freedom of assembly and association
Last year saw the highest number of internet shutdowns ever recorded. Such enforced digital darkness is a slippery slope of easy authoritarianism that we see spreading globally, one that countries like India, with the world's highest number of shutdowns, are using to gain undemocratic compliance from their citizens.
The Association for Progressive Communications is outraged by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Iran as well as deeply alarmed by the ensuing violent crackdown on protests, violations of women’s rights, and widespread internet shutdowns across the country.
In Iran, women are protesting to demand bodily autonomy and their right to live, in the wake of the state-backed murder of a 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by the morality police. The government is responding by killing more women, attacking protestors and censoring the internet to contain the information.
We want people, especially those facing discrimination and oppression, to have greater power and autonomy through digital technologies to exercise their full range of human rights online and offline. Check out our achievements in this area in 2020.
In recognition of the 250 organisations in the #KeepItOn Coalition against internet shutdowns, we urge all states to immediately and unconditionally cease shutting down, throttling, or blocking the internet.
Karisma, FLIP, ILEX, CEJIL, IFEX, Derechos Digitales and APC urge the Human Rights Council to call on the Colombian state to guarantee, respect and protect the exercise of human rights online and offline in the country.
On 17 July, the Tanzania government issued new Electronic and Postal Communications (Online Content) Regulations. These new regulations repress online speech, privacy and access to information.
APC’s priorities at this HRC session include gender and privacy online, freedom of religion or belief, and the criminalisation of human rights defenders, journalists and digital security and tech expertise, as well as highlighting violations of internet rights in countries like India and Myanmar.
APC produced this written submission on the Revised Draft of General Comment No. 37 on Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in response to the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s invitation for civil society and other stakeholders to provide comments.
As an organisation that has worked at the intersections of human rights and technology for nearly three decades and fully recognises the critical importance of ICTs for the fundamental right to protest, APC welcomes the focus of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights on this topic.
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
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