Geneva, Sep 29 — The United Nations Human Rights Council Friday heard a joint statement by UNITED SIKHS and CAP Freedom of Conscience, a European nonprofit, regarding Sikh turban rights in France.

Both organisations collaborated on this significant endeavour as co-signatories to the oral statement presented by CAP Freedom of Conscience in Geneva, Switzerland.

The incorporation of the France turban issue in the joint statement, representing both UNITED SIKHS and CAP Freedom of Conscience, underscores the imperative nature of addressing this matter on the international stage.

68. JS2, JS5,JS9 and JS20 expressed concerns about discrimination, persecution, and limited access to justice faced by marginalized communities.115
JS2 highlighted the  discrimination and stigma experienced by Dalits, recommending immediate action through the enactment of an Anti-discrimination Act, representation, access to social services, and addressing discrimination in education and employment. JS5 focused on the persecution  of Ahmadi Muslims and called for stronger legislative and institutional responses, protecting religious practices, ensuring access to justice, and addressing violence and discrimination.  JS9 and JS16 were concerns about the limited justice access, violent attacks, and religious intolerance affecting various religious minorities.

Thousands  of Ahmadi  Muslims  in  Germany who  have fled  severe  religious persecution in Pakistan are awaiting a decision on their asylum  applications. They   belong   to  a religiously  and  politically  persecuted   minority  – the Ahmadiyya Muslim  Community. It  is  recognized   around  the  world   by  human   rights  groups  that Ahmadi Muslims  are  constantly,  ruthlessly  persecuted.

As the case of the 101 detained members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light in Turkey continues to gain momentum on the international level, their case is being brought  to EU government delegations at the United Nations Human  Rights Council.

In a side-event of the 54th session of the Human Rights Council in Germany, director of CAP Freedom of Conscience, Thierry Valle, has delivered an oral statement emphasizing the urgent need to grant asylum/humanitarian visas to the 101 members through EU consulates in Turkey as the only way available means to safeguard their right to freedom of religion and their right to life and freedom from inhumane or degrading treatment. 

We, together with United Sikhs welcome the efforts made by France to combat stigmatization and discrimination against minorities since its last UPR.

We remain concerned about France’s policies on freedom of religion and belief, which are leading to a climate of religious intolerance, community withdrawal, hate speech and hate crimes.

As stated in our latest contribution to the OSCE 23 Report on hate crimes, the French policy act as a catalyst for intolerance, in violation of international conventions such as the Durban Declaration.

We are deeply concerned about the recent transfer of 6 billion dollars in Iranian assets from South Korea to the Swiss Central Bank.

Although Reuters has reported that Iran’s use of the funds is explicitly limited to humanitarian aid, we are concerned about their misuse and are shocked that a nation that continually violates the fundamental rights of its citizens could benefit from such a substantial economic measure.

Since May of this year, over 100 Ahmadis from various countries where they were heavily persecuted, have been detained by the Turkish authorities in Edirne Immigration Detention Center. They want to apply for asylum in an EU country.

Those people from the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light do not want to stay in Turkey, another Muslim majority country, where people also consider them infidels and treat them as such.

Violence in Yemen in 2023 has seen an uptick , including an increase in targeted attacks  and violent speech towards religious minorities. On 25th May 2023, Houthi militia stormed a peaceful meeting of Bahais in Sana’a and arrested 17, including five women, and continue to detain 11 of them incommunicado. In 2 June 2023, the UN High  Commissioner on Human Rights reported how the Mufti Shamseddin Sharafeddin, appointed by leaders of the Houthi militant movement, accused the detained Bahais of being apostates and saying “they should be killed,” if they did not repent Similar hate speech and incitement has been recorded in Yemen towards Christian converts and others since the start of the conflict and was raised during the virtual 53rd Human Rights Council parallel event co-sponsored by the Slovak Republic Bureau of the Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief.

CAP Liberté de conscience and Human Rights Without Frontiers are deeply concerned about the Ukrainian children who were taken away against their will from the Ukrainian occupied territories to Russia in the framework of the war and whose parents are desperately in search of them.  Both NGOs strongly support the recommendations of the UN Secretary-General, who urges

Recognizing that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for the 193 member states of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, as shown in the Universal Declaration on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting, presented by five NGOs during a World Summit in 2021;

We, together with the NGO Stop Amhara Genocide, have continuously alerted this Council that the Tigray conflict was an opportunity for the Ethiopian government to intensify the ethnic cleansing of the Amhara people started under TPLF regime.

We are deeply concerned about cases of violations of freedom of expression and the misuse of military justice to repress activists and “political dissidents” in Lebanon.

Amendments to the Criminal Code allow the Permanent Military Court to hear civil cases related to national security, with far fewer protections for the defendants.

The use of law and military justice to repress “political dissent” in lebanon: the Omar Harfouch case

CAP Liberté de conscience is deeply concerned about the escalating crisis and human rights violations that are devastating the Amhara region in Ethiopia.

We are deeply shocked by the escalation of violence in the conflict in Sudan, which has reached unprecedented levels of atrocity, without any of the points in the resolution adopted by this Council on May 11 having led to pacification.

We have learned that democracy is no guarantee against violations of freedom of religion or belief. However, when more democracy is introduced, it often happens that more religious liberty is also guaranteed. We have noticed, in particular, the progress of religious liberty in countries once part of the Soviet Union. Although some problems occasionally surface, the Baltic States are a virtuous example of transition to religious liberty, and even in Central Asia, where freedom of religion or belief is not yet fully recognized, at least several Jehovah’s Witnesses and other prisoners of conscience have been liberated from jail.

CAP Liberté de Conscience and Human Rights Without Frontiers are deeply concerned about the situation of over 100 members of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light detained for 90 days as of 23 August at the Edirne Migration Center in Turkey, for exercising their legal right to claim asylum.

La Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires (BAYS) fue creada en 1983 por el Dr. Percowicz para enseñar Raja Yoga, filosofía occidental y oriental, y sus aplicaciones prácticas para mejorar el bienestar personal y la vida cotidiana (la información sobre BAYS y su caso se recoge en el único estudio académico sobre el grupo publicado en una revista revisada por expertos: Massimo Introvigne, “La gran caza de brujas contra las sectas en Argentina y la Escuela de Yoga de Buenos Aires.”

The Buenos Aires Yoga School (BAYS) was established in 1983 by Dr. Juan Percowicz to teach Raja Yoga, Western and Eastern philosophy, and their practical applications to improve personal well-being and daily life (information on BAYS and its case are taken by the only scholarly study of the group published in a peer-reviewed journal: Massimo Introvigne, “The Great Cult Scare in Argentina and the Buenos Aires Yoga School,” The Journal of CESNUR, 7.3, 2023, 3–32; parts of this study are reproduced here with permission).

CAP LC and Human Rights Without Frontiers would like to raise to the Council’s attention the urgent crisis of 104 members of the religion in Turkey, who are at risk of facing death sentences and imprisonment because Turkish authorities have decided to deport them back to their home countries, where they are facing extreme forms of religious persecution.

The genocide of Amhara commenced from as early as 1990 when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) took power in Ethiopia with the ongoing and systematic massacre of ethnic Amhara and Agew people in Arsi, Harerghe; Benishangul-Gumuz, Metekel Zone, Southern region and in the forcefully annexed areas as west Tigray; Welkait-Tegede, Setit Humera and Raya.

In particular, the authors of joint submission 4 noted the use of these laws to close a number of places of worship and recommended that France ensure respect for freedom of religion, freedom to practise religious rites and freedom of association.[i] The Coordination des associations et particuliers pour la liberté de conscience recommended ensuring that article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is respected by French institutions.[ii] JS10 recommended to put an end to religious discrimination and stigmatization of Jehovah’s Witnesses.[iii]

According to UNICEF analysis based on the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) “Global Internal Displacement Database 2022” (GIDD), the number of refugee children worldwide has increased dramatically, reaching nearly 36.5 million children by the end of 2021. The report highlights the growing The number of refugee children between 2005 and 2021, and the global number of refugee children has doubled under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from four million in 2010 to more than 10 million in 2021, a rate of 132%. While the total number of non-refugee migrant children increased by 10 percent during the same period, the report highlights the dark reality that the world faces in terms of child refugee issues, as children constitute less than a third of the world’s population, while they represent more than 40 percent of the total refugees in the world in The year 2021. This represents 1 out of every 3 children living outside their countries of origin who are refugee children, which is a dangerous reality that reflects an unhappy childhood lived by nearly half of the refugees in the world, who live in extremely difficult conditions and are exposed to the worst types of violations and crimes that prevent them from enjoying their childhood and deprive them To exercise their rights and freedoms guaranteed to them by international legislation.

he traffic light coalition in Germany has taken many  measures and passed laws to better manage  migration. However, the number  of deportations has also increased.  Even  to those countries where  blasphemy  laws are  practiced in  the  strongest terms.  Deportations of Ahmadi  Muslims  to  Pakistan  have increased  sharply  in the  past.