CorpWatch : Human Rights

	Contact l Sitemap

	E-Mail Page
	Printer Safe

Human Rights

Human rights abuses, once committed primarily by repressive governments, are increasingly carried out in the corporate interest. In the global marketplace, it is easier than ever to hide abuses in developing countries from the consumers on the other side of the world. Energy companies might pay off militias to gun down local activists, factories might poison the farmland, air or water of the communities in which they do business. Most often, the people who do the hardest work - sewing garments, mining for precious metals, building the prisons and dams - are the ones most vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

News Articles

INDIA: Camera Obscura and the manufacture of happiness
by Aman Sethi & Priscilla Jebaraj, The Hindu
March 6th, 2012
An advertisement flooding airwaves across India would have you believe that a company called Vedanta is a creating a product called happiness. But London-based Vedanta Resources has attracted the ire of environmental activists and human rights groups like Amnesty International who have accused the company of exploiting indigenous communities — such as the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in Odisha — without due process.

SYRIA: US technology used to censor the Internet in Syria
by Pratap Chatterjee, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
October 23rd, 2011
Technology from a major Silicon Valley company, Blue Coat, is being used by the Syrian government to censor the Internet and monitor dissidents, according to activists. The equipment can be used to monitor users and block access to certain websites, such as social networking applications like Facebook and internet phone sites like Skype, which were key to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia

CHINA: Group Says It Has New Evidence of Cisco’s Misdeeds in China
by Somini Sengupta, New York Times
September 2nd, 2011
Human Rights Law Foundation, accuses Cisco Systems of tailoring technology for the Chinese government to monitor and apprehend members of the banned Falun Gong organization.

U.K.: Bell Pottinger acted for controversial Yemen organization
by Melanie Newman, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
September 1st, 2011
Bell Pottinger, the London-based public relations firm, has been working for Yemen’s National Awareness Authority, which is run by the nephew of Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The organization has been accused of spreading propaganda on behalf of the government.

LIBYA: Censorship Inc.
by Paul Sonne and Margaret Coker, The Wall Street Journal
August 30th, 2011
Amesys of France, VASTech of South Africa and ZTE Corp. of China provided technology to Libya that was allegedly used for the repression of Libyan citizens during the four decade rule of Colonel Gadhafi.