cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17627707

On International Human Rights Day, a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Vienna united Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Christians demanding an end to Chinese Communist Party oppression. Demonstrators called for global action against the ongoing human rights abuses and systemic oppression of marginalized communities in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

On International Human Rights Day, a significant protest unfolded outside the Chinese Embassy in Vienna as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Chinese Christians united against ongoing oppression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The event, spearheaded by the Tibetan Community Organisation in Vienna, spotlighted widespread human rights abuses by the Chinese authorities.

Leading the demonstration, Tibetan diaspora members waved flags and held banners condemning the CCP's persistent violations in Tibet. They voiced concerns over issues such as the demolition of monasteries, enforced relocation of Tibetan children, and what many called cultural genocide. The protesters urged global recognition of these atrocities and pressed for international intervention to halt Chinese repressive policies.

Uyghur activists stood alongside their Tibetan peers, highlighting the severe persecution faced by Uyghurs, including mass detentions, forced labor, and the destruction of religious sites. Joined by Chinese Christians, who protested against the state's control over religious practices, they collectively demanded an end to CCP tyranny and urged the world to hold China accountable.

[Edit to include the link.]

On International Human Rights Day, a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Vienna united Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Christians demanding an end to Chinese Communist Party oppression. Demonstrators called for global action against the ongoing human rights abuses and systemic oppression of marginalized communities in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

On International Human Rights Day, a significant protest unfolded outside the Chinese Embassy in Vienna as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Chinese Christians united against ongoing oppression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The event, spearheaded by the Tibetan Community Organisation in Vienna, spotlighted widespread human rights abuses by the Chinese authorities.

Leading the demonstration, Tibetan diaspora members waved flags and held banners condemning the CCP's persistent violations in Tibet. They voiced concerns over issues such as the demolition of monasteries, enforced relocation of Tibetan children, and what many called cultural genocide. The protesters urged global recognition of these atrocities and pressed for international intervention to halt Chinese repressive policies.

Uyghur activists stood alongside their Tibetan peers, highlighting the severe persecution faced by Uyghurs, including mass detentions, forced labor, and the destruction of religious sites. Joined by Chinese Christians, who protested against the state's control over religious practices, they collectively demanded an end to CCP tyranny and urged the world to hold China accountable.

[Edit to include the link.]

Archive

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has already slapped a 100 per cent tariff on all Chinese electric vehicles and a 25 per cent tariff on imports of Chinese steel and aluminum products. The finance ministry has said it's exploring options to widen the duties.

The mid-year fiscal update presented on Monday showed that Ottawa has decided to apply tariffs to imports of certain solar products and critical minerals from China early in the new year, with levies on semiconductors, permanent magnets, and natural graphite following in 2026.

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Trudeau's government has frequently criticized the Chinese government-funded policy of oversupply and over-capacity. He has said Canada needs to protect local jobs from cheap Chinese products finding their way into the country.

Russian Economist Konstantin Sonin explains what a recent report on the Russian economy – which argues that “Putinomics” can both keep the war going and ensure economic growth – gets wrong.

Konstantin Sonin: [...] here are a number of artificial statistical effects that create the impression that the economy as a whole is growing. The fact is that it is not growing. In fact, two processes are taking place in the economy: a decline in people’s standard of living and a decline in consumption – in both the quantity of goods consumed and the quality of goods consumed. This is how the war is being financed [...] We get a statistical illusion.

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If we take all these [official statistical] figures on faith, then we get something strange: you can take a working economy, remove a million people from the workforce – 500,000 for the war, 500,000 as emigrants – increase the costs of all transactions – because, owing to the chain of intermediaries, each transaction abroad now costs more and gets you less – and the end result is an economy producing more.

This contradicts what we know about the functioning of an economy. There is no such thing as pressing a button and producing more. Especially if your costs have increased. You can also imagine a situation where you press a button and produce more now at the expense of tomorrow, but my colleagues do not expect a downturn tomorrow.

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I do not think that the people sitting at [Russia's federal statistics agency] Rosstat are deliberately tweaking the numbers. But it would not be surprising if you, presented with the opportunity to decide, roughly speaking, how to calibrate a model, you did it in such a way that it gave you the most favorable numbers.

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If we roughly assume that inflation [which is officially at around 9 percent year on year at the moment] is actually underestimated by about half, then GDP growth disappears, as does the growth of real incomes [...] obviously does not exist. Because if this growth were real, we would have no idea where these real incomes are going, as there is no consumption growth in any data.

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Of course, the Russian economy has not collapsed, as some hotheads predicted; it has not gone away. But for each transaction, for each item, the costs have gone up. Every unit of Russian exports is sold for less than it was sold for before. Every unit of Russian imports is bought for more than it was bought for before.

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The effects we are talking about, which I believe indicate an economic deterioration, are a couple percent, single percentage points. Maybe even 10%. We have seen that GDP and other macroeconomic aggregates can halve in seven years – this was the case in the early 1990s. But did trams stop running? Did clinics stop working?

In other words, this alone does not lead to an economic collapse. [...] There is a war going on now and that it is being financed by reducing the country’s standard of living. We know from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that people can put up with a lot for a long time. Before my eyes, from the age of 10 to 18, we went from queues for quality products to queues for butter, and then to queues for eggs and bread.

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I do not think it’s possible to assist the brain drain more than it has already been assisted [...] Russia has experienced a brain drain that is unprecedented for any country in the last half century.

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Regarding capital flight, we also need to understand what it means to “encourage capital flight." [...] Dollars only make sense if our oligarch bought some goods abroad and brought them to Russia. In this case, the dollars are put to work. And what would our hypothetical oligarch invest in if he were allowed to? In the most profitable business today: circumventing sanctions. This is where the biggest margins are now. Allowing Putin’s oligarchs to invest money abroad now, allowing capital flight, would amount to subsidizing the most profitable business out there.

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If Putin today decisively carries out demilitarization and reduces spending on the security services and propaganda, then yes, he can prolong the life of his regime. But if, for example, next year he increases military spending and increases spending on the security services and propaganda, then he might bring it all down in a year.

Russian state-controlled media report about the resignation of former Deputy Prime Minister insinuates that “her resignation comes in the wake of new controversy surrounding her family’s past, particularly her grandfather’s ties to Nazi collaboration in Ukraine.”

The RT article falsely claims that “Freeland’s departure has reignited scrutiny of her family’s wartime past”.

[...]

Russian-state or pro-Kremlin media repeatedly targets Western politicians of Ukrainian descent, distorting and weaponizing WWII-era history to brand them as “Nazis” or “Nazi collaborators.” Chrystia Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage and who has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine, is a prime target.

[...]

The exaggerated storyline of Freeland’s resignation fits into a broader trope of portraying NATO or G7 countries as facing severe internal crises. Presenting “policy disagreements” as a dramatic cabinet split underscores the narrative that Trudeau’s government is collapsing—a recurrent theme in Russian-state-backed outlets.

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Archive

The Russian disinformation network Matryoshka has launched a new campaign aimed at convincing social media users that scholars and professors from top global universities are calling for the West to lift sanctions against Russia. In the videos, well-known academics can purportedly be heard urging Ukraine to surrender “historically Russian lands” — and even portraying Volodymyr Zelensky as a vampire. The campaign spreads this disinformation by cloning the voices of real professors using artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

The campaign was uncovered by the Bot Blocker project (which goes by the @antibot4navalny handle on X). The videos all follow a similar structure: a speaker introduces themselves, often citing an affiliation with renowned institutions like Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, or the University of Bristol. The footage then transitions to segments without the speaker on screen — while their voice supposedly continues. During these moments, the voice promotes claims that Europe is suffering under anti-Russian sanctions, that the West must stop providing Ukraine with weapons and financial aid, that Zelensky is sending Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths, and that Ukraine must cede its territories to Russia.

Investigations by The Insider and Bot Blocker confirmed that the opening sections, in which the speakers appear and introduce themselves in person, were taken from real videos. The other portions, however, were artificially generated using AI, which effectively cloned the academics’ voices.

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In [one] video, [Historian and University of Bristol Professor Ronald] Hutton begins by discussing the study of folklore. However, the footage then shifts to a portrait of Volodymyr Zelensky as a cloned version of Hutton's voice claims that the Ukrainian president is a vampire feeding on the lives of his citizens sent to fight in the war with Russia. The original video, from which the introductory segment was taken, genuinely focuses on folklore and vampires — but makes no reference to Zelensky or Ukraine. The Insider and Bot Blocker have identified other original recordings that were manipulated for similar fake videos.

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The creators of these fake videos have used the voices and images of real academics from institutions including Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Bristol, the University of Cumbria, and Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies). They also manipulated footage from events like the Bank of America Chicago Marathon.

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The disinformation campaign known as Matryoshka began no later than September 2023, as first reported by Bot Blocker. Initially, the campaign organizers posted messages on Twitter (now X) addressed to Western media, urging them to “verify information” that proved to be fabricated materials containing anti-Ukrainian propaganda created by the organizers themselves. These posts were then widely shared by stolen accounts, allowing the content to spread rapidly across the platform.

The bots operate in a coordinated manner. One account might share a photo of supposed graffiti in Los Angeles depicting President Zelensky as a beggar, while another account calls on journalists to confirm whether the image is real or fake. In most cases, the bots spread defamatory videos targeting Ukrainians, often overlaid with logos of credible media outlets to lend an appearance of authenticity.

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Archived

Layoffs of IT specialists in Russia have accelerated as 2024 draws to a close. According to reporting by The Bell in its subscribers-exclusive newsletter, the cutbacks have hit both tech firms and the IT divisions of companies in other industries. However, Russia’s wartime political posture has made it difficult to speak openly about economic setbacks, and businesses have labored to conceal or deny mounting troubles with IT personnel. Meduza summarizes The Bell’s report.

Multiple IT recruitment specialists told The Bell that businesses have tried to conceal information about the layoffs or denied outright that cutbacks are happening at all. One source explained that layoffs have been “quietly underway” all year, but the rate intensified in recent months. “No one is ready to make this public. They say, ‘Sure, we let some people go, sure, it was the whole department, sure, it was the entire project, but it’s not layoffs, come on,’” the source said. Another IT recruiter told The Bell that layoffs have become routine. “Entire teams are coming to us,” he explained.

The Bell reported layoffs at the social media conglomerate VK and the telecom giant MTS, though both companies deny it. The Bell’s sources also mentioned cutbacks to IT workers at the development group Samolet. (Samolet says it merely “streamlined” its IT department to eliminate redundant functions when creating a new division called Samolet Technologies.) Sberbank is also rolling back investments in testing and evaluation, reportedly by cutting contracts with outsourced IT product developers.

Additionally, the founder and former CEO of MyOffice (which designs office software intended to replace Microsoft Office products in Russia) revealed earlier this month that executives had laid off its entire senior management (who were appointed only two years earlier when Kaspersky Lab gained control over the company). The IT Workers Union has reported cutbacks at other firms, as well.

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“The economy is screwed,” the source said. “IT specialists were supposedly in high demand, there was a labor shortage, and so on. But the market has no money for growth, and marketing instruments have failed. Sure, companies need marketers and IT specialists, but there’s no money [to pay them]. However, they’re hiding all this because, in Russia, the economy can’t possibly be screwed.”

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Archived

European Union regulators are investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling.

The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner.

The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the European Union and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign to promote a long shot candidate, Calin Georgescu.

“Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential elections by using TikTok, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the Digital Services Act by failing to tackle such risks,” European Commission president Ursula on der Leyen said in a press release. “It should be crystal clear that in the EU, all online platforms, including TikTok, must be held accountable.”

The European Commission is the 27-nation EU’s executive arm and enforces the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations intended to clean up social media platforms and protect users from risks such as election-related misinformation. It ordered TikTok earlier this month to retain all information related to the election.

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In russischen Kampfdrohnen, die im Angriffskrieg gegen die Ukraine eingesetzt werden, steckt auch Jahre nach Inkrafttreten von Sanktionen Schweizer Technologie. Das belegt ein Foto von Überresten einer Drohne vom Typ Lancet, das CORRECTIV in der Schweiz vorliegt. Die Aufnahme zeigt eine Platine mit einem Chip der Schweizer Firma u-blox mit Sitz in Thalwil. Dieser wurde im Februar 2024 hergestellt. Das zeigt das auf dem Chip aufgedruckte Herstellungsdatum, 2/24. Dabei ist die Lieferung von militärisch nutzbaren Gütern aus der Schweiz nach Russland bereits seit März 2022 verboten.

[...]

Die von u-blox hergestellten Chips mit der Produktbezeichnung LEA-M8S ermöglichen die Navigation der Drohnen, die meist im Doppel eingesetzt werden: Die eine zur Aufklärung, die andere, mit Sprengladung versehene zur Zerstörung des Zielobjekts. Lancet-Drohnen gelten als besonders günstig und zugleich effizient. Dass in den eineinhalb Meter langen, wendigen Luftfahrzeugen aus russischer Produktion auch Schweizer Bauteile jüngeren Datums enthalten sind, hatten Recherchen von Swissinfo bereits im November 2023 ergeben. In einer Stellungnahme hatte die Firma versichert, den Verkauf nach Russland schon kurz nach dem Einmarsch in die Ukraine gestoppt zu haben.

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Archived

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Munich-based MAN Truck & Bus, a subsidiary of Volkswagen-owned commercial vehicle manufacturer Traton, has ended a tyre supply deal with the Serbian plant of Chinese Shandong Linglong Tire Co., citing allegations of “human rights violations” in reports on working conditions at the plant, BIRN and Manager Magazin can reveal.

In cooperation with anti-trafficking organisation ASTRA and the Serbia-based Initiative for Economic and Social Rights, A11, BIRN [Balkan Investigative Reporting Network] has reported extensively since 2021 on the exploitation of Vietnamese and Indian workers at the Linglong site in Serbia, which is key to the Chinese company’s European ambitions.

The allegations included a raft of Labour Law violations, the confiscation of passports and cramped, dirty, unsanitary accommodation.

[...]

Serbia has faced calls from the European Parliament and United Nations human rights rapporteurs to investigate allegations of exploitation, while since the start of 2023 German companies have been obliged to carry out due diligence with respect to human rights in global supply chains under Germany’s Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains.

MAN Truck & Bus told Manager Magazin: “We have been following the reports on the working conditions in the Serbian plant of one of our suppliers. We take the allegations that human rights violations have occurred in this context very seriously and, in connection with this suspected case, stopped all delivery requests to the supplier in question at the end of November.”

However, German car giant Volkswagen, MAN’s ultimate owner, said it was still seeking to “clarify the facts”.

“We have followed the reporting on working conditions at the Serbian facility of one of our suppliers,” the company told Manager Magazin. “The allegations of human rights violations in this context are taken very seriously, and we have already taken appropriate steps to clarify the facts. Please understand that we cannot provide further details regarding our supplier relationships due to contractual confidentiality obligations.”

While underscoring that Volkswagen itself had not yet received any supplies from Linglong’s Serbia plant, the company said: “Serious violations of labour standards and human rights can lead to the termination of contracts with suppliers if corrective measures are not taken.”

Volkswagen specified that Linglong China supplies a 19-inch tyre first used on the VW Tiguan and Cupra Terramar models this year and manufactured “exclusively” in China. “In addition, Linglong China is a supplier of spare tyres that are used throughout the Volkswagen Group,” it added.

Alongside Volkswagen, Linglong is one of the sponsors of Bundesliga football club FC Wolfsburg, which grew out of a sports club for Volkswagen workers in the northern German city of Wolfsburg, where Volkswagen Group is headquartered.

The Linglong plant in the northern Serbian town of Zrenjanin is key to the company’s European market hopes. The factory officially opened its doors in September this year, when Linglong Tire general director Wang Feng listed Volkswagen as among the plant’s first customers, alongside Nissan, Audi, Ford, Stellantis, Hyundai, Kia and MAN Truck & Bus.

Labour legislation and human rights violations

For years, Serbian NGOs have been sounding the alarm about the exploitation and possible human trafficking of foreign workers engaged in building Linglong’s Serbian plant, the first Chinese tyre factory in Europe.

They alleged that passports had been confiscated from Vietnamese and Indian workers and that the workers were housed in dirty, cramped dormitories with just two toilets for hundreds of men and a lack of clean, warm water.

In two separate investigations, BIRN found that the contracts they signed with subcontractors of China’s Shandong Linglong Tire Co. violated multiple articles of Serbia’s Labour Law, from working hours to vacation days and financial penalties.

Under the terms seen by BIRN, the workers faced being fired if they tried to unionise or protest, while “regular working hours” could, if necessary, breach the legal maximum.

“The illegalities in the employment contract are such that it is easier to count what is legal than what is not,” Mario Reljanovic, an expert on labour law, told BIRN at the time.

Both the Vietnamese and Indian workers were hired through intermediaries, who charged them thousands of dollars to secure them employment in Serbia.

One Indian worker, Rafiul Bux, told BIRN in January 2024 that he had paid a recruitment agency $3,500, for which he had to take a bank loan.

He described dire working and living conditions in Serbia, a lack of medical support, unpaid salaries and having to surrender his passport to his employer for months on end.

Tomoya Obokata, the UN Special Rapporteur on modern slavery, told BIRN at the time that such fees are a kind of “debt trap”.

“They should not be paying that,” he said in an interview. “It should be employers who should be paying for all of this, and governments to monitor these practices.”

Serbia’s backing for Linglong

Construction of the Linglong factory began in 2019 as one of a number of Chinese projects in Serbia that have made the country a Balkan hub for Chinese investment.

The government handed over 95 hectares of land – valued at 7.6 million euros – free of charge and provided 75 million euros in subsidies from state coffers for the recruitment of 1,200 employees by the end of 2024, according to Serbia’s Commission for the Control of State Aid.

Critics in Serbia say the government, hungry for investment, has turned a blind eye to labour and living conditions facing workers engaged in major foreign projects, particularly Chinese.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has regularly defended Linglong, despite mounting evidence of human rights violations.

Confronted with the allegations concerning Vietnamese workers in 2019, Vucic told reporters: “An inspection has been sent. What do people want? You want us to destroy an investment of $900 million dollars so that Zrenjanin does not progress?”

“You care about Vietnamese workers? Come on people, we know each other well; you’re not worried about Serbian workers and here you are worrying about Vietnamese.”

Serbian authorities said they were looking into the allegations based on criminal complaints made by ASTRA and the workers themselves, but nothing ever came of it.

Linglong has dismissed the accusations and, on occasion, tried to shift any responsibility onto its subcontractors. It denied ever employing workers from India and said its contract with another Chinese company, CEEG TEPC, which did bring in Indians, was terminated in September 2022.

Obokata said that neither Linglong nor the Serbian government had ever responded to the concerns he and his UN colleagues outlined in a letter to them regarding the case of the Vietnamese workers.

“There is a disturbing trend in your country, and it is up to the Serbian government to do something about it,” he said at the time. “If the Serbian authorities are not doing that, they should be held liable as a country and as a government for facilitating labour exploitation and human trafficking.”

Germany’s supply chain act

Germany’s Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains has faced criticism from all sides, either as too soft on companies or as an unwanted brake on the country’s struggling economy.

The Act cites an exhaustive list of international human rights conventions, including the prohibition of child labour, slavery and forced labour, the disregard of occupational safety and health obligations, withholding an adequate wage, disregard of the right to form trade unions or employee representation bodies, the denial of access to food and water as well as the unlawful taking of land and livelihoods.

If enterprises fail to conduct due diligence when choosing suppliers, they risk fines of up to eight million euros or two per cent of annual global turnover. The latter is applicable only to enterprises with an annual turnover of more than 400 million euros. Companies ultimately risk being excluded from public contracts.

Due to the continual risks of attacks, children in some areas of the country are now sheltering up to six hours a day sheltering in basements and other damp dark spaces, said Catherine Russell, head of UN child rights agency, UNICEF.

At least 2,406 boys and girls have been killed or injured since the war began in February 2022 - an average of two a day, according to UN verified numbers, though the true figure is likely far higher.

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"Some parts of Ukraine are experiencing power outages for 18 hours a day. As a result, many children in Ukraine are left without essentials such as heating, safe water and sanitation,” she said.

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The war is also taking a terrible toll on children’s mental health and robbing them of their childhood, she continued.

"Children are impacted by the constant threat and fear of attacks or violence, the loss of loved ones, the separation of families due to displacement, and the disruption of education – including isolation due to long-term online learning,” she said.

As the war continues, UNICEF and partners are working tireless to meet the immediate humanitarian needs of children and families. This includes working with municipalities to keep heating systems operational throughout the winter.

Although they are doing their utmost, Ms. Russell stressed the need for more action.

[...]

As UNICEF remains deeply concerned about the number of children who have been separated from their families, Ms. Russell urged parties to prioritize family tracing and reunification, and refrain from taking any actions that would alter a child’s nationality or make it more difficult for them to be reunified.

[...]

Archived link

Here is the study (pdf).

The Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management, supported by War Child Alliance, surveyed more than 500 Palestinian children in Gaza last June. The results in brief:

• 96% of children feel death is imminent
• 92% of children are not accepting of reality,
• 87% display severe fear,
• 79% suffer from nightmares,
• 77% of children avoid talking about traumatic events,
• 73% of children exhibit symptoms of aggression,
• 49% of children wish to die because of the war.

There are "many more show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness", the organization War Child Alliance says.

A seminal 2019 study published in the Lancet indicated that 22% of individuals in a conflict affected population would suffer from a mental disorder*. In comparison, the figures from this needs assessment study indicate that virtually all of the most vulnerable children in Gaza require psychosocial and trauma recovery support.