Fortify Rights

NEW: Pro-democracy organizations in #Myanmar should establish independent war crimes investigation units to investigate alleged human rights violations committed by all parties to the conflict. Following @FortifyRights workshops on the laws of war and atrocity documentation, #Karenni leaders expressed interest in establishing a war crimes investigation unit and reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the laws of war. “The Karenni IEC government is serious about building a future federal democratic Myanmar that reflects the aspirations of the people, and we stand ready to continue working together to support them and others to achieve that vision,” said @bouckap, Senior Director at @FortifyRights. Read more: fortifyrights.org/mya-inv-2026-0…

American Jewish World Service @ajws condemns the U.S. State Department’s campaign to undermine the International Criminal Court and its threats to human rights defenders. “This attack on the court is an insult to victims and survivors of atrocities,” said @matthewfsmith, founder and CEO of @FortifyRights. “As someone challenging the effects of the administration’s ICC sanctions in federal court, I know firsthand that this campaign also threatens the fundamental freedoms of Americans working to advance accountability.” ajws.org/press-releases…

.@BenedictRogers from @FortifyRights explains why the international community must stand with #Taiwan to preserve peace, defend democracy, and uphold international law, in a new op-ed for @Telegraph. telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/1…

.@FortifyRights’s @yaplaysheng speaks to @AlexHowlett2 @Diplomat_APAC about the rise in anti-#Rohingya hate in #Malaysia. “When influential figures repeat harmful things against refugees, they lend legitimacy to online hate and give the public permission to translate that online hate into offline abuses. And we’ve seen that already with the vigilantes going around, exposing the locations of people’s homes and schools, and sometimes brutalizing them.” thediplomat.com/2026/07/how-so…

As hundreds of #Rohingya refugees are feared dead or missing at sea, @FortifyRights Human Rights Specialist Lynn Htet told @nytimes: “If the people on the boats were from the West, many countries would have come together to form search groups. But Rohingya don’t have any influence. They are invisible people.” nytimes.com/2026/07/17/wor…

Writing in The Tablet @benedictrogers sets out the case for the Genocide Determination Bill: “The Bill is designed to end the absurd merry-go-round where the government refuses to recognise a genocide, saying it is for the courts, but without British courts having genocide determination within their judicial scope. It will give the High Court in England and Wales, and its equivalent Court of Session in Scotland, the power to receive submissions from survivors and victims of atrocities, or organisations on their behalf, and make a determination as to whether these indicate that a genocide is underway or there is a serious risk of a genocide being committed.     If the court determines that there is a genocide or the risk of one, the government – under this Bill – would be required by law to act to fulfil its obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent it or punish the perpetrators, by imposing sanctions or referring the case to the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice or other international bodies.   If this Bill passes, it will be an historic moment and provide a long overdue mechanism for addressing what has become known as the crime of crimes” @andyburnham @YvetteCooperMP @DavidLammy @attorneygeneral @jennychapman @ShabanaMahmood @Burmacampaign @Coalition4GR @bbclysedoucet @christinalamb @alexsobel @AlexCrawfordSky @CharlesHMoore @FraserNelson @NigeriaCsw @CSW_UK @acn_uk @timfarron @Jacob_Rees_Mogg @pmounstephen @danny__kruger @Billbrowder @DXW_KC @tariqahmadbt @afneil @MorrisofBolton @aliciakearns @MahmutRahima @UyghurCongress @HumanRightsCtte url.uk.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/cwEVCr8AwCAv…

Important support from @FortifyRights for Genocide Determination Bill independent.co.uk/voices/genocid…

The U.K. has long said #genocide should be determined by courts—but without a legal mechanism, that policy has too often resulted in inaction. In @The_Tablet, @BenedictRogers from @FortifyRights explains why @DavidAltonHL #GenocideDeterminationBill deserves support. thetablet.co.uk/blogs/why-lord…

WATCH: @FortifyRights works with pro-democracy organizations in #Myanmar’s #Karenni State to strengthen compliance with the laws of war and support accountability for atrocity crimes. Through workshops, @FortifyRights provided training in #humanrights, atrocity documentation, and the preservation of evidence of #warcrimes. We stand ready to support resistance forces in efforts to establish independent war crimes investigation units

NEW: The Malaysian government should immediately investigate the deaths of 140 people in immigration detention since the start of its enforcement campaign in 2024 and end abusive detention practices that put refugees and migrants at risk. Based on new government data disclosed in parliament, @FortifyRights calculates that 109 people died in immigration detention in 2024 and 2025, with another 31 deaths recorded between January and June 2026. Former detainees described medical neglect and delayed treatment in overcrowded and squalid detention centers. “Malaysia’s immigration depots have become places where people are sent to die,” said Lynn Htet, Human Rights Specialist at @FortifyRights. “The government must investigate whether detainees were denied timely and adequate medical care, and publish full details on every death in detention.” fortifyrights.org/mly-inv-2026-0…

รัฐบาลไทยควรเร่งดำเนินการให้นักเคลื่อนไหวและผู้ลี้ภัย จาง ซินเหยียน (Zhang Xinyan) เดินทางไปตั้งถิ่นฐานในประเทศที่สามโดยเร็ว และรับรองว่าเธอจะไม่ถูกผลักดันกลับไปยังจีน ซึ่งอาจทำให้เธอเผชิญกับการประหัตประหาร มีรายงานว่าจางถูกขัดขวางไม่ให้เดินทางไปประเทศที่สาม เพียงไม่กี่วันก่อนที่อนุทิน ชาญวีรกูล นายกรัฐมนตรีประเทศไทย จะเดินทางเยือนประเทศจีน ฟอร์ตี้ฟายไรต์ได้ยื่นหนังสือร้องเรียนต่อคณะกรรมาธิการการกฎหมาย การยุติธรรม และสิทธิมนุษยชน สภาผู้แทนราษฎร เพื่อขอให้ตรวจสอบการจับกุมจาง ซินเหยียน และป้องกันไม่ให้มีการผลักดันเธอกลับ “ทางการไทยควร...อนุญาตให้จาง ซินเหยียน เดินทางไปตั้งถิ่นฐานในประเทศที่สามซึ่งได้ตอบรับให้ความคุ้มครองเธอในฐานะผู้ลี้ภัยแล้วโดยทันที” พุทธณี กางกั้น ผู้อำนวยการฟอร์ตี้ฟายไรต์กล่าว bit.ly/ThaiProtectZha…

NEW: The Thai government should immediately facilitate the resettlement of activist and refugee Zhang Xinyan and ensure she is not forcibly returned to #China, where she faces risk of persecution. Zhang was reportedly prevented from resettling in a third country just days before Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's visit to China. Fortify Rights has petitioned #Thailand's Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs, Justice, and Human Rights to investigate her arrest and prevent her forced return. “Thai authorities should … immediately permit Zhang Xinyan to resettle in a third country that has already accepted her as a refugee in need of protection,” said @PuttaneeKangkun, Director at @FortifyRights. fortifyrights.org/tha-inv-2026-0…

သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်ချက်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ ဒီမိုကရေစီလိုလားသောအဖွဲ့အစည်းများအနေဖြင့် လက်နက်ကိုင်ပဋိပက္ခတွင် ပါဝင်ပတ်သက်နေသည့် မည်သည့်အဖွဲ့အစည်း၏ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှု စွပ်စွဲချက်များကိုမဆို စုံစမ်းစစ်ဆေးနိုင်မည့် လွတ်လပ်သော စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုစုံစမ်းရေးအဖွဲ့များကို ဖွဲ့စည်းသင့်သည်။ @FortifyRights ၏ စစ်ပွဲဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေနှင့် ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်မှုများ မှတ်တမ်းတင်ခြင်းဆိုင်ရာ အလုပ်ရုံဆွေးနွေးပွဲအပြီးတွင် ကရင်နီပြည်ခေါင်းဆောင်များက စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုစုံစမ်းရေးအဖွဲ့ ဖွဲ့စည်းရန် စိတ်အားထက်သန်ကြောင်း ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခဲ့ကြသည်။ ထို့အပြင် စစ်ပွဲဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေများကို လေးစားလိုက်နာသွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်းလည်း ၎င်းတို့က ထပ်လောင်းအတည်ပြုခဲ့သည်။ “ကရင်နီ IEC အစိုးရဟာ ပြည်သူတွေရဲ့ မျှော်မှန်းချက်တွေကို ထင်ဟပ်စေမယ့် အနာဂတ် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ နိုင်ငံကို တည်ဆောက်ဖို့ အလေးအနက် ဆောင်ရွက်နေတာပါ။ ဒီမျှော်မှန်းချက်ကို အကောင်အထည်ပေါ်လာဖို့အတွက် ကျွန်တော်တို့အနေနဲ့ တော်လှန်ရေးအင်အားစုတွေနဲ့ အတူတကွ ဆက်လက်ပူးပေါင်းလုပ်ဆောင်ပြီး ကူညီပံ့ပိုးပေးဖို့ အဆင်သင့်ရှိနေပါတယ်” လို့ @FortifyRights အဖွဲ့ရဲ့ အကြီးတန်း ဒါရိုက်တာ Peter Bouckaert @bouckap ကပြောပါတယ်။ bit.ly/WarCrimesInves…

Fortify Rights joins more than 50 #HongKong diaspora organizations and human rights groups in condemning Beijing's new #ethnicunitylaw. The law, which took effect on 1 July 2026, threatens ethnic and religious communities in #China while extending the reach of transnational repression beyond its borders. Governments must reject China’s extraterritorial application and protect diaspora communities from intimidation and harassment. fortifyrights.org/eas-inv-stm-20…

🚨 54 human rights and diaspora organisations warn 🇨🇳 Ethnic Unity Law threatens freedoms worldwide The coalition urges international governments and institutions to publicly condemn the EUPL, stand against transnational repression, and protect diasporas affected by the legislation around the world. Read the full statement below👇 hongkongwatch.org/all-posts/2026…

“Ann was a most extraordinary conviction politician.“ @BenedictRogers from @FortifyRights pays tribute to former U.K. MP Ann Widdecombe and her decades-long advocacy for freedom of religion or belief and persecuted communities worldwide, in @The_Tablet. thetablet.co.uk/blogs/ann-widd…

NEW: The U.K. Parliament should pass the Genocide Determination Bill to ensure genocide is recognized. The bill, introduced by @DavidAltonHL, would give survivors a pathway to seek preliminary genocide determinations through U.K. courts and require the government to take action when such findings are made. “Passing the Genocide Determination Bill would send a clear message that the U.K. will not allow legal uncertainty or political caution to obstruct action in the face of genocide,” said @matthewfsmith, CEO at @FortifyRights. Read full news release: fortifyrights.org/glo-inv-2026-0…

Pastor Ezra Jin shares his first public reflections since his release from arbitrary detention in #China. The international community should continue pressing for the release of all those imprisoned for their belief and exercising their fundamental rights. wsj.com/opinion/pastor…

Pastor Ezra Jin's release should renew international pressure on Beijing to free religious and political prisoners and end China’s persecution of religious communities, writes @BenedictRogers @FortifyRights in @UCANews. “While we celebrate Pastor Jin’s release, let us not forget that eight of his fellow Zion Church pastors and leaders remain in detention in China.” ucanews.com/news/pastor-ji…

Uyghur activist Tahir Imin reflects on the human cost of Beijing's erasure campaign against Uyghurs and the global community's failure to act. “The world has failed us. If we are to survive as a people, Uyghurs in the diaspora must preserve in exile what China is erasing.” nytimes.com/2026/07/02/opi…