Palestine
Palestine
CIVICUS Monitor: Palestine human rights record slips after targeting of climate activists
July 18, 2024
The CIVICUS Monitor announced in a new report Wednesday that Germany’s civic space is no longer rated as ‘open’ following police targeting of climate protesters and restrictions on protests.
The report, People Power Under Attack 2023, assesses civic space conditions in 198 countries and territories. Germany’s downgrade to the ‘narrowed’ rating reflects findings that the government does not fully protect its citizens’ freedoms of expression, assembly and association. Instead, authorities occasionally violate such freedoms.
This year, CIVICUS Monitor researchers documented German authorities breaking up climate protests and using disproportionate measures against the Last Generation climate movement. Security forces raided homes, seized bank accounts and blocked websites in response to non-violent civil disobedience by the group. They also surveilled phones, emails and voicemails. Separately, authorities responded to pro-Palestinian protests in late 2023 with excessive force and bans.
“Germany used to be one of the most free countries in Europe. Now Germany is leading the pack in the EU-wide crackdown on climate activism,” said Tara Petrović, CIVICUS Monitor’s Europe and Central Asia researcher. “Germany’s downgrade should be a wake-up call for the country and continent to change course.”
The CIVICUS Monitor rates each country's civic space conditions based on data collected throughout the year from country-focused civil society activists, regionally-based research teams, international human rights indices and the Monitor's own in-house experts. The data from these four separate sources are then combined to assign each country a rating as either ‘open,’ ‘narrowed,’ ‘obstructed,’ ‘repressed’ or ‘closed.’
This year, the CIVICUS Monitor found just 2.1% of people live in ‘open’ countries, where civic space is both free and protected, the lowest percentage yet and almost half the rate six years ago. Germany, which slid from ‘open’ to ‘narrowed’ this year, is thus part of the trend away from free civic space.
Meanwhile, nearly a third of humanity, or 30.6% of the global population, lives in ‘closed’ societies, the most restrictive possible environments. This is the highest percentage of people in ‘closed’ countries the CIVICUS Monitor has recorded since its first report in 2018. Together, these statistics point to a world in crisis.
“We are witnessing an unprecedented global crackdown on civic space,” said CIVICUS Monitor lead researcher Ms. Barreto Barreto. “Germany shows that citizens in democracies are not immune from an erosion of their rights.”
The targeting of Last Generation was not the only significant civic space restriction in Germany in 2023. In January, police used excessive force to remove some 700 protesters occupying the “ghost” village of Lützerath, whose residents had been evicted to allow for the expansion of a coal mine. Officers beat and pepper sprayed a journalist covering the Lützerath protest, despite him being accredited with police.
“It is not only autocracies that put undue pressure on civil society,” said Christine Meissler, Policy Advisor Civil Society Space at the Berlin-based organisation, Bread for the World. “Democracies are now also criminalising legitimate civil society engagement.”
More recently, police used excessive force against pro-Palestinian protesters in a district of Berlin with a significant Arab population, including deploying pepper spray and water cannons and arresting 174 people.
Authorities also banned pro-Palestinian protests in Berlin and Frankfurt, in line with similar bans in past years. Such restrictions on the ability to gather and demonstrate are discriminatory in nature and violate the right to peaceful assembly.
“The German authorities’ actions against activists exercising legitimate rights to association and peaceful assembly are not conducive to a democratic state,” said Petrović. “They are not aligned with the country's international obligations to protect civic freedoms, either.”
The other downgraded countries this year are Bangladesh (closed), Bosnia & Herzegovina (obstructed), Kyrgyzstan (repressed), Senegal (repressed), Sri Lanka (repressed) and Venezuela (closed).
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact: media@civicus.org
CIVICUS Monitor: El historial de derechos humanos de Palestine empeora tras ataques a activistas climáticos
6 de diciembre de 2023
El CIVICUS Monitor anunció el miércoles en su último informe que el espacio cívico en Alemania ya no se considera "abierto", tras las acciones de la policía contra los manifestantes climáticos y las restricciones impuestas a las protestas.
El informe "People Power Under Attack 2023" evalúa las condiciones del espacio cívico en 198 países y regiones. La degradación de Alemania a la categoría de "obstaculizado" refleja que el gobierno no protege plenamente los derechos de libertad de expresión, reunión y asociación de sus ciudadanos. En cambio, las autoridades violan ocasionalmente estas libertades.
Este año, los analistas del CIVICUS Monitor documentaron cómo las autoridades alemanas disolvieron protestas climáticas y actuaron de manera desproporcionada contra el movimiento climático "Última Generación". Las fuerzas de seguridad llevaron a cabo allanamientos, confiscaron cuentas bancarias y bloquearon sitios web en respuesta a la desobediencia civil no violenta del grupo. También se realizaron intervenciones en teléfonos, correos electrónicos y mensajes de voz. Además, las autoridades reaccionaron a las protestas pro-palestinas a finales de 2023 con violencia excesiva y prohibiciones.
"Alemania solía ser uno de los países más libres de Europa. Ahora está a la vanguardia de la represión del activismo climático en la UE," dijo Tara Petrović, analista del CIVICUS Monitor para Europa y Asia Central