"On the backs of trafficked workers and child labourers, China exploits the vast cobalt resources of the DRC to fuel its economy and global agenda," a congressional hearing on human rights violations heard this week

Rigobert Minani Bihuzo, a Catholic priest who has worked to expose child labour and human rights violations in the DRC's mining sector, testified to the dangerous working condition at the mines.

The children work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, he said. He described their working conditions as being "like slavery".

Injuries are common, and for those who are hurt or become sick, lack of medical care means "the majority will die due to various untreated illnesses", he said.

US representative Christopher Smith, who chaired the "Child Labour and Human Rights Violations" in the Mining Industry of the Democratic Republic of Congo, clearly voiced his views on the violations.

"The Chinese Communist Party's quest for cobalt for batteries and lithium for solar panels to power the so-called Green Economy motivates human rapacity as an estimated 40,000 children in Congo toil in non-regulated artisanal mines under hazardous conditions."

The DRC produces over 70 percent of the world's cobalt. 15 to 30 percent of this is produced in artisanal mines.

Smith said that, for years, these small-scale operations have been notorious for human rights violations. The congressional Council on Foreign Relations attributes some of the inhumane working condition to the DRCs instability - "a country weakened by violent ethnic conflict, Ebola and high levels of corruption".

Congolese civil rights attorney Hervé Diakiese Kyungu told the hearing children are trafficked and exploited because they are small.

Kyungu explained this is because the artisanal mines "are often no more than narrow shafts dug into the ground.

"Children are recruited — often forced — to descend into them, using only their hands or rudimentary tools without any protective equipment, to extract cobalt and other minerals."

At the Chinese company Dongfang Congo Mining, children are often exposed to radioactive minerals, injuries, and deadly and painful diseases as they work to extract the valuable ore, Kyungu testified.

They are also unpaid and exploited. The work is often fatal as the children are required to crawl into small holes dug into the earth.

"Officially artisanal mines are supposed to be owned by Congolese citizens working in ‘cooperatives'.

"In reality, they are selling the product extracted from these to the Chinese and other foreigners such as Pakistanis or Indians. The vast majority of this ore, however, is trafficked through Chinese intermediaries."

Chinese representatives are on site, overseeing the operations.

On one occasion "two persons identified as Chinese citizens… instructed two Congolese military officers to whip two Congolese who were found on their site".

The whipping, which was shared on the internet, demonstrates the cooperation between Chinese companies and DCR government officials, Kyungu said.

Source

• CNA

Facebook hired former American Civil Liberties Union executive Laura Murphy in May 2018 to assess its performance on vital social issues.

The final 100-page report said while the company has made progress on issues such as voter suppression and cracking down on hate groups, "those gains could be obscured by the vexing and heartbreaking decisions Facebook has made that represent significant setbacks for civil rights."

Here are five takeaways from the audit.

Election interference

Facebook has expanded its voter suppression policy since the audit began.

This includes banning posts about violence relating to voting, voter registration or the outcome of elections, as well as threats that voting will lead to law enforcement action (such as immigration agents arresting people, for instance). But the company needs a "stronger interpretation" of its policies against voter suppression, the audit said.

This includes prohibiting posts such as US President Donald Trump's in May that call into question the integrity of voting by mail.

Facebook's decision to leave up these posts - along with another one many saw as threatening violence against protesters - "have caused considerable alarm for the auditors and the civil rights community," the report said.

"These decisions exposed a major hole in Facebook's understanding and application of civil rights," the audit said, calling the decisions "devastating."

Organised hate

Facebook reported in May that in the first three months of 2020, it removed about 4.7 million posts connected to organised hate; an increase of more than 3 million from the end of 2019. But "while this is an impressive figure," the auditors said it's not clear if this means Facebook removed more material or there was more material from organised hate groups in the first place.

The company, the auditors said, has also not implemented their recommendation to prohibit veiled and not just explicit references to white nationalist or white separatist ideology.

The company also needs to invest more resources to address organised hate against Muslims, Jews and other targeted groups on the platform, the audit said. Continue reading

• The analysis or comments in this article do not necessarily reflect the view of CathNews.

In their recent newsletters and press releases, they say that the wake of terror attacks, governments often consider curtailing a number of civil liberties.

"With that in mind, the Coalition has invested time into following Government announcements and calls for action from political parties and NGOs."

They have raised concerns about;

Banning of websites

Spokesman Dr David Cumin said the FSC didn't challenge the original decision of ISPs to block websites.

"They are after all private enterprises, and concerned customers have the option of using a competitor."

"However, a threat to free speech has emerged with the Government's intervention.

Governments don't just ‘ask kindly' for companies to block content - any request from those with regulatory power comes with an implicit threat of ‘…or else'."

Chief censor's decision

Last weekend the chief censor announced that the terrorist's 74-page manifesto is now classified as ‘objectionable', making it a crime to hold, share, or quote from.

Anybody caught with the document on their computer could face up to 10 years in prison, while anyone caught sending it could face 14 years.

Cummin says: " This is a dangerous precedent that seems to fly in the face of the rights of New Zealanders to seek understanding about the motivation behind the terrorist's evil acts."

He said most New Zealanders will have no interest in reading the rants of an evil person.

"But there is a major debate going on right now on the causes of extremism.

Kiwis should not be wrapped in cotton wool with their news and information censored."

"New Zealanders need to be able to understand the nature of evil and how it expresses itself."

Source

• freespeechcoalition.nz
• freespeechcoalition.nz
• scoop.co.nz
• apnews.com
• Image: thedailyblog.co.nz

The Adorers of the Blood of Christ, who own a strip of the land earmarked for the pipeline, have considered it "sacred ground" for nearly a century.

Believing the pipeline poses a danger to God's creation, the nuns have positioned their newly dedicated open air chapel just where planners want the new pipeline to go. They say it stands as a symbol of people's resistance to the pipeline's development.

The nuns have declined repeated offers of compensation from Transco, the project's developer, to allow an easement for the pipeline to be built.

"This is something that we felt as a matter of conscience," says Sister Sara Dwyer, coordinator of the congregation's justice, peace and integrity of creation ministry.

"We had to look at it more deeply and take a stronger stand."

Dwyer says allowing the pipeline through the property would run contrary to the congregation's Land Ethic.

This upholds the sacredness of creation, reverences the earth as a "sanctuary where all life is protected" and treasures the earth's beauty and sustenance that must be protected for future generations.

The nuns have also filed a civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the pipeline. They argue that the order authorising the pipeline's construction and operation violates their right to practice their faith under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• ViceNews
• Image: Washington Post

The lawsuit was filed in the case of a pregnant woman whose life was at risk from premature labor. The group says Mercy Health Muskegon hospital didn't tell the woman that she should consider terminating her pregnancy because the bishops' guidelines barred mention of abortion.

The Catholic News Agency, however, quoted a professor of medicine as saying the lawsuit wrongly claims that abortion was medically necessary in the case of the woman.

"Abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother," said Dr. Brian C. Calhoun, a professor and vice-chair in the obstetrics and gynecology department at West Virginia University-Charleston.

Calhoun, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, rejected the deliberate killing of an unborn patient in a medical emergency.

"Abortion is not medicine. It is something else entirely," CNA quoted Calhoun in its report.

Calhoun said that patients may need to be delivered prematurely. Even if the premature baby ends up dying, this is different from an abortion, in which a doctor directly and deliberately "kills the baby, usually by surgical dismemberment."

He suggested that the lawsuit is an attempt "to make abortion seem like a great idea." He noted that surgical abortions also have "numerous" complications, including bleeding, lacerations, incompetent cervix, and infection.

Sources

Catholic News Agency
AP/Fox News
The New York Times
Image: Catholic News Agency

In a public statement the diocese said that complicated voting rules, which limit the power of people in Hong Kong to choose their representatives, are an offence against basic civil rights.

Acts of civil disobedience could be "reasonable" in response to such offences, the statement indicated.

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Archbishop Piero Marini, who served for 18 years as Pope John Paul II's liturgical Master of Ceremonies, said "there are many couples that suffer because their civil rights aren't recognised".

Archbishop Marini, who is now the president of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses, was being interviewed by La Nación newspaper in Costa Rica, following a local eucharistic congress.

The archbishop made his statement in the context of a question about the meaning of a secular state.

"This is already a reality in Europe," he said. "A secular state is fine, but if it turns into a secularist state, meaning hostile to the Catholic Church, then there's something wrong.

"Church and state should not be enemies to one another. In these discussions, it's necessary, for instance, to recognise the union of persons of the same sex, because there are many couples that suffer because their civil rights aren't recognised.

"What can't be recognised is that this [union] is equivalent to marriage."

In February a similar position was expressed by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

During a Vatican news conference, Archbishop Paglia said that while the Church is opposed to anything that treats other unions as equivalent to marriage between a man and a woman, it could accept "private law solutions" for protecting people's rights.

In his La Nación interview, Archbishop Marini was also asked what the recent change in the papacy meant.

"It's a breath of fresh air, it's opening a window on to springtime and on to hope," he said.

"We had been breathing the waters of a swamp, and it had a bad smell. We'd been in a Church afraid of everything, with problems such as Vatileaks and the paedophilia scandals. With Francis we're talking about positive things; he puts the emphasis on the positive and talks about offering hope."

Sources:

National Catholic Reporter

Vatican Insider

Image: Chronicle Herald

This is one of the most stirring documents in American history: a courageous and compelling defence of civil disobedience, a call to Christian activism and an intellectual defence of the natural law as a reflection of an order in the universe established by its creator. While gay rights advocates have framed the struggle for same-sex marriage as the "new civil rights movement", it is doubtful that they would agree with Dr King's strong defence of the natural law.

In view of its importance, we are publishing some of the most significant paragraphs from Dr King's letter. The complete document is available at many sites on the internet.

16 April 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms…

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet
• Image: George's Journal

JPMorgan Asset Management had hoped to attract investors who wanted exposure to investments that would not clash with tenets on issues such as birth control and civil rights. It also eschewed investments in governments of countries that have the death penalty.

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