[governance] IGC Submissions to UN Human Rights Council Feb 2020

[ian.peter at ianpeter.com]

Hi Sala,

I like this as a way forward, and note that on the draft of the other 
proposed submission to Chinese government you have just included:

(1) The Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) is deeply 
concerned by global trends of governments to abuse the "national 
security" exception to trample on basic freedoms of expression 
particularly when these freedoms are fundamentally linked to good 
governance and keeping governments accountable.

(2) From Venezuela's treatment of Luis Carlos Diaz and numerous other 
journalists, United States of America's treatment of Edward Snowden and 
Julian Assange, France's mistreatment of Taha Bouhafs, a reporter at 
French news website Là-bas Si J'y Suis, allegedly assaulted whilst 
filming a protest of undocumented workers and now the recent sentencing 
of Chinese webmaster and human rights activist Huang Qi to 12 years in 
prison for allegedly leaking state secrets when he was promoting 
accountability and transparency and good governance.

This is I think the beginnings of a good submission. To finalise it:

1. I think we need a comprehensive list of all the journalists and 
activists in all countries who have been imprisoned or punished for 
using the Internet to express basic freedom of expression issues which 
should be a basic human right, not a grounds for imprisonment. There are 
quite a few more names we can add,  and I am sure people on this list 
can make suggestions.

2. We need to forcefully express the human rights obligations of 
governments to not use excuses such as national security to undermine 
basic freedom of expression. I know there are people here who can 
express this better than I can, but a strong statement in support of 
basic human rights for on line activists - with a comprehensive list of 
individuals and countries who have denied them these rights - would be a 
great thing to do, and I would be happy to work with others on such a 
statement.

I suggest we drop the Huan Qi draft right now, and instead work on a 
more comprehensive and inclusive statement as outlined and also 
suggested by Norbert.

Ian

------ Original Message ------
From: "Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro" <governance at lists.riseup.net>
To: "governance" <governance at lists.riseup.net>
Sent: 5/08/2019 10:49:16 AM
Subject: [governance] IGC Submissions to UN Human Rights Council Feb 
2020

>Dear Colleagues,
>
>The recent discussions on the drafting of Huan Qi which caused some to 
>raise the need to raise the geopolitical violations naturally within 
>that statement, got me to thinking that perhaps we should consider 
>drafting a separate submission for the UN Human Rights Council meeting 
>scheduled to take place in February, 2020.
>
>Given that we are free to make submissions pertaining to those Human 
>rights concerns related to the internet, it may be worthwhile 
>considering making a general submission with a wider focus. This is 
>inspired by Norbert's suggestion of expanding focus of the Huan Qi 
>statement which I think we should keep separate but I defer to the 
>wider community. The oral submissions would probably be a 3 to 5 min 
>intervention from the floor.
>
>If this is something of interest, then we can work towards it.
>
>Sala
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