SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Vicious Attack Against Pro-Democracy Protest Organizer in Hong Kong
Responding to an attack in Hong Kong on Thursday lunchtime against Jimmy Sham, the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front, by masked men wielding baseball bats, Man-kei Tam, Director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, said:
"This vile attack against Jimmy Sham appears to be a deliberate attempt to target a well-known pro-democracy activist. On top of terrifying physical threats Jimmy Sham also faced homophobic abuse. The Hong Kong police must launch a swift and proper investigation into these despicable events.
WASHINGTON
Responding to an attack in Hong Kong on Thursday lunchtime against Jimmy Sham, the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front, by masked men wielding baseball bats, Man-kei Tam, Director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, said:
"This vile attack against Jimmy Sham appears to be a deliberate attempt to target a well-known pro-democracy activist. On top of terrifying physical threats Jimmy Sham also faced homophobic abuse. The Hong Kong police must launch a swift and proper investigation into these despicable events.
"The repeated harassment of pro-democracy activists, combined with police bans on demonstrations, has created a climate of fear for peaceful protesters. It is vital that the authorities send a clear message that those who target peaceful activists with such violence, irrespective of their political views, will face justice."
Background
Jimmy Sham is the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), the organizer of a series of massive peaceful protests in Hong Kong against the Extradition Bill. He and a friend were attacked on Thursday at lunchtime by two masked men with a baseball bat and a long knife. Jimmy Sham was not hurt but his friend required hospital treatment for an arm injury.
Approximately a dozen pro-government protesters also demonstrated outside an LGBTI organization where Jimmy Sham works. Some of them shouted homophobic insults.
On Thursday, the Hong Kong police banned the CHRF from organizing a rally and a march on August 31, the fifth anniversary of Beijing announcing its decision on how "universal suffrage" would be implemented in Hong Kong. CHRF has appealed the decision.
The police claim the ban is justified because they say some protesters are likely to resort to violent acts and cause injuries.
CHRF was the organizer of the protests against the Extradition Bill on June 9, 2019, where an estimated 1 million people marched on the street, and protests on June 16 where 2 million participated. On August 18, police banned CHRF from organizing a march but allowed a rally in Victoria Park. An estimated 1.7 million people walked along the main streets of Hong Kong Island as they tried to enter the park and attend the rally. There were no violent incidents that day.
This statement is available at: https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/vicious-attack-against-pro-democracy-protest-organizer-in-hong-kong
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
Trinidadians Sue US for Caribbean Boat Bombing That Killed Relatives 'In Cold Blood'
“People may not simply be gunned down by the government, and the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary risk making America a pariah state," said one attorney in the case.
Jan 27, 2026
Relatives of two Trinidadian men killed during the Trump administration's internationally condemned bombing spree against boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday against the United States.
Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, were killed in one of the at least 36 strikes the Trump administration has launched against civilian boats in the southern Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean since last September. According to the lawsuit and the Trump administration's own figures, at least 125 people have been killed in such strikes, which are part of the broader US military aggression targeting Venezuela.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts by lawyers from the ACLU, the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School on behalf of Joseph's mother Lenora Burnley and Samaroo's sister Sallycar Korasingh. The complaint alleges that the US violated the Death on the High Seas Act, which allows relatives to sue for wrongful deaths at sea, and the Alien Tort Statute, which empowers foreign citizens to seek legal redress in US federal courts.
According to the lawsuit:
On October 14, 2025, the United States government authorized and launched a missile strike against a boat carrying six people traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The strike killed all six, including Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who had been fishing in waters off the Venezuelan coast and working on farms in Venezuela, and who were returning to their homes in Las Cuevas, in nearby Trinidad and Tobago.
The October 14 attack was part of an unprecedented and manifestly unlawful US military campaign of lethal strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean... The United States has not conducted these strikes pursuant to any congressional authorization. Instead, the government has acted unilaterally. And Trump administration officials, including President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have publicized videos of the boat strikes, boasting about and celebrating their own role in killing defenseless people.
"These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification," the lawsuit asserts. "Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command."
Burnley said in a statement announcing the lawsuit: "Chad was a loving and caring son who was always there for me, for his wife and children, and for our whole family. I miss him terribly. We all do."
“We know this lawsuit won’t bring Chad back to us, but we’re trusting God to carry us through this, and we hope that speaking out will help get us some truth and closure," she added.
Korasingh said, “Rishi used to call our family almost every day, and then one day he disappeared, and we never heard from him again."
“Rishi was a hardworking man who paid his debt to society and was just trying to get back on his feet again and to make a decent living in Venezuela to help provide for his family," she added, referring to her brother's imprisonment for taking part in the 2009 murder of a street vendor. "If the US government believed Rishi had done anything wrong, it should have arrested, charged, and detained him, not murdered him. They must be held accountable.”
Trump officials have offered very little concrete evidence to support their claims that the targeted vessels were smuggling drugs. Critics allege that's why attorneys at the US Department of Defense reportedly inquired about whether two survivors of an October bombing in the Caribbean could be sent to the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) maximum security prison in El Salvador, which has been described by rights groups as a "legal black hole."
The survivors were ultimately returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador. Some observers said their repatriation showed the Trump administration knew that trying the survivors in US courts would compel officials to explain their dubious legal justification for the attacks, which many experts say are illegal.
Trump officials also considered sending boat strike survivors to the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but that would allow their lawyers to sue for habeas corpus—a right granted by the US Supreme Court in its 2008 Boumediene v. Bush decision during the era of extrajudicial imprisonment and torture of terrorism suspects, as well as innocent men and boys, at the facility. The Trump administration has even revived the term “unlawful enemy combatant”—which was used by the Bush administration to categorize people caught up in the War on Terror in a way that skirts the law—to classify boat strike survivors.
The Trinidadian and Tobagonian government has also been criticized for hosting joint military exercises with the United States in the Caribbean Sea amid Trump's boat-bombing campaign.
ACLU senior counsel Brett Max Kaufman said Tuesday that “the Trump administration’s boat strikes are the heinous acts of people who claim they can abuse their power with impunity around the world."
“In seeking justice for the senseless killing of their loved ones, our clients are bravely demanding accountability for their devastating losses and standing up against the administration’s assault on the rule of law," he added.
CCR legal director Baher Azmy argued that “these are lawless killings in cold blood; killings for sport and killings for theater, which is why we need a court of law to proclaim what is true and constrain what is lawless."
"This is a critical step in ensuring accountability, while the individuals responsible may ultimately be answerable criminally for murder and war crimes," Azmy added.
Hafetz said that "using military force to kill Chad and Rishi violates the most elementary principles of international law."
“People may not simply be gunned down by the government," he stressed, "and the Trump administration’s claims to the contrary risk making America a pariah state.”
Jessie Rossman, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, contended that Trump's "lethal boat strikes violate our collective understanding of right and wrong."
“Rishi and Chad wanted only to get home safely to their loved ones; the unconscionable attack on their boat prevented them from doing so," Rossman added. "It is imperative that we hold this administration accountable, both for their families and for the rule of law itself.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Lancet Study Warns Plastics Could Cost Humanity 83 Million Years of Healthy Life
"Systemic change is needed 'from the cradle to the grave' of plastic production, use, and disposal," said the lead author, calling for "ambitious action from governments and industry transparency."
Jan 27, 2026
A study published Tuesday in the Lancet Planetary Health highlights how humanity's continued reliance on plastics—which are primarily derived from planet-heating fossil fuels—is expected to harm global health over the next couple of decades.
"Plastics life cycles emit a range of gases and pollutants that contribute to the global burden of disease, including greenhouse gases that drive climate change, air pollutants linked to respiratory illnesses, and hazardous chemicals associated with cancers and other noncommunicable diseases," the study explains.
"These emissions occur across all stages of the plastics value chain: from oil and gas extraction, which provides the feedstocks for more than 90% of global plastics; to polymer production and product manufacturing, global transportation, recycling, and formal or informal waste management and mismanagement; to the gradual degradation of plastics in the environment," the publication continues.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, as well as France's University of Toulouse, modeled various scenarios of plastics production, consumption, and disposal from 2016-40.
"The study is the first of its kind to assess the number of healthy years of life lost ('disability-adjusted life years' or 'DALYS'—a measure of harm) due to greenhouse gases, air pollutants, and toxic chemicals emitted across the life cycle of plastics at a global scale," according to LSHTM.
The team estimated that without any changes in global plastics policies and practices, annual health impacts would soar from 2.1 million DALYs in 2016 to 4.5 million DALYs by 2040—with a total of 83 million healthy years of life lost over the full study period. Under a business-as-usual scenario, 40% of the health harms would be tied to rising temperatures, nearly a third to air pollution, and over a quarter to toxic chemicals.
Because of limited data—particularly on the use stage of plastics and the chemicals they contain—lead author Megan Deeney of LSHTM told Agence France-Presse that "this is undoubtedly a vast underestimate of the total human health impacts."
new paper in @thelancet.com estimating the global health burdens of plasticsI think this is one of the first analyses that quantifies the impacts of plastics across its entire lifecycle (from extraction to waste) and highlights the pretty staggering health effects of our current economic system
[image or embed]
— Rob Ralston (@policyrelevant.bsky.social) January 27, 2026 at 6:54 AM
Still, the researchers were able to offer some insight into the adverse health impacts—thanks to their repurposing of modeling methods typically used to evaluate the environmental footprint of individual products and technologies.
These methods "are an increasingly important tool to tackle sustainability questions at a much larger scale," study co-author and Exeter professor Xiaoyu Yan said in a statement. "Our study shows that this approach can help uncover the massive impacts of plastics on human health throughout the life cycle. We now need urgent action to reduce the impacts of plastics on the environment and ultimately human health."
Deeney stressed that such action can't be restricted to consumers. As she put it, "Our research shows that the adverse health impacts of plastics stretch far beyond the point at which we buy a plastic product or put plastic items in a recycling bin."
In the US alone, government data suggests that just 5% of plastic waste is recycled annually, according to a Greenpeace report published last month. The advocacy group also noted that only a fifth of the 8.8 million tons of the most commonly produced types of plastics are even recyclable.
"Often the blame is put on us as individual consumers of plastics to solve the problem, but while we all have an important role to play in reducing the use of plastics, our analysis shows systemic change is needed 'from the cradle to the grave' of plastic production, use, and disposal," Deeney said Tuesday. "Much more ambitious action from governments and industry transparency is needed to curb this growing global plastics public health crisis."
The lead author said that the most effective measure is slashing the production of "unnecessary" plastic. She also pointed out that lack of data doesn't just impact studies like this one: "Industry nondisclosure and inconsistent reporting of plastics' chemical composition is severely limiting the ability of life cycle assessments (LCAs) to inform effective policy to protect humans, ecosystems, and the environment."
The study comes after the latest round of global plastics treaty negotiations stalled in August—which environmentalists called an "abject failure" that should be blamed on the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia, and other major governments opposed to curbing production.
"The inability to reach an agreement in Geneva must be a wake-up call for the world: Ending plastic pollution means confronting fossil fuel interests head-on," Greenpeace USA's Graham Forbes said at the time. "The vast majority of governments want a strong agreement, yet a handful of bad actors were allowed to use process to drive such ambition into the ground."
Keep ReadingShow Less
1,000+ Organizations to Congress: ‘No Funds for ICE and Border Patrol’
"How many more people have to die, how many more lies have to be told, and how many more children must be used as bait and abducted?"
Jan 27, 2026
A broad coalition of more than 1,000 advocacy organizations sent a letter on Tuesday pushing members of Congress to immediately stop all funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, agencies at the forefront of the Trump administration's violent mass deportation campaign and crackdown on dissent.
"We the undersigned 1,025 organizations write to express our horror, outrage, and deep grief about the news that federal agents have executed a human being in broad daylight on the streets of Minneapolis," reads the letter, headlined "No Funds for ICE and Border Patrol."
"How many more people have to die, how many more lies have to be told, and how many more children must be used as bait and abducted before Congress fulfills its responsibilities and stops these out-of-control agencies from continuing to violently attack our immigrant communities and communities of color, as well as their many allies and supporters?" the coalition asks.
"We demand an immediate halt in all funding for these deadly operations until the violence, abuses, and deaths in American communities and in immigration detention centers stop," the letter continues. "Congress must refuse to provide one dollar to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol through the appropriations process and immediately take action to revoke the tens of billions already given through last summer’s reconciliation bill."
The message, organized by Detention Watch Network, was released as US senators prepared to consider a package of six appropriations bills that includes a measure proposing more than $64 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP. The DHS funding package includes $10 billion for ICE, which is currently the highest-funded US law enforcement agency.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said his caucus will block the appropriations package if it includes the DHS funding bill, which Republicans still support despite the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that DHS agents "have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations 16 times since July, and as in the recent shootings in Minneapolis, in each case the Trump administration has publicly declared their actions justified before waiting for investigations to be completed."
"Most of the incidents involve officers firing at drivers during enforcement stops in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, where DHS has surged federal immigration officers," the Post noted. "At least 10 people have been struck by bullets—including four US citizens. Three people have been killed."
Democrats have proposed stripping the DHS appropriations measure from the broader funding package and considering it as a standalone bill, with passage conditioned on ICE reforms.
"What you do now will be remembered for future generations—take a stand today while you still have the power to do so."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) outlined a number of proposed reforms, including "no more masked secret police" and specific requirements that ICE agents obtain "a warrant from an independent judge before barging into people’s homes and snatching people from their communities."
"That’s just the start," Warren wrote on social media. "There’s more we can do to rein in ICE. Stripping the DHS bill from the Senate budget package this week is one of the best options we’ve got to slam on the brakes, condition any funding, and put some basic controls in place to stop this violence."
In their letter on Tuesday, the advocacy coalition demanded that senators "act decisively and show DHS and the communities you serve that this cruelty and lawlessness is unacceptable and must end now."
"When federal agents are patrolling the streets of American cities and gunning people down in broad daylight, the bare minimum
response is to stop the funding that enables these violent agencies to carry out these atrocities," the coalition wrote. "You have the power and responsibility to stop this. What you do now will be remembered for future generations—take a stand today while you still have the power to do so."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular