Amnesty Reports against Human Rights Violation in Asian Countries
Amnesty International is an International non-governmental organization headquartered in the United Kingdom (UK), highly focused on Human Rights with a mission of campaigning for a world in which every individual enjoys all of the human rights.
Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 10 million people in over 150 realms and territories. The firm Amnesty is famous for scrutinizing and manifesting the facts, whenever and wherever abuses occur. Apart from this, Amnesty also highlights the misuse of technologies directing to human rights violations.
Here are some instances from the research, conducted by Amnesty’s Security Lab (a Technical Partner) supported by forensic analysis on the phones of a sample of journalists, Human rights activists, and lawyers whose numbers are on the leaked list.
On 24 February 2021, Amnesty International found a hacking campaign against the activists of Vietnamese. A hacking group known as Ocean Lotus has been directing more spyware attacks on the Human rights activists of Vietnam. Amnesty Tech’s security Lab identified proofs of hacking attempts in phishing emails sent to two dissidents. (1 Philippines and other one Germany) the hackers were supposed to have ties with Vietnam’s administration which has been cracking down on dissidents.
In October 2021 Amnesty International identified an Indian cybersecurity company behind a hacking group in a cyberattack that attempted to deliver Android and Windows spyware to an activist in Togo (West African Country). In the earlier 2020 presidential elections in Togo, the Donot Team hacking group strived to spy on a well-known Togolese Human rights defender. During the enquiry Amnesty International exposed a connection between Donot Team’s Android spyware and Innefu Labs Pvt. Ltd. (an Indian cybersecurity company asserts to provide services to law enforcement)
Amnesty International noted that the Innefu Labs IP address is connected to the infrastructure used for the allocation of Donot Team spyware in the cyberattacks targeting the human rights activist in Togo. Innefu Labs, however, has denied the allegations of Amnesty International, saying it has no connection to the Donot Team or the cyberattack against the activist of Togolese and claiming that it was unaware of its IP address being used for unethical activities.
In February 2022, an investigation was revealed by Amnesty on How Pegasus software of Israel’s notorious Group NSO was used to infect the devices of three Activists in Bahrain. Ali Abdulemam (Digital rights Organisation Red Line 4 Gulf, with technical support from Amnesty International and Citizen Lab) revealed that a lawyer, an online journalist, and a mental health counselor, of Bahrain, were targeted by the Pegasus Software between June and September 2021. The Pegasus Project association had formerly identified Bahrain as a budding client of the NSO group, with hundreds of Bahraini Phone numbers integrated on a leaked list of 50,000 potential Pegasus targets.
According to the Lynn Maalouf (Deputy Director for Research in Amnesty International’s the Middle East and North Africa Regional Office), Amnesty was calling on Bahraini controllers to instantly stop their use of surveillance technologies, and also Spyware exporters to close down the supply of software to states with the harmful software until an International authoritarian framework complaint with Human Rights obligations is put in place.
On February 1, 2022, Amnesty revealed a report on Israel’s apartheid (institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another) against Palestinians. The investigation specifies how Israel implements a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their Human Rights. The oppression campaign consists of Palestinian living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as a displaced refugees in other provinces.
Recently on 10 April 2022, Foreign policy analyzed that Israel took the help of Google Ads to Whitewash its record. StandWithUs (a nonprofit organization) linked to Israel’s Foreign Ministry paid for Google ads accusing Amnesty of spreading “apartheid lies”. Users were detailed that YouTube placed content warnings on Amnesty’s video about Israeli apartheid. Digital rights groups have repeatedly accused Facebook and other Social media platforms for censoring Pro-Palestinian Content amid Israeli government pressure. This scandal highlights the role of big tech in helping and abetting human rights abuses.
On 10 April 2022, Amnesty revealed its report on Ukrainian Nazis in the Bucha killings. As the images from Bucha were published, the Russia misinformation farm appeared out a highly synchronized and targeted disinformation assault. Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov called the propaganda a “fake attack”. Russia’s ministry of defense posted to Telegram, claiming that some of the photos were “fake”. Pro-Kremlin social media accounts accused “Ukrainian Nazis” of the Bucha killings — dishonesty that has already made it to China.
