Month: December 2021

The U.N. human rights office is calling on Belarus and Poland to end what it calls appalling treatment of refugees and migrants stranded along their common border and to live up to their obligations under international human rights and refugee laws. A U.N. human rights team visited the region between November 29 and December 3 to get a firsthand view of the situation. While Polish officials met with the team, Belarusian authorities did not. U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell says team members were not granted access to the restricted border area. However, she says they interviewed government officials, civil …

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In Turkey, Uyghur refugees who fled Chinese detention centers and other alleged rights abuses say they fear the Turkish government is under increased pressure to prosecute or deport activists. But as VOA’s Heather Murdock finds at one school in Istanbul, some Uyghur children say their parents sent them here to find safety, when there was no one to care for them at home. Camera: Umut Colak …

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As China’s crackdown on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong intensifies under Beijing’s so-called “National Security Law,” tens of thousands of citizens are fleeing the territory. In the first six months of the year, over 65,000 Hong Kong citizens applied to move to Britain, which controlled the territory until 1997, under a special new visa scheme. VOA’s Henry Ridgwell met one Hong Kong family who is making a new life in Britain. Camera: Henry Ridgwell …

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A Russian businessman has been extradited from Switzerland to the United States to face charges of insider trading, the Swiss justice ministry said.    Vladislav Klyushin, who reportedly owns a media and cybersecurity business called M13 that is linked to the Kremlin, is accused of “involvement in a global scheme to trade on non-public information stolen from U.S. computer networks … between at least in or about January 2018 and September 2020,” according to a press release from the U.S. Justice Department.    According to the company’s website, its products were used by “the Administration of the President of the …

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The White House said Monday the United States is ready to start diplomatic talks with Russia through multiple channels, but it made clear that Moscow must address Western concerns about its military buildup along the Ukrainian border. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with his counterpart, Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the White House saying the U.S. was willing to talk directly with the Kremlin, as well as through the NATO-Russia Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The White House said Sullivan told Ushakov that “any dialogue must …

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Russia expelled two German diplomats on Monday in response to Germany’s expulsion of two Russian diplomats last week.  The dispute between the two nations started when a German court said last week that Russia had ordered the assassination of a former Chechen militant Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili in Berlin in 2019.  A German court convicted Russian Vadim Krasikov of murder and sentenced him to life in prison, calling the slaying a “grave breach of German law and the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany.” After the conviction, Russia called the notion of Russian involvement “absurd.”  The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned …

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Pope Francis has denounced domestic violence against women as “nearly satanic” and said parents should never slap their children.  Francis made the comments in a televised encounter with an abused woman who recently fled her home with her four children. Their meeting was broadcast late Sunday on the private Mediaset network’s TG5 program and also included footage of Francis interacting with a homeless woman, a prisoner and a student.  The abused woman told the pope her story and asked him how she can find her dignity after she and her children suffered so much violence.  Francis, who has previously spoken …

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