#EndReprisals

Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj are two Kashmiri human rights defenders. They have conducted ground-breaking and extensive human rights documentation in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, including through their work within the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) - Khurram as founder and programme coordinator, and Irfan as a researcher.

Both activists have been internationally recognised for their work. Khurram is the Chairperson of the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Deputy General Secretary of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and a laureate of the 2023 Martin Ennals Award.

Irfan is a well-regarded independent journalist with frequent contributions to Kashmiri, Indian and international news outlets. He is the founder of Wande Magazine and is an editor at TwoCircles.net.

Pham Doan Trang is an author, blogger, journalist and pro-democracy activist from Viet Nam. She is a well-known advocate for human rights and has written on a wide range of human rights topics, including LGBTQI+ rights, women’s rights, environmental issues and on the suppression of activists.

She is considered among the most influential and respected human rights defenders in Viet Nam today. She has always been a major source of inspiration and mentorship for Vietnamese civil society and the next generation of human rights defenders.

Trang received the Reporters Without Borders 2019 Press Freedom Prize for Impact and was the Laureate of a Martin Ennals Award in 2022.

"Our impact may be large, may be small, and may be nothing. But we must try. It is our duty to the dispossessed and it is the right of civil society." Cao Shunli

Cao Shunli was a courageous Chinese human rights defender and lawyer who was recognised posthumously as a finalist for the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2014. Her story is a powerful example of dedication to human rights advocacy under challenging circumstances.

Cao was born in 1961. After studying law she initially worked as a civil servant at China's Ministry of Human Resources. Her trajectory shifted significantly when she was denied government-provided housing. This incident propelled her into activism, particularly against corruption in housing distribution. Her whistleblowing efforts, however, resulted in administrative detentions in 1999 and 2001 and eventually led to the loss of her job and social security benefits in 2001.

Transitioning to a role as a ‘petitioner’ (individuals in China who approach the government to lodge personal grievances and seek remedies) she soon started to help other marginalised citizens. Her activism gained a new dimension in 2008 upon discovering the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. Under this process, each UN Member State undergoes a peer review of its human rights records every 4.5 years. To prepare for this review the State is expected to produce a national report in consultation with civil society. China was coming under review for the first time in February 2009.

Working with fellow activists, Cao documented abuses, especially in extrajudicial Re-education through Labor (RTL) camps. However, their efforts to present this documentation to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs were met with the government’s refusal and multiple detentions. She was detained in April 2009 during a rally and subsequently sentenced to RTL, where she experienced denial of food and torture. Despite these hardships, she continued to document RTL abuses.

Cao and other activists made another attempt to engage in the second UPR report being prepared by Chinese authorities for their country's October 2013 review in Geneva. However, the government declined to disclose information on ‘State secrets’ grounds. In response, Cao and a group of activists organised a peaceful sit-in outside of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their sole request was to meet with officials, and they patiently awaited the Ministry’s response. The sit-in attracted, at times, as many as 200 participants and persisted for nearly five months. It was eventually disbanded four times, with the final clearance occurring in October, just before the UPR Review.

Cao also submitted to the UPR Working Group information about rights abuses of the group of petitioners and reprisals against those seeking participation in the UPR.

Until 2020, civil society in Hong Kong was vibrant. The Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), for example, was established in 2002 with the aim of giving a platform to different organisations to promote the development of human rights in Hong Kong. The CHRF was responsible for organising the largest peaceful protests in Hong Kong’s history, notably protests against the National Security Law in 2003 with half a million Hong Kongers taking to the streets, as well as the one and two million person-strong anti-extradition law protests on 9 and 16 June 2019 respectively.

Human rights organisations in Hong Kong had engaged consistently and constructively with the UN, and regularly contributed to the work of the UN Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures. Forty-five civil society groups organised themselves into a strong coalition for policy advocacy and engagement with the Hong Kong government linked to the 2018 Universal Periodic Review, while UN expert recommendations and comments on Hong Kong were widely shared, and often addressed in substantive meetings of the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s elected legislature. Many saw the UN as a venue of justice, as well as a source of authoritative guidance on issues ranging from police violence to abuses against migrant domestic workers.

This engagement came to a screeching halt after the imposition by Beijing of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), which entered into force on 1 July 2020.