Human Rights | WPN World People News

Labour Day in Pakistan is oxymoronic, because the day is just another holiday for the nation’s better off population, while the labour class toils under the blazing sun. Perhaps on no other day does the class difference between the haves and have nots manifest itself as clearly as it does on this day. Throughout the world, the day is marked to commemorate the struggle of the working class; in Pakistan however, that class is kept deliberately unaware of its rights. When the ruling elite become an integral part of the state, the state becomes the exploiter.

It is children who pay the price when EU member states fail to cooperate and protect children’s best interests in legal proceedings such as cross-border parental custody disputes and adoption decisions, Parliament points out in a non-binding resolution voted on Thursday. MEPs want specialised chambers within EU countries' family courts to ensure that transnational cases are processed faster.

A newly adopted law in China gives police unprecedented power to restrict the work of foreign groups in the country, Human Rights Watch said on April 28. The law will also limit domestic groups’ ability to obtain foreign funding and work with foreign organizations.

Fighting terrorism and respecting human rights are two sides of the same coin, 46 national and international human rights organizations said in an open letter addressed to all Tunisians and titled “No to Terrorism, Yes to Human Rights” on April 28. Three of the organizations are the Tunisian recipients of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Two others represent the families of Tunisian politicians Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, assassinated in 2013 by extremist Islamists. Five Tunisian celebrities, including actors, a filmmaker, a rapper, and a star athlete, affirmed this view in a video also released on April 28.

Apparently unlawful attacks by government and armed groups around Aleppo in Syria have killed at least 89 civilians since April 22, 2016. Despite the rising casualties, Western leaders meeting in Hannover, Germany, on April 25 missed an opportunity to focus on the need to protect civilians in Syria.

Egyptian security forces arrested at least 382 people in the days leading up to and during the dispersal of mostly peaceful protests on April 25, 2016. The protests followed a rare mass demonstration against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on April 15.

The law approved by the National Council of the Austrian parliament is a blow to the rights of asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said on April 27. The law, which is expected to pass quickly and unchallenged in the parliament’s upper chamber, allows the federal government to declare a state of emergency and drastically curtail the right to seek asylum at Austria’s borders.

Burmese authorities should dismiss politically motivated immigration charges against a prominent former activist monk and release him from detention, Human Rights Watch said on April 26. U Gambira, also known by his lay name Nyi Nyi Lwin, faces up to five years in prison if convicted by a court in Mandalay for allegedly leaving Burma illegally in October 2013.

The bombing of a bus in West Jerusalem on April 18, 2016, apparently by a member of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, is a grave breach of the laws of armed conflict that prohibit targeting civilians.

The United States Congress should repeal provisions in two 1996 immigration laws that have subjected hundreds of thousands of people to arbitrary detention, fast-track deportations, and family separation, Human Rights Watch said on April 25.