Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 23 October

The Chinese city of Harbin, home to 11 million people, was shut down by air pollution that was 50 times the level the World Health Organization considers safe. It was so thick that the city’s official news site said: “You can’t see your own fingers in front of you.” You can’t have meaningful environmental rights without other basic rights: access to information, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to health and right to a remedy. Far from recognizing these rights, the Chinese government is violating them, especially in regards to environmental protests. Torture, and the US government’s classifying of it, pervades every aspect of hearings at Guantanamo Bay for five men accused in the 9/11 attacks. The government should declassify what happened to these men, and many others, in CIA custody. Over the past decade, international donors have pumped billions of dollars of aid into Uganda.  But despite increased pressure on the government, the cycle of corruption continues. 
It is highly unlikely that anything other than the prosecution of the highest-ranking responsible officials will fundamentally alter the deep-rooted patterns of graft. The list of those condemning Malta’s automatic detention of migrants and asylum seekers, including children, keeps growing and growing. Every year, thousands of migrants take perilous, sometimes fatal boat journeys across the Mediterranean, seeking new lives in Europe. From this morning: