cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/3842837

***UN experts expressed grave concern over credible and well-documented allegations of long-standing trafficking and forced labour of migrant women in the Golyanovo district of Moscow, in Russia.

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Archived version

The victims, primarily from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have reportedly been subjected to extreme forms of exploitation and violence for decades.

“The facts described reveal deeply disturbing patterns of trafficking in persons and contemporary forms of slavery, enabled by systemic failures in the Russian legal and institutional framework,” the experts said. “The lack of effective and timely investigations and the fact that perpetrators are not held accountable fuels impunity which is unacceptable.”

...

“These women were isolated, abused, and stripped of all autonomy. The scale and duration of the abuse, coupled with the authorities’ failure to act despite repeated complaints, point to a deeply entrenched system of exploitation,” the experts said.

Despite dozens of complaints from victims and civil society organisations since the 1990s, Russian authorities have failed to conduct effective investigations, even refusing to register cases.

...

The linked opinion article was written in response to this opinion article in the NYT.

i have never come across this channel before, so i wanna share it with others who might've just missed this wise guy entirely.

Posted in video format because it's the original source/proof (and of course it is a video, it's Simon Whistler we are talking about, perhaps the current de facto posterboy of YouTube after having replaced Matthew Santoro a while ago). We in the fediverse have been mindfully observant of situations like what's happening in Germany. Does the idea someone thinks they will get to be treated as different in this state of affairs scare anyone else?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/43916323

Gaza’s water “comes from wells with salt water unfit for consumption. They have water treatment plants, Israel should hit those plants. When the entire world says we have gone insane and this is a humanitarian disaster — we will say, it’s not an end, it’s a means.” That was the opinion of Giora Eiland, adviser to the defense minister and former head of the Israeli National Security Council, writing in Yedioth Ahronoth on October 9, 2023.⁠[1]

Already by November, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that “around 70% of the population in Gaza is drinking salinised and contaminated water.”⁠[2] By July 2024, Oxfam reported that “people in Gaza have had only 4.74 litres of water per person per day” since the start of Israel’s offensive,[3] well below the World Health Organization’s minimum needed for survival in a humanitarian emergency.⁠[4]

Israel's control over life’s most essential resource did not arise overnight. After occupying Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, it quickly established a system to extract water for its own use while restricting Palestinian access. For decades, this policy forced the indigenous population into dependence and precarity, while Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories — illegal under international law⁠[5] — enjoyed “privileged access to water.”⁠[6]

Read the rest of the piece on SourcedPress. Every fact-checking thread is public, and every source document is provided.

https://sourced.press/a/water-and-occupation

Israel has passed a new bill which criminalises the questioning of the official narrative regarding 7 October 2023. The law, passed without opposition, bars non-Israeli citizens from entering or residing in the country if they or the organisations they represent deny the 7 October attack, question the Holocaust, or support the prosecution at international courts of Israeli security personnel for war crimes. It also expands a controversial 2017 amendment that prohibited visas for individuals associated with groups supporting the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for a peaceful resolution to Russia’s now three-year war in Ukraine. VOA examined several approaches floated by think tanks recently aimed at achieving a lasting peace to the war.

The 24th February marks the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Neither side has been able to land a knockout blow. Donald Trump is back in the White House and promising to begin negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war. What should we expect in 2025 and beyond?

To understand how the war might end, a good place to start is why it began—putting aside Putin’s propaganda about Ukraine being run by Nazis, or having bioweapons labs, and so on.

This war is about how Putin and the people around him see the world and Russia’s place in it. To know what Putin is thinking, we must listen to what he is saying, but here there are two major problems. The first is the role of lying in Russian statecraft, at both the tactical and strategic levels—the latter being what I have called the “intercontinental ballistic whopper”. The second is much bigger. It is that we often don’t want to accept deeply unattractive facts or their consequences. We need to believe that Putin’s worldview can somehow be made to fit with ours and a compromise reached. It can’t.

MBFC
Archive

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17668694

Since October 2023, Israeli authorities have deliberately obstructed Palestinians’ access to the adequate amount of water required for survival in the Gaza Strip, according to a report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Because of the decimation of the healthcare system in Gaza since October 2023, including disease tracking, the true scale of those harmed or killed by Israeli authorities’ actions that have deprived Palestinians of adequate water is unknown and may likely never be fully understood. However, these policies have likely contributed to thousands of deaths. Doctors and nurses told Human Rights Watch that they had seen numerous infants, children, and adults die from a combination of malnutrition, dehydration, and disease.

[...]

Israeli authorities made clear their intention to deprive the population of Gaza of necessities after October 7, 2023. On October 9, then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered “a complete siege” on Gaza, stating “[t]here will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed.” On October 11, 2023, then-Energy Minister and current Minister of Defense Israel Katz echoed the call for electricity, water, and fuel to be cut, and on October 12, 2023, he called for humanitarian aid to be cut as well.

[...]

In the days after the Hamas-led attacks by Palestinian armed groups in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, senior Israeli officials, including former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and former Energy Minister and current Defense Minister Israel Katz made public statements expressing the government’s aim to deprive civilians in Gaza of water, HRW says, citing sources.

[...]

Israeli authorities have also significantly restricted humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, prevented aid deliveries to different areas within Gaza at various times, and have specifically blocked supplies related to water treatment and production, HRW says.

[...]

Israeli authorities have barred nearly all water-related humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, including water filtration systems, water tanks, and materials needed to repair water infrastructure.

[...]

Protests have now spread from Tbilisi to Batumi, Zugdidi, Kutaisi, Telavi, Gurjaani, and other Georgian cities, sparked by the government's decision to postpone EU accession talks.

Welp... looks like Russia is turning up heat and locals aint having it.

Hopefully Georgian security forces understand who they are supposed to protect here.