Human Rights First » FirstCast

On this edition of Firstcast we’ll discuss the current state of affairs in the ongoing Pussy Riot case and the growing persecution of the LGBT community in Russia.

This week's FirstCast covers the story of the blind "barefoot" lawyer Chen Guangcheng. He is recipient of the 2012 Human Rights First Award for his lifelong work fighting for the rule of law in China. Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale called him a "giant among" men as he presented the award.

In December last year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out strongly in support of global LGBT rights at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Her speech coincided with a directive from President Obama to prioritize the protection of LGBTI rights in US foreign policy. On FirstCast this week, we focus on some of the most vulnerable of the LGBT community: refugees. We look at what the Obama Administration and the international community is and should be doing to protect them from violence and discrimination.

Despite relentless assaults by the Syrian regime on civilian populations, there is still no international arms embargo on Syria. This is largely due to Russia’s insistence on blocking such a measure at the UN Security Council. In this week's FirstCast, a Human Rights First podcast, we focus on the escalating violence in Syria and the Russian state arms dealer--Rosoboronexport--which continues to arm the Syrian regime with weapons.

Subscribe to Firstcast on iTunes!In this special edition of Firstcast, we feature the voices of a recently detained asylum seeker, whom we can call Michael, and Human Rights First’s Ruthie Epstein to discuss the broken system of U.S. immigration detention. Drawn by the promise of the Statue of Liberty, refugees flee to the United States seeking freedom.  But too often, the U.S. government welcomes them with handcuffs and jail. For many years, Human Rights First has worked to correct this injustice.  We achieved an important victory in 2009 when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) publicly announced that it would shift away from a penal model of detention to one more appropriate for immigration detainees. But two years later–as we found in our recent report, “Jails and Jumpsuits”, the overwhelming majority of the nearly 400,000 detainees ICE holds annually are still held in jails or jail-like facilities—at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of more than $2 billion a year. A full 50 percent of ICE’s beds are in actual jails. Our report notes that former prison officials and other corrections experts have found that less penal conditions in detention can actually help improve safety inside a facility, a finding echoed in multiple studies. It outlines steps that the administration should take to end its reliance on facilities with conditions that are inappropriate for asylum seekers and other civil immigration law detainees, and to bring U.S. detention practices into compliance with international human rights standards. Read our latest report: Jails and Jumpsuits: Transforming the U.S. Immigration Detention System – A Two-Year Review.

In this week's FirstCast, we talk about the controversial National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense bill currently being considered by the Senate which has provisions that would limit the ability of the U.S. government to deal with terrorism suspects. Human Rights First has been working to make sure that these provisions are removed from the bill since day one and have launched a campaign this summer to educate Congress about the dangers of passing them.

In this special edition of FirstCast, we feature the voices of two brave women who have been detained the longest in Bahrain in connection to the crackdown of pro-democracy advocates. Roula al-Safar is a nurse, a humanitarian, and the head of the Bahrain Nursing Association who was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jalila al-Salman is a teacher and vice president of the Bahrain Teachers Association. She was sentenced to three years in prison.

While Russia’s heightened prosecution of ultranationalist groups resulted in a decrease of violent hate crime, law enforcement and prosecutorial officials also use the same legislation to persecute nonviolent government critics including journalist, independent media and human rights organizations and religious organizations--draining resources away from police units tasked with combating real threats of racist violence.

As our country moves forward, we must recommit ourselves to honoring the memory and sacrifice of those lost by holding fast to the principles of tolerance, human rights, and the rule of law. This week's podcast features commentary from everyday people, reflecting on lessons learned from 9/11 and steps on how to move forward.

This month, the HATE NO MORE Campaign was launched in the Ugandan capital Kampala, calling for an end to hate toward the gay community. The campaign is spearheaded by Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) and a coalition of some 30 other organizations. The four-month campaign will engage civil society, political leaders, religious leaders, and the general public in dialogue about hatred and its physical and psychological manifestations. The campaign was launched despite a break-in at FARUG’s headquarters earlier that same week. Kampala police initially refused to go to the crime scene but the organization’s lawyers stood up to this injustice, getting the police to open an investigation and take fingerprints at the office. After the burglary at FARUG’s office, Human Rights First issued a call to the Ugandan police chief, asking him to personally oversee the investigation: Dear Major General Kayihura: I write to express my deep concern about the recent news of a burglary at the office of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG). According to news reports, the police were late in getting to the crime scene. However, an investigation was ultimately opened and the crime scene analyzed by forensics experts. FARUG staff estimate that the burglars stole 5 computers, 2 printers, a server, a microwave, and various documents, including the members’ electronic database which includes the names of the organization’s members. I urge you to personally oversee the investigation into the burglary and ensure that all perpetrators are located and brought to justice. If the perpetrators purposely targeted FARUG because of its work to protect the rights of LGBTI individuals, their possession of the oranization’s electronic database put individual members at risk. I urge the police to give high priority to this investigation and to stay true to your motto of “protect and serve” by guaranteeing protection to the members of Freedom and Roam Uganda and other rights activists who may be threatened by further violence and attacks. More than 4,100 individuals have signed our petition to the police chief, and we hope that these signatures will help ensure that the crime does not go unpunished. We still don’t know if the robbery and another attempted break-in were meant to silence the work of organizations fighting for the rights of LGBTI Ugandans. However, FARUG and its executive director Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera assure us that their struggle will continue.

In the aftermath of the attacks in Norway, this week's FirstCast features Human Rights First's Tad Stahnke who discusses the importance of promoting respect for religious differences and combating hatred and intolerance. Anders Behring Breivik has admitted to killing 76 people who he believes promoted “multiculturalism” and enabled “the ongoing Islamic colonization of Europe.” We also learn, from his 1500-page testament, that this self-proclaimed Christian nationalist was inspired to recreate a Knights Templar in Europe to fight a holy war against Islam and may have been further inspired by the rising anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States.

Most Americans are familiar with Guantanamo Bay. This week's FirstCast focuses on the much larger detention facility at the U.S. airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan. There are actually more than 2000 prisoners being held indefinitely in Afghanistan, more than ten times as many held in Guantanamo Bay. Interestingly, just since President Obama took office, the number of detainees in custody has more than tripled. Human Rights First's Daphne Eviatar and Gabor Rona discuss the implications of Bagram in Afghan society as we find out more details about U.S. detention process in Afghanistan—including the revelation of what an "enduring security threat" means—and as the United States begin to pull military troops out of the country.

This week's FirstCast features Shehrbano Taseer, the daughter of Salmaan Taseer who was assassinated for publicly condemning the misuse of blasphemy laws in Pakistan. She is continuing her father's work and has become an international voice for the victims of extremism and religious intolerance. She has been speaking out against the forces that killed her father and against laws that persecute in the name of religion.