Dear WMF Human Rights Team:
I would like some clarification on your statement below. In
particular, does your stated approach allow you to follow the best
practices described at
https://freedomhouse.org/2023/summit-for-democracy-political-prisoners
to, e.g., "meet regularly with family members of political prisoners,
advocacy groups, and media outlets and journalists, in public and in
private, in their efforts to secure an individual’s release"?
The literature review at
https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/17277 states:
"The theoretical and empirical literature attributes several potential
roles to civil society in [security sector and justice reform]. These
include making security and justice institutions accountable,
mobilising a range of social groups for reform, publicising abuses and
advocating for reform, offering technical expertise, and improving
security-citizen relations."
If the Foundation staff has prohibited itself from engaging with the
public on freeing jailed wikipedians, orchestrating letter writing
campaigns, or coordinating with other NGOs and government agencies,
such as those Andreas has described as having no record of the
imprisoned Arabic Wikipedia administrators, then I would hope that the
CEO or Trustees would step in immediately to rectify any internal
policies such that best practices can be upheld.
-LW
On Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 3:51 PM WMF Human Rights
<talktohumanrights(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> In the interest of safeguarding confidential information and ensuring the safety of
our community members, the Foundation will not publicly disclose details regarding human
rights cases. The Human Rights Team recently updated its meta page to clarify this
approach. Our primary concern is to uphold the safety and privacy of everyone involved. At
the same time, our inability to discuss these matters should not be read as inaction. We
care deeply about volunteer safety and our role, more generally, involves different levels
of internal support, wider advocacy and partnerships with others depending on the
circumstances of an event.
>
> On Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 6:06 AM Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Let's put it a different way then:
>>
>> Is anyone at the WMF doing anything in support of the two jailed Saudi
Wikimedians, be it liaising with international or regional human rights organisations, the
US State Department, briefing journalists so the wider public is aware of the situation,
or anything else to make sure Osama and Ziyad aren't forgotten about as they start (by
my calculation) their fourth year in jail?
>>
>> I am asking because the press reports published at the start of this year do not
seem to have led to any significant coverage of the two Wikimedians' plight on the
websites of major human rights organisations. (If I have missed any, please let me know.)
>>
>> For example, I found nothing at all on the website of Reporters without Borders.
Similarly, the most recent Amnesty International report on the "crackdown on online
expression" in Saudi Arabia includes several mentions of Twitter users but none of
Wikipedians:
>>
>>
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/02/saudi-arabia-alarming-crackd…
>>
>> Amnesty's report specifically mentions that a Twitter user was sentenced for
supporting women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul but fails to mention that one
of the jailed Wikimedians uploaded Loujain al-Hathloul's Commons picture, which is
used in her Wikipedia articles.
>>
>> I didn't find anything about Osama and Ziyad or, more generally, Wikimedians
in Saudi Arabia on the website of the EFF.
>>
>> There is a mention of Osama and Ziyad and the fact that they were Wikipedians on
the PEN website:
>>
>>
https://pen.org/report/freedom-to-write-index-2022/
>>
>> The U.S. State Department's 2022 country report on Saudi Arabia, published in
March 2023, includes a mention of Osama's 32-year prison sentence, but doesn't
make clear that he was jailed for being a Wikipedian, and Ziyad is not mentioned:
>>
>>
https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practice…
>>
>> Will this be remedied in the U.S. State Department's 2023 country report? I
think each country report covers the period up to October of the preceding year, so this
month will be the last chance to make sure the 2023 report published next spring will
include information on Osama and Ziyad's prison sentences and their Wikipedia
activity.
>>
>> Andreas
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 11:09 PM The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>>>
>>> Frankly, that's implausible.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 3:37 PM DerHexer via Wikimedia-l
<wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I do think that posting any kind of response to these questions on a
public mailing list would do more harm than good. Thank you.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> DerHexer
>>>> Wikimedia Steward
>>>>
>>>> Am Montag, 25. September 2023 um 21:20:21 MESZ hat Andreas Kolbe
<jayen466(a)gmail.com> Folgendes geschrieben:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> As there was a recent press mention of Osama and Ziyad[1] (see "In
the Media" in the current Signpost issue) – does the WMF's Human Rights Team
(cc'ed) have any update on their situation?
>>>>
>>>> Has anyone else heard any news? If I recall correctly, Osama had married
not long before being jailed in 2020 – has anyone been in touch with his wife?
>>>>
>>>> Is there anything the community can do?
>>>>
>>>> Andreas
>>>>
>>>> [1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_imprisoned_for_editing_Wikiped…
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