawyer), Veli Acu (Human Rights Agenda Association) Ali Gharavi (IT strategy consultant), Peter Steudtner (non-violence and wellbeing trainer).

China: Democratic Voice Liu Xiaobo Dies in Custody | Human Rights Watch

China: Democratic Voice Liu Xiaobo Dies in Custody | Human Rights Watch

The death of Chinese dissident and public intellectual Liu Xiaobo, winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, lays bare the Chinese government’s ruthlessness toward peaceful proponents of human rights and democracy, Human Rights Watch said today. On July 13, 2017, Liu died from complications of liver cancer in a Shenyang hospital in Liaoning Province while being guarded by state security.  The last time a Nobel Peace laureate died in state custody was in 1938, when pacifist Carl von Ossietzky died of tuberculosis under guard in a hospital in Nazi Germany.

Suncor: clean up your toxic tailings mess before 2085

Suncor: clean up your toxic tailings mess.

Suncor is trying to get the Alberta government to give it until 2085 to clean up billions of litres of ghastly mess.

But it gets worse. Suncor's strategy to "clean up" literally 525 billion litres of poisonous tailings sludge involves dumping it into a hole and capping it with water. That's it. This half-baked plan is nothing more than Suncor’s thinly veiled excuse to avoid cleaning up the after-party of a 50-year fossil fuel extraction binge fest.

We have zero guarantees that corporations like Suncor will even be around in three-quarters of a century -- let alone have the resources or motivation to clean their messes up.

Tell Suncor to stop playing games and clean up its mess now.

There are now more than 1.2 trillion litres of tar sands tailings fluids sitting in open ponds and leaching toxic chemicals into the environment of northern Alberta. They remain the biggest logistical and environmental challenge of bitumen mining.

Indigenous Peoples, environmentalists, and residents have always feared that the long-term plan is to simply delay cleaning them up until every last drop of carbon has been sucked out of the earth. Then, the tar sands corporations can leave the mess for communities and taxpayers to deal with. And if Suncor gets its way, this is exactly what will happen.

What's even more baffling is that Suncor's mine is set to close in 2032, so essentially the company is asking us to believe it is going to stick around for over 50 years after operations have ended to clean up what it destroyed. Albertans and Canadians have absolutely no guarantee Suncor is going to finish the job. This is a risk we simply cannot afford to take.

The Alberta government is currently reviewing Suncor's flawed tailings strategy -- and that means we don't have long to act. 

Tell Suncor it needs to take responsibility and clean up its toxic tailings mess.