Human Rights
- Articles in order of date – most recent at the top
- Please email us with relevant news articles or petitions
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Please see pages under this page in the menu.
All human rights issues of individuals is of concern to Progressive Atheists Inc. but we particularly focus our limited resources on issues involving Atheists because those issues are often ignored by others.
Issues include:
* Assisting Atheists persecuted in their home countries
* Assisting Atheists in Australia who are persecuted in their home country
* Highlighting the plight of persecuted Atheists on world Human Rights Day each year
* Addressing the issues concerning Atheists that are listed in the ‘Freedom of Thought’ report each year both in Australia and overseas
* Supporting the global Atheist Census to identify discrimination against Atheists
* Campainging against sexual, physical and mental abuse violations of children and other human rights abuses by religious organisations
* Declaration of Human Rights
* Discrimation priveileges of religions
* The right to die with dignity
* Accusations by religious hypocrits that it is Atheists that have no morals/ethics
* The human right of free speech
* Equal rights to have notable Atheist heritage protected
* The rights of the LGBTI community to be free of religious discrimation and free of religious violence
* The right of marriage equality
* One law for all – no religious laws to take precedence over secular laws
* The opression of women by religions
* The murder of children and others by accusations based on primitive religious superstitions (e.g. witchcraft, demons, etcetera)
* The murder of children and others by not providing medical care for primitive superstitious religious reasons
* The murder of children and others by through the purely fictious requirement for exorcisms
* Ending the victimisation and death of people for purely fictious religious crimes (e.g., blasphemy)
* and many more
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Religion and human rights | Awkward, but necessary, bedfellows
Sep 4th 2014, 18:53 by B.C.
FOR people who dedicate their lives to promoting universal human rights, is religion a friend or a foe? Open Democracy, a London-based internet discussion forum, has been hosting a debate about that question for the last six months, drawing some impassioned contributions from scholars and activists across the world.
In one recent contribution, a Kenyan human-rights lawyer said she was dismayed by the rising influence of religion in her part of the world, which she blamed on a mixture of lobbying by religous-right groups in the rich north and an attempt by local elites to offer the “opium” of faith as a substitute for any solution to real problems like poverty or violence. She blamed conservative American lobbies for promoting anti-gay laws in African countries, such as Uganda.
Humanists oppose the ‘Move On’ Bill
By SNS On 18 Mar 2014 | Victorian Humanists
MEDIA STATEMENT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
18 March 2014
The Summary Offences and Sentencing Amendment Bill 2013, dubbed the ‘Move On’ Bill, reportedly passed through the Victorian Upper House on 12 March 2014. The new law curtails human rights, and potentially disempowers people and communities who might seek to exercise their right to peaceful protest.
Female genital mutilation ‘more common than thought’ in Australia
Australian Associated Press, theguardian.com, Thursday 2 January 2014
NSW community services minister Pru Goward says community engagement is needed to prevent the crime, not tougher laws
Pru Goward says the genital mutilation of young girls is easy to hide in a community that condones it. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
The genital mutilation of female children is much more common in Australia and by Australians overseas than authorities can detect, NSW community services minister Pru Goward says.
But toughening the law on this “hideous” crime is not an option, she says.
Instead, community engagement and education is needed to prevent more little girls being targeted, Goward told ABC Radio on Thursday.
Goward’s comments came after a Sydney father was charged with having his then nine-month-old baby daughter circumcised while abroad in February 2012.
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