Human Rights

14 Oct 2021; MEMO: An Israeli planning committee yesterday approved plans advancing the construction of thousands of homes in Givat Hamatos, an illegal East Jerusalem settlement that threatens to cut off parts of the city from its Palestinian residents and the West Bank.

According to Peace Now activist Hagit Ofran, the Palestinian area of Khirbet Tabalya, southwest of the city, had already been allocated for use in Givat Hamatos. She described yesterday's approval as a "bureaucratic move."

14 Oct 2021; MEMO: Palestinian director, Ameen Nayfeh, says he felt proud after bringing to life through film his personal struggle in crossing an Israeli military checkpoint to visit his dying grandfather. But he did not expect his short film to have a wide audience, Reuter's reports.

That all changed for Nayfeh on Thursday, when Netflix launched a new Palestinian film collection, the first of its kind by a major streaming service, that includes his award-winning short "The Crossing".

Srinagar, 13 Oct 2021: A Kashmiri was killed on Wednesday by Indian security forces in Pulwama district of the Indian Administered Kashmir, Indian officials said.

Inspector General of Police (Kashmir) Vijay Kumar claimed that the killed Kashmiri, Sham Sofi, was the top commander of an organisation called Jaish-e-Mohammad.

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: The death of businessman Khaled Al-Adawy is "considered premeditated murder" as he was forcibly disappeared, tortured, and denied medical treatment, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights said in a statement.

Khaled, 51, owned the Pancho Readymade Garments Factory from which he was arrested in July and taken to the National Security headquarters where he was interrogated, beaten, tortured by electric shock, and verbally humiliated.

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Hamas has rejected an Egyptian proposal to form a unity government with Fatah, citing previous unity agreements foiled by the secular Palestinian movement.

In remarks made to Arabi Post yesterday, Hamas spokesman Abdul-Latfi Al-Qanou said: "Hamas' vision is to reevaluate the national temporary mechanisms. It had been proposed to end the internal division."

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Extremist Israeli settlers yesterday uprooted 900 olive and apricot saplings and stole olive crops in the village of Sebastia of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, Wafa news agency reported.

Settlers also uprooted 70 trees in Masafer Yatta, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Palestinian sources reported to Wafa that settlers vandalised Palestinian-owned property in several northern West Bank towns.

New Delhi, Oct 12 (PTI) Amid raging debate globally over social media regulation and controls, microblogging platform Twitter on Tuesday cautioned that 'Open Internet' is more at risk now than ever before, and asserted the need for coordinated, multi-stakeholder strategy to defend free, secure, and global open internet.

In its position paper on 'Protecting the Open Internet', Twitter said governments that seek to defend and expand online freedom cannot stand by while other countries seek to silence critics, censor journalists, and block access to information.

Barmer, Oct 12 (PTI) A police constable allegedly raped a woman at her house in Rajasthan's Barmer district and was thrashed by her family members after she raised an alarm, officials said on Tuesday.

The accused constable, Sultan Singh, who is posted at Sheo police station, has been suspended, they said.

Singh entered the woman's house and allegedly raped her on Monday night. After the woman raised an alarm, her family members caught the constable and thrashed him badly, police said.

12 Oct 2021; MEMO: Civil society organisations and activists in the UK and overseas are threatening to organise a mass boycott of the University of Bristol unless it reverses the decision to fire Professor David Miller over his criticism of Israel and its state ideology, Zionism.

The threat was issued yesterday in a letter to the Vice-Chancellor and President of Bristol University which contained the signatures of prominent academics and activists.

12 Oct 2021; MEMO: Several Palestine activist groups and academics working in the field of anti-Semitism studies have issued separate statements raising their concerns on instrumentalising anti-Semitism ahead of tomorrow's International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Anti-Semitism held in Malmo, Sweden.