Fault Lines examines how state laws in the US can lead to child sexual abuse in religious communities going unpunished.
Over the past 20 years, religious organisations from the Catholic Church to Jehovah’s Witnesses have had a reckoning with cases of child sexual abuse. Many states have tried to tackle the abuse by making clergy mandatory reporters of abuse to officials, just like doctors, therapists and teachers are. However, more than 30 states in the United States do not require church officials to report knowledge or allegations of child abuse if the information is deemed privileged, specifically coming from confession or counselling. It means that abuse can all too often be hidden – and survivors are left without recourse or justice.
Fault Lines investigates how state laws in the US can lead to child sexual abuse in religious communities going unpunished.
The top court in the US state of Colorado has ruled that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from holding office again over his role in the January 6, 2021 assault on the United States Capitol by his supporters.
Tuesday’s verdict makes Trump the first presidential candidate in US history to be deemed ineligible for the White House under a rarely used provision of the US Constitution that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after taking oath to protect it.
Trump’s campaign spokesperson dubbed the verdict “flawed” and promised to “swiftly” file an appeal in the United States Supreme Court.
Here is more to know about the ruling and what it means for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
What did the Colorado court rule on Donald Trump on Tuesday?
A slim majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the former president is ineligible to hold the US presidency and is to be disqualified from the state’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which bars anyone involved in insurrection or rebellion from running for federal office.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the Colorado Supreme Court wrote in its four-three majority decision.
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” the Colorado justices said. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
This is the first time a court has ruled on the basis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War.
A lower court judge in the state previously ruled that Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, amounted to insurrection but stopped short of disqualifying him, saying Section 3 does not apply to presidents.
The Colorado Supreme Court paused its own ruling pending review by the US Supreme Court.
The ruling was aligned with advocacy groups and activists who called for the disqualification of Trump from the presidential race following his involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed across several US states in efforts to disqualify Trump from running for president in those states. Similar lawsuits have previously been dismissed by courts in Michigan, Florida and New Hampshire. The Minnesota Supreme Court has also rejected a disqualification case.
However, this ruling can influence other states to invoke similar rulings in competitive states that Trump needs to win.
What happened on January 6, 2021?
On January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to prevent the Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. This was after Trump prematurely declared victory and alleged voter fraud. In a speech on the day of the riot, Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol. A US Congressional committee concluded that Trump was responsible for the Capitol riots.
Can Trump still run for presidency and what does it mean for the 2024 election?
Even if the ruling survives Supreme Court review, it could be inconsequential to the outcome of the November 2024 election because Trump does not need to win Colorado, which is a Democratic-leaning state.
Colorado has nine of the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. Biden won the state by more than 13 percentage points in the 2020 election.
But similar lawsuits could be filed in competitive states that Trump must win to prevail, and while none of those courts would be bound by the Colorado decision, judges will likely study it closely while reaching their own conclusions.
How did Trump and Republicans react to Colorado’s ruling?
Trump’s campaign called the court decision “undemocratic”. Trump and his allies have dubbed disqualification cases in Colorado and other states as part of a conspiracy by his political rivals to keep him out of office.
“The Colorado Supreme Court issued a completely flawed decision tonight and we will swiftly file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court,” a campaign spokesperson said.
Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said the “all-Democrat appointed” panel in Colorado was doing the bidding of a “[George] Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden”.
Even after his absence from the Republican debates, Trump remains a frontrunner in the polls. “Democrat Party leaders are in a state of paranoia over the growing, dominant lead President Trump has amassed in the polls,” he added.
Despite their exasperation with Trump, US Republican leaders joined in to call the ruling undemocratic and campaign for its appeal on X. This included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination. DeSantis said the US Supreme Court “should reverse” the Colorado ruling.
“The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal ground,” he wrote on X,
What’s next?
The ruling has been placed on hold by the Colorado Supreme Court until January 4, or until a review by the US Supreme Court, which Trump said he will immediately seek. Colorado officials have said the issue needs to be settled by January 5, which is when the state prints its presidential primary ballots.
It is unclear how the Supreme Court would rule, but it is dominated by a conservative majority that includes three Trump appointees, some of whom are longtime sceptics of giving courts powers that are not clearly based in legislation.
That was a top concern for the dissenting justices in the 4-3 Colorado decision, who said the majority’s ruling would strip Trump of one of his most basic rights without adequate due process.
“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past – dare I say, engaged in insurrection – there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office,” Justice Carlos Samour Jr said.
They noted that Trump has not been convicted of insurrection by a jury and did not have the right to subpoena records or compel witnesses to testify in the case, among other basic rights afforded to criminal defendants.
What is the status of other cases against Trump?
The current ruling adds to the legal woes facing the former president. A US federal judge on Monday set March 4, 2024, as the date for his election subversion conspiracy trial – a move immediately decried by Trump himself as “election interference”.
That date is the eve of the so-called “Super Tuesday” – one of the biggest moments of the primaries when voters in more than a dozen states, including populous California and Texas, go to the polls. Colorado is also on that list, but will Trump be on the ballot?
Trump noted the timing, saying it was “just what our corrupt government wanted”.
Then, just three weeks later, on March 25, Trump will have another court date – this time in New York, where he is facing charges over alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
On May 20, 2024, all eyes will be on Florida, where the third case against the ex-president will open: over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.
A fourth trial could even open in 2024: Trump is also under indictment in Georgia, over an alleged conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.
The prosecutor in that case has asked for a 2024 trial.
Colorado’s Supreme Court has ruled former United States President Donald Trump is ineligible to run for the White House because of his role in the 2021 assault on the Capitol by his supporters and should be removed from the state’s primary ballot.
While the ruling only applies to Colorado, it marks the first time in US history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars from public office anyone who “engaged in insurrection”, has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate and comes as courts in other states consider similar legal actions.
“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the Colorado high court wrote in its four-three majority decision.
“Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” they added.
The decision – which Trump’s campaign said it would appeal – drew immediate condemnation from Republicans.
The one-time property tycoon and reality TV star faces a raft of court cases, from criminal charges over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, to mishandling classified documents, hush money payments in the 2016 election and fraud in his business practices.
Trump has claimed he is the victim of political persecution.
“We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” the Colorado justices said. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
A lower court earlier found that while Trump incited an insurrection, for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the 14th Amendment was intended to cover the presidency.
Noah Bookbinder of the campaign group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which brought the original case along with a group of Colorado voters, welcomed Tuesday’s higher court ruling.
The court’s decision is “not only historic and justified, but is necessary to protect the future of democracy in our country”, he said in a statement.
“Our Constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government.”
Swift appeal expected
The Colorado court placed its ruling on hold until January 4 or until the US Supreme Court rules on the case. State officials say the issue must be settled by January 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots. The Republican primary is due to take place in March.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said they would “swiftly file an appeal” to the Supreme Court, which has the final say on constitutional matters.
Cheung claimed Colorado’s “all-Democrat appointed” panel was doing the bidding of a “[George] Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked [President] Joe Biden”.
The Supreme Court at the federal level has a six-three conservative majority and includes three judges Trump appointed when he was president.
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, faces dozens of lawsuits under Section 3, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War.
It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
“I think it may embolden other state courts or secretaries to act now that the bandage has been ripped off,” Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has closely followed the cases, told the Associated Press news agency after Tuesday’s ruling. “This is a major threat to Trump’s candidacy.”
The Colorado court decision brought swift rebukes from senior Republicans, including Trump’s one-time rival for the 2016 nomination, Senator Marco Rubio.
“The US has put sanctions on other countries for doing exactly what the Colorado Supreme Court has done today,” he wrote on social media.
The Colorado ruling stands in contrast with the Minnesota Supreme Court, which last month decided that the state party can put anyone it wants on its primary ballot. It dismissed a Section 3 lawsuit but said the plaintiffs could try again during the general election.
In another 14th Amendment case, a Michigan judge ruled that Congress, not the judiciary, should decide whether Trump can stay on the ballot in a ruling that is being appealed.
(Al Jazeera)
The liberal group behind those cases, Free Speech For People, has also filed a lawsuit in Oregon seeking to remove Trump from the ballot there.
Both groups are financed by liberal donors who also support President Biden, who is set to run for a second term in office. Trump has blamed the president for the lawsuits against him. Biden has no role in them.
Three Colorado Supreme Court justices dissented in Tuesday’s ruling.
One of the dissenting justices, Carlos Samour, said in a lengthy opinion that a lawsuit was not a fair mechanism for determining Trump’s eligibility for the ballot because it deprived him of his right to due process, noting that a jury had not convicted him of insurrection.
“Even if we are convinced that a candidate committed horrible acts in the past – dare I say, engaged in insurrection – there must be procedural due process before we can declare that individual disqualified from holding public office,” Samour said.
Of all the doctors and medical personnel killed in Gaza this year, Dr Osaid Alser estimates he knew half personally.
Alser, a researcher and resident at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in the United States, grew up in Gaza City, Palestine’s largest city. He started his medical career there, starting as a student and eventually becoming a teacher himself.
But since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Alser has watched as Israeli bombs have rained down on his hometown and military forces have stormed into medical centres.
The result has been the near collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Only 11 hospitals — a third of those in the enclave — remain operational, with dwindling amounts of fuel and medical supplies.
Faced with the death and destruction in Gaza, Alser felt compelled to speak up. “We have a duty to say: Stop the war and ceasefire now,” he told Al Jazeera.
To him, calling for a ceasefire was an ethical imperative, not a political statement.
But not all healthcare providers feel the same way. Many feel an obligation to avoid commenting on conflicts, as part of a tradition that views medical workers as above the fray.
However, the intensity of the war — and its particular toll on Gaza’s health system — have spurred some to ask: When do medical professionals have a responsibility to speak out?
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli raid at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip [Fadi Alwhidifa/Reuters]
Debating ‘medical neutrality’
The debate erupted last month with a meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest professional organisation for physicians in the US.
Its House of Delegates, which sets the organisation’s policies, declined to debate a resolution that would have called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
According to the publication MedPage Today, some of the delegates felt the resolution would force them to decide whether the conflict in Gaza was a “’just war’ or ‘unjust war’”. That, they said, was not their role.
The concept of so-called “medical neutrality” stretches back to a history of civilian involvement in battlefield medical care, with some volunteer nurses tending to the sick and wounded on both sides of a conflict.
International law has since developed to protect the roles healthcare workers have in warfare, making it a war crime to intentionally attack medical personnel.
But “medical neutrality” does not necessarily mean impartiality. And some medical ethicists point out that the scale of the Gaza conflict has raised dire questions.
“The concern that a lot of people are having is that this is not business as usual,” Harold Braswell, an associate professor of healthcare ethics at Saint Louis University, told Al Jazeera.
“Israel has dropped an enormous amount of bombs on a highly condensed civilian area in a very, very short period of time. And that has created a very, very urgent situation.”
A unique circumstance
Gaza, a narrow strip only 11km (7 miles) wide and 40km (25 miles) long, is home to 2.3 million people. Palestinian health authorities estimate that at least 19,453 people have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children.
A further 1.9 million have been displaced, with tens of thousands living in the streets of Rafah after Israel ordered civilians to flee south.
Humanitarian organisations have warned of healthcare workers being killed, as bombs drop on hospitals and ambulance convoys.
Alser, the doctor in Texas, has taken it upon himself to sketch out the scale of the impact. He and his brother, also a doctor, launched an initiative last month to track the number of healthcare workers killed.
So far, they have documented 278 killed since the start of the war. That includes 104 physicians, 87 nurses and 87 others working in various medical roles.
“That includes a lot of my friends, my mentors, even my own medical students that I taught back in 2017, who went on to become doctors and have been killed,” Alser said.
— Healthcare Workers Watch – Palestine (@HCWWatch) December 7, 2023
“We’ve been documenting the names of course, because they’re not just numbers, and we’re posting their stories from people we know and trust on the ground.”
In addition, Israel has detained more than 40 health workers, including Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya — the director of Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa — and Alser’s former student, Dr Saleh Eleiwa. The rising numbers left Alser feeling no choice but to speak out.
“I just felt like we absolutely have to talk about this,” he said. “So that’s really the motivation: Seeing our colleagues, friends, family being killed — doctors, professionals who just work in medicine [and] go home after they work for many, many hours and they get killed.”
Rising calls for a ceasefire
Alser is not alone. The American Public Health Association (APHA), the largest professional body for public health workers in the US, issued an appeal last month for an immediate ceasefire, amid pressure from its members.
Healthcare labour unions and advocacy groups have likewise called for a ceasefire. And more than 100 faculty members at public health and medical schools signed a letter this month urging the US government to support a ceasefire.
US President Joe Biden has thus far avoided pressing for a ceasefire, citing Israel’s right to “defend itself” after the Hamas attack on October 7.
But members of the medical community are divided over how much pressure to place on Israel and whether its acts of war have reached a threshold that demands a unified ethical stance.
Much of that division has centred on whether the attacks on healthcare centres in Gaza amount to war crimes.
In a widely circulated opinion piece published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr Matthew Wynia argued that health professionals do indeed have a responsibility to speak out on the war and denounce any crimes committed under international humanitarian law.
But he sees the issue as far from settled, citing Israel’s claims that Hamas fighters are using Gaza’s medical facilities “for offensive purposes, which can make striking them legal under limited circumstances”.
Even in those instances, however, Wynia said there were limits to the extent to which violence could be justified.
“If a facility is being used to hide military equipment and personnel, for example, any proposed strike on it must still ‘minimise’ potential harm to civilians, and the military value of the strike must be ‘proportionate’ to the civilian harms it might cause,” Wynia wrote.
In an email to Al Jazeera, Wynia said he fundamentally considers himself a pacifist and would personally support a ceasefire.
However, he added, “unless we posit that all doctors are ethically obliged to be pacifists, then I don’t think we can say that calling for a ceasefire in this war is an ethical obligation for all doctors”.
“And to be consistent, this would mean also calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and in all other wars,” he said.
Article prompts backlash
Wynia’s opinion piece sparked a backlash in the medical community, with some readers saying it relied too heavily on narratives put forth by Israel.
Alser was among them. He and two colleagues — Canadian-Palestinian doctor Tarek Loubani, and Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert — wrote a response saying Wynia’s article lacked ethical clarity.
The article “muddied the moral intuitions held by many of us that attacking hospitals, infrastructure, and health care workers is wrong”, they wrote.
All three doctors had worked previously in Gaza. They said they had “never come across militants operating from within a hospital or restricting access to certain hospital areas”.
For its part, Israel’s military has released videos of weapons allegedly found in medical centres and given media tours of tunnels under the al-Shifa Hospital. No independent investigation has been conducted.
The Israeli doctor Zohar Lederman also said there should be no ethical ambiguity when it comes to the Israeli military’s siege of hospitals in Gaza.
“One of the most sophisticated militaries in the world should not murder hundreds of vulnerable patients, including patients receiving dialysis and newborns in incubators, who have nowhere else to go,” he wrote in his own response.
Wynia has since answered his critics with another, shorter article, saying medical professionals should condemn “both illegal use of and attacks on health care facilities” and war crimes committed by either side.
He also emphasised that there remains a diversity of opinions “on the ethics of Israel’s approach to this war”.
“In fact, I can attest that there are, and Israel’s defenders and critics are equally convinced they hold the moral high ground,” he said.
Time to ‘speak up more’
For Alser, the debate further underscores the need for Palestinian perspectives in discussions about the war, regardless of any professional repercussions he may face.
The 31-year-old doctor remained on call as the fighting began, watching the war in his homeland late at night or early in the morning.
In the weeks since the fighting started, his mother, five siblings, nieces and nephews have been displaced six times. They too briefly stayed at al-Shifa Hospital, before fleeing to Khan Younis and eventually Rafah.
Palestinian boys stand in a makeshift tent at a camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip [Mohammed Abed/AFP]
They are currently living in a tent. Alser explained that, as the Israeli siege continues and food runs scarce, they face malnourishment.
“For me, it was time to speak up and speak up more — to advocate for my family and call for protection for my friends, my people,” he said. “So, instead of just sitting at home crying and just doing nothing, I kind of shifted that energy to more like doing something good.”
“We’re being advocates,” he added, “and advocacy is a very important part of medicine”.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin says coalition will include Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, UK and other countries.
The United States has announced the launch of a multinational force to protect trade in the Red Sea after a series of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels forced several shipping companies to suspend operations.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday that Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Seychelles and the United Kingdom would be among the countries joining the 10-nation “multinational security initiative”.
“Countries that seek to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation must come together to tackle the challenge posed by this non-state actor,” Austin said in a statement, describing the attacks as an issue that “demands collective action”.
The announcement comes after the US and UK navies said over the weekend that their destroyers had shot down a total of 15 drones in the waterway.
The Iran-backed Houthis have ramped up drone and missile attacks on vessels in key shipping lanes since the start of the war in Gaza, targeting ships alleged to have links to Israel or Israelis.
The rebel group said on Monday it had attacked the Norwegian-owned Swan Atlantic and the MSC Clara using naval drones to show solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Swan Atlantic’s owner, Norway’s Inventor Chemical Tankers, said in a statement the vessel had no link to Israel and was managed by a Singaporean firm.
There were no injuries reported by either vessel.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official and spokesman, told Al Jazeera earlier on Monday that the group would confront any US-led coalition in the Red Sea.
At least 12 shipping companies, including the Italian-Swiss giant Mediterranean Shipping Company, France’s CMA CGM and Denmark’s AP Moller-Maersk, have suspended transit through the Red Sea due to safety concerns.
UK oil giant BP on Monday became the latest firm to announce it would avoid the waters.
“In light of the deteriorating security situation for shipping in the Red Sea, BP has decided to temporarily pause all transits through the Red Sea,” BP said in a statement.
“We will keep this precautionary pause under ongoing review, subject to circumstances as they evolve in the region.”
Houthi attacks have effectively rerouted a significant portion of global trade by forcing freight companies to sail around Africa, imposing higher costs and delays for deliveries of energy, food and consumer goods.
About 12 percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, which connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, including 30 percent of container traffic.
The Russian president says Moscow has ‘no interest … to fight with NATO countries’.
The Russian president has dismissed the United States’s claims that Moscow could attack a NATO country in the future as “complete nonsense”, saying such a conflict would run counter to his country’s interests.
Vladimir Putin made the statement in an interview with Russian state TV on Sunday, weeks after US President Joe Biden warned that if Putin achieved victory in Ukraine, he might be emboldened to attack a NATO ally, sparking a third world war.
“It is complete nonsense – and I think President Biden understands that,” Putin told state television channel Rossiya.
“Russia has no reason, no interest – no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military – to fight with NATO countries.”
Putin added that Biden may be trying to stoke such fears to justify his “erroneous policy” in the region.
US-Russia relations have sunk to their lowest level in decades since Moscow invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.
Throughout the 22-month war, the US has provided Ukraine with $111bn in weapons, equipment, and other aid, helping the Ukrainians fend off Russia’s advance and regain some territory.
Biden favours sending even more support to war-torn Ukraine, which is running short on supplies as it grinds to a bloody winter stalemate.
He has asked US Congress to approve $61.4bn in support for Ukraine as part of a larger $110bn package that includes more funds for Israel and other issues.
However, there is waning appetite in the Congress for the lingering war. Some Republican lawmakers have blocked the aid package, demanding the White House first take action on border security.
Biden on December 12 said right-wing lawmakers’ refusal to approve the package also risked handing President Putin a “Christmas gift” of victory.
“Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine,” Biden said during a news conference with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “We must … prove him wrong.”
Presidents Zelenskyy, left, and Biden shake hands in the White House, Washington, DC, December 12 [Mandel Ngan/AFP]
Tensions with Finland
While Putin dismissed the prospect of a direct NATO feud, he did address tensions with neighbouring Finland since it joined the alliance.
Finland, which became a NATO member in April, on Friday shut down its entire eastern border with Russia, which it accuses of orchestrating a migrant crisis on its border.
Putin said he would respond to the deteriorating ties by opening up a military zone in its northwest.
“They [the West] dragged Finland into NATO. Did we have any disputes with them? All disputes, including territorial ones in the mid-20th century, have long been solved,” Putin said.
“There were no problems there. Now there will be [problems] because we will create the Leningrad military district and concentrate a certain amount of military units there.”
Top US diplomat calls on international community to oppose ‘transnational repression.’
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has condemned Hong Kong authorities for placing bounties on five pro-democracy activists based overseas, including a US citizen, calling on the international community to oppose “transnational repression.”
Blinked said on Friday that the bounties of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) for information leading to the activists’ arrest showed Hong Kong authorities’ disregard for international norms and human rights.
“We strongly oppose any efforts to intimidate and silence individuals who choose to make the United States their home and will not waver in standing up for those who are targeted simply for exercising their human rights,” Blinked said in a statement.
“We encourage the international community to join us in condemning this act of transnational repression. The United States remains committed to defending the rights and freedoms of all people and calls on the PRC to act in a manner consistent with its international commitments and legal obligations,” the top US diplomat added, referring to the acronym of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron earlier condemned Hong Kong authorities’ move as “threat to our democracy and fundamental human rights.”
Hong Kong police Chief Superintendent Steve Li Kwai-wah said the five were suspected of incitement to secession, incitement to subversion, and foreign collusion and had “betrayed their own country and betrayed Hong Kong.”
The five have advocated for democracy and civil liberties in Hong Kong from abroad following a sweeping crackdown on the city that has criminalised practically all opposition to Beijing.
Siu holds US citizenships, and Hui was granted asylum in the US in 2021.
Cheng, who was granted asylum by the British government in 2020, Fok and Choi all live in the UK.
In April, Hong Kong authorities announced bounties for information leading to the arrest of eight other overseas-based Hong Kong activists, including former lawmaker Ted Hui.
Siu said on X she would “never be silenced” and “never back down.”
Hui said her advocacy for democracy and freedom “has not and will not stop,” while Cheng described the charges against him as an “honour.”
Amnesty International said on Thursday that the bounties were “confirmation that the Hong Kong authorities’ systematic dismantling of human rights has officially gone global.”
China’s foreign ministry on Friday hit back at criticism of the bounties, accusing Western governments of revealing their “malicious intentions in messing up Hong Kong.”
About 300 people have been arrested under Hong Kong’s national security law, which has drastically curtailed rights and freedoms that are supposed to distinguish the city from the Chinese mainland under an arrangement known as “one country, two systems.”
Those arrested include Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, the founder of the defunct Apple Daily newspaper, who is set to go on trial from Monday on charges of colluding with foreign forces.
Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss faced outpouring of racist and sexist threats after Giuliani’s false claims.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has been ordered to pay $148m in damages to two former election workers he defamed with false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
An eight-person federal jury in Washington, DC, said on Friday that Giuliani should pay Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss $75m in punitive damages, plus $36m each for defamation and emotional distress, for falsely claiming that they tried to rig the election against Trump.
The award comes after Freeman and Moss, two former poll workers in Fulton County, Georgia, testified that Giuliani’s false claims had made them the target of a flood of racist and sexist threats.
In court, Moss and Freeman, who are black, described fearing for their lives after being falsely accused of hiding ballots in suitcases, counting votes multiple times and interfering with voting machines.
Freeman testified that she fled her home after the FBI told her she wasn’t safe, and Moss told jurors she rarely leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks.
“Our greatest wish is that no one, no election worker, or voter or school board member or anyone else ever experiences anything like what we went through,” Moss told reporters after the verdict. “You all matter, and you are all important.”
Giuliani, who had argued his election comments had no connection to the threats the women received, described the jury verdict as absurd.
The “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”, he said.
“It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that, actually.”
Giuliani also claimed that his remarks “were supportable and are supportable today”.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, had acknowledged that his client had caused harm, but argued that the $48m penalty asked for by the two election workers would be “the end” for Giuliani and that he was a “good man”.
The verdict adds to a growing list of legal and financial woes for Giuliani, who, before joining Trump’s inner circle, was known as “America’s Mayor” for leading New York through the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Giuliani, along with Trump and 17 others, has been charged with participating in an illegal plot to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
In 2021, Giuliana had his licences to practise law in New York and Washington, DC, suspended over his false statements about the 2020 election.
In September, the 79-year-old former prosecutor was sued by his former lawyer for allegedly only paying a fraction of $1.6m outstanding legal fees.
He is also being sued by Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, for alleged computer fraud and by a former employee over alleged wage theft and sexual harassment.
Perry, who played the wise-cracking Chandler Bing in the popular US sitcom, passed away from the “acute effects” of the sedative, with drowning a secondary cause in his October 28 death at age 54, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said on Friday.
Heart disease and “the effects of buprenorphine,” a drug used to treat opioid abuse, were also contributing factors, the autopsy report said.
Perry, who spoke openly about his struggles with alcohol and opiate addiction, had reportedly been undergoing ketamine treatment for anxiety and depression but took his last known infusion more than a week before his death, which would have been long enough for the drug to have left his system.
“The exact method of intake in Mr. Perry’s case is unknown,” the report said.
The autopsy did not detect alcohol or other drugs such as cocaine, heroin or fentanyl in Perry’s system.
In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote about taking ketamine daily at certain points to help with addiction, pain and depression.
“Has my name written all over it – they might as well have called it ‘Matty,’” he wrote of the drug.
Perry became one of the world’s most recognised actors during Friends’ 10-year run from 1994 to 2004.
The sitcom, also starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer, followed the ups and downs of six young singletons in New York.
Perry’s sudden death stunned his castmates, friends, family and fans worldwide, drawing heartfelt tributes for the Canadian-born actor.
“Oh boy this one has cut deep,” Aniston, who played Rachel on Friends, said on Instagram shortly after his death.
“He was such a part of our DNA. We were always the 6 of us. This was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be.”
The United States media, bar just a few exceptions, are refusing to engage seriously with one of the most important questions about Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza: Is Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians in the besieged enclave, and is the US complicit in this worst of all human crimes?
The American media’s avoidance of the growing allegations of genocide directed at Israel is not surprising. After all, since the beginning of this latest war, mainstream US media have eagerly justified and excused Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians. For example, they usually refer to blatant acts of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Gaza as “evacuations”, and claim Israel is “defending itself” against “terror” even as it continues to terrorise millions of civilians living under its occupation with bombs and bullets along with apartheid laws and settler-colonial policies of oppression.
Like its refusal to acknowledge Israel’s other atrocities against Palestinians and violations of international law, the US media’s reluctance to report on and discuss the accusations of genocide has real consequences.
As Prism, a progressive news outlet based in the US, recently noted, “through journalistic sleight of hand – including the use of passive language, ever-shifting headlines, bothsidesism, and the myth of objectivity – reporters across the US are fuelling the genocide their newsrooms are refusing to acknowledge is taking place”.
Indeed, what constitutes genocide is clearly defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, and this is exactly what we witness in Palestine today. As leading genocide scholar Raz Segal recently stated, it is clear Israel is carrying out in Gaza “a textbook case of genocide”.
The American media’s hesitance to utter the word genocide in relation to Israel’s assault in Gaza, coupled with their tendency to downplay or outright deny Israeli crimes against Palestinians, signals to Israel that it can continue its killing spree with impunity, and reassures the US administration that it won’t be held to account for its complicity.
Thankfully, mainstream print and audio-visual media are not the only venues for concerned parties to draw attention to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, hold accountable and pressure its perpetrators to stop, and encourage political negotiations. Activists are turning to courts and peaceful public protests to try and hold accountable Israel and complicit foreign governments.
While the top international courts tasked with considering such issues – the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice – move at a snail’s pace, human and constitutional rights organisations have taken their case on the Gaza genocide to courts in the US.
This battle to recognise Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza started in mid-October, when the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organisation, published its legal analysis of US complicity in “Israel’s unfolding genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. Then on November 3, alongside fellow legal non-profits, Palestine Legal and the National Lawyers Guild, the CCR took its case directly to Congress; it notified representatives that if they vote for an aid package to Israel they “could face criminal and civil liability for aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity”.
The organisation then followed up on November 13 with a lawsuit involving half a dozen American and Palestinian plaintiffs, accusing President Joe Biden and his secretaries of state and defence of enabling Israel’s genocide. In the brief it submitted to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the organisation argued that the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel constitutes “a breach of US responsibilities under customary international law, as codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.
The organisations using US courts to charge Israel with genocide in US courts are not struggling to find evidence to support their claim. Many scholars of genocide and war crimes studies, like Raz Segal, are on their side.
The Genocide Convention defines the crime of genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. These five acts are: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Many genocide and international law experts across the world agree that Israel has committed in Gaza at least the first three acts in this list with undeniable intent, and is thus guilty of genocide.
Just a week ago, on December 9, 55 scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies published an open letter condemning Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, but also stating that “the starvation, mass killing, and forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is ongoing, raising the question of genocide, especially in view of the intentions expressed by Israeli leaders”.
The legal case for the US’s complicity in this genocide is equally strong.
Katherine Gallagher, the lead lawyer for CCR’s lawsuit against Biden and his colleagues, explained at a presentation in New York City that the US’s actions in support of Israel – including sending expedited military and economic aid to the country, blocking United Nations Security Council resolutions to implement a ceasefire, and giving Israel advanced weapons that few other states get, among others – clearly “cross the lines of complicity in genocide”.
“The US was put on notice of the likelihood of genocidal actions, and it should have taken action to prevent it,” she added, explaining that Israel could not pursue its present level of attacks without US aid and diplomatic protection at the UN.
On December 8, the US government asked the North California District Court to throw out the lawsuit, arguing on jurisdictional grounds that the judiciary cannot intervene in the executive branch’s foreign policymaking. The plaintiffs say the US is bound by the Genocide Convention it ratified and as such, must respect the requirement that all those who have the capacity to stop a genocide are obligated to do so.
The government’s demand that the CCR case is dismissed coincided with another US veto of a UNSC resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza, and a move by the administration to circumvent necessary congressional approval to immediately send Israel more artillery ammunition, which only reiterated Washington’s unconditional support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
A few days later, the World Health Organization said the healthcare situation in Gaza was “catastrophic” and warned that disease was spreading among the 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza forced from their homes by Israel’s strikes and would probably worsen because of overcrowding in areas where civilians are seeking shelter. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, meanwhile, warned that there was “no effective protection of civilians in Gaza” and that there is increasing “pressure for mass displacement into Egypt”, signalling another war crime, known as forcible transfer, may be in the making. Around the same time, Save the Children said it had documented in Gaza the cases of more than 7,000 children under the age of five who were so malnourished that they required “urgent medical treatment to avoid death”.
As evidence for Israel’s genocide mounts and the US media avoids acknowledging what is happening before our eyes, discussions on the nature and extent of Israel’s crimes are throttled on US college campuses and in other public spaces; those daring to speak up are branded as anti-Semites and terror supporters, or even as advocates of genocide against Jews, which makes it critical that court cases like the CCR’s try and hold those responsible to account.
Over the past week, the round-the-clock media coverage of accusations of anti-Semitism at elite American universities such as Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania repeated the charge that allowing pro-Palestine protests and statements on campuses promoted anti-Semitism and threatened Jewish students, faculty and staff. Some particularly ignorant and extremist members of Congress, the academy, and the media even suggested that the accelerating ceasefire and pro-Palestine protests could be seen as part of an attempted genocide against American Jews.
Such an inversion of reality is not so unusual, when extremist pro-Israel fanaticism combines with equally hysterical desperation among American politicians. New benchmarks in political fantasy and dishonesty are now being set in the United States, when some extremists suggest that nonviolent activism for a Gaza ceasefire and equal rights among Palestinians and Israelis is genocidal, while the Israeli state, which claims to represent all the world’s Jews, is committing a verified genocide in Gaza.
History will not judge kindly the American media’s failure to recognise and accurately report on this moment. However, in the absence of adequate media and political scrutiny, it is encouraging that scores of scholars bravely provide evidence and speak up on the issue, and that American courts offer a venue to assess and hold accountable perpetrators and complicit state enablers of this generation’s iteration of humanity’s worst crime – genocide.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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