#criminalisation

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

This tweet is about Florida, but it could equally apply to the UK.

Get organised.

[elladastinkardiamou]

On trial for saving lives: the young refugee activist facing a Greek court

Seán Binder belongs to the band of committed humanitarians who rushed to Greece at the height of the refugee crisis. In other countries, and at other times, his idealism might have been celebrated.

But the 27-year-old law student, who has spent the past two years in London, is a man living in fear. Though forced to abandon volunteering, the German-born Irishman and his Syrian friend, Sarah Mardini, are perhaps the most famous aid workers in Greece, for all the wrong reasons: a criminal investigation has hung over their heads for the past three years.

“There’s nothing criminal, or heroic, about helping people in distress at sea,” he tells the Observer. “Legally and morally, it is the right thing to do.”

The activists have been accused of human trafficking, money laundering, fraud and espionage – the last charge based on allegations that, while on Lesbos, the Aegean island at the centre of refugee flows, they monitored coastguard radio channels and vessels to gain advance notification of the location of smugglers’ boats.

In an 86-page report, police also accuse them of being members of a criminal organisation that posed as an NGO with the aim of profiteering by bringing people illegally into Greece. The charges followed a six-month police inquiry: human rights groups championing the pair have called them “farcical”.

“It’s been a sword of Damocles,” Binder says. “As absurd as the charges may be, they cast a shadow over your life that makes it impossible to move on.”

[indizombie]

Israel’s shutdown of Palestinian Union of Health Workers Committee (UHWC) headquarters in Ramallah will have major consequences for the provision of essential health services to thousands of Palestinians, a programme for women’s health that was at the headquarters has now stopped. So far they have completely failed to protect the rights of all Palestinians – including their right to healthcare - throughout the global pandemic, pursuing a discriminatory COVID-19 vaccination policy. Israeli authorities must immediately rescind the shutdown order and put an end to the harassment of health workers. Instead of criminalising organisations providing vital health services, the Israeli authorities should be ending their institutionalised discrimination and systematic oppression of Palestinians.

Saleh Higazi, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa

[mirrorontheworld]

Le rapport parlementaire qui veut mettre les militants écologistes en prison

Une mission d’information parlementaire pilotée par Les Républicains et La République en marche demande de « renforcer l’arsenal pénal » contre « les militants antiglyphosate, véganes ou antichasse ». Les propositions pourraient être inscrites dans la loi, une perspective qui inquiète fortement les militants écologistes ou antispécistes.

[sappy-queer]

Boomers will support the criminalisation of queer relationships in certain parts of the world on the basis that “laws are there for a reason” then refuse to follow the most basic COVID safety precautions

[larueourien]

[generalelectionmusings]

[pinksixty]

Austria's Constitutional Court Overturns Ban #EqualMarriage

Austria’s Constitutional Court Overturns Ban #EqualMarriage

Austria’s Constitutional Court has overturned a law which prevented same-sex couples from marrying.

The new change makes Austria the first European nation to enshrine marriage equality as a human right.

  A 99-year-old gay man has been denied reparations by the German government because he spent less than 6 months in jail for being gay. Holocaust survivor, Wolfgang Lauinger who petitioned to…

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