Social Justice & Equality

The legal challenges on the status of the .IO domain (see our previous item) have moved another step forward.

The Chagos Refugees Group initiated a claim at the OECD in 2021 for a fair share of the enormous sums of money paid in domain registrations and to Paul Kane, the Internet guy who somehow lucked into the incredibly lucrative colonialist gig of running the .IO domain on behalf of "The Crown". The claim highlights that domain registrations are being administered irresponsibly and providing a haven for online criminals.

The Ireland National Contact Point for the OECD has carried out its initial assessment and determined that the complaint should be heard. The decision notes that

The complaint also alleges that by marketing a digital asset associated with the Chagos Islands without sharing profits with the Chagossians, the Companies are “doing business with an unlawful and apartheid colonial regime”

https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/publications/publication-files/initial-assessment-afilias-101domain-grs-icb.pdf

There's a helpful summary of the situation here: https://behindmlm.com/mlm/oecd-overseeing-io-domain-abuse-lawsuit-mediation/

More details about the case:

• https://www.jlevy.co/2021/07/28/oecd-complaint-filed-against-afilias/
• https://www.business-humanrights.org/fr/derni%C3%A8res-actualit%C3%A9s/complaint-filed-against-afilias-its-subsidiaries-before-the-ireland-oecd-national-contact-point/
• https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/27/io_domains_uk_un/
• https://www.oecdwatch.org/complainant/chagos-refugees-group-united-kingdom/

It's also come to light that the technical administration of the.io domain has been inept https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/ in 2027 hackers were able to take control of the entire TLD - failing a key function of the registrar's contractual duties.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch published a major report recently showing that the US and UK governments committed:

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY by

1. forcibly displacing the Chagossians during construction of the US military base on Diego Garcia,
2. barring Chagossians from returning home, and
3. engaging in racial persecution.

The report, “That’s When the Nightmare Started,” is an unprecedented condemnation of the US and UK by a major human rights organization. Human Rights Watch calls for full reparations for the Chagossians from the US and UK, including:

1. the right of return;
2. resettlement assistance;
3. proper compensation;
4. government apologies

Please help support the Chagossians by sharing news of the report with anyone and everyone you know, especially journalists, human rights advocates, and activists, among others!

http://thechagosrefugeesgroup.com/

UK was forced to accept the 2019 decision of the International Court of Justice which assigned sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, and has made an empty promise to accede and vacate the illegal colony, but many of the Ilois refugees are now elderly, and rising seas threaten the atoll.

We suggest that companies doing business in the "BIOT" should be boycotted and sanctioned, including ICB/Afilias/Donuts, who run the .io domain as well as many others. Other companies who support the current criminal regime both on and offline should be identified and publicised.

UK should act and come clean about the huge revenues of the .io domain - the islanders have requested reparations while UK and its corporate partners continue to profit from their exile.

_{image: US Navy in Diego Garcia 1973 c/o Flickr}

GreenNet is pleased to announce another new service which we're hoping will help our users in this weird time when online communications has become all the more important.

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For the last month we have been providing free video chat for GreenNet users on our open Jitsi instance. If you are interested in escaping from Zoom, Facetime, Skype or Whatsapp etc, we can host a private Jitsi server for you for £20/month. Please let us know if you would like to try it out.

• Suitable for meetings, webinars, conference calling, as well as partying!
• Video, audio and text chat, no limit to participants or number or length of calls
• Calls are encrypted
• Simple login and addresses, no downloads (unless you want the app)
• Screen sharing, calls can be recorded, moderation facilities
• Open source software
• Hosted on secure private servers, powered with energy from renewable sources

Jitsi works in browsers such as Chrome, Firefox or IE, apps are available for Android and IoS.

We have been experimenting with Jitsi for a few years and have selected and set up a secure private server for GreenNet customers and network, which nobody has access to apart from us and you. Because Jitsi is open source, that means that the code is fully available for inspection. That transparency means you know that there are no backdoors or vulnerabilities, unlike all those well-known corporate products, which are black boxes owned by businesses who won't tell you how they work or who else might have access to them: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/products/jitsi-meet/

This month, which marks the eighth anniversary of the death of Jimmy Mubenga, the Stansted 15 face trial for taking a stand against brutal treatment on deportation flights. Meanwhile, Transparency International and Global Witness have published a report which highlights the sale of 'golden visas' to foreign plutocrats without adequate background checks.

In October 2010, father-of-five Jimmy Mubenga was killed under restraint on a BA flight by G4S guards while being forcibly deported.  Passengers heard him crying out that he couldn’t breathe, but the guards involved were later acquitted. 

This month, the Stansted 15, whose non-violent protest prevented a charter deportation flight from taking off, are facing trial for their actions. ‘Since Jimmy Mubenga’s death, much of the deportation “business” has moved to chartered airlines’, the journalist Clare Sambrook tweeted on Oct 13th. ‘People are still restrained, subject to racist abuse, damaged, but on secret flights with, rarely, any independent witnesses aboard’.

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A new report published by Transparency International and Global Witness investigates the ‘golden visa’ programmes designed to attract wealthy investors to European countries including the UK. For a minimum investment of £2 million, applicants can obtain a ‘Tier 1 (Investor)’ visa, which confers the right to stay in the UK for 3 years and 4 months, a period which can be extended (for a fee). After five years, indefinite leave to remain can be applied for. Simply investing more money reduces the qualifying period: with £5 million, you can apply after three years, and with £10 million after two.

The report reveals that between 2008 and 2015, over 3,000 wealthy investors entered the UK under the scheme, including 706 from Russia and 1,126 from China. During this period, necessary background checks were not undertaken, due to the fact that the visas were granted before the applicants opened UK bank accounts. Banks assumed that a successful visa application meant that the Home Office had verified that the source of the money was legitimate, while the Home Office assumed that the banks would carry out these checks.

Last year, a fraud case involving a Kazakh billionaire who bought British residency for his son highlighted the issues with the scheme. Since 2015, some reforms have been introduced, and the novichok attack in Salisbury has recently prompted the Home Office to review the visas granted during the ‘blind faith’ period of 2008-2015. The £3.5 billion which came into the country during this time is high-risk for corruption. Naomi Hirst from Global Witness, quoted in The Guardian, points out that any ‘dirty money’ that came into the UK through the scheme would mean that ‘the UK government was potentially laundering money for these people unwittingly’.

With enough money, the route to UK citizenship is smooth. Government guidance assures potential applicants that ‘[u]nder this route you will not need to show that you have any English language ability because, while you are allowed to work in the UK if you wish to, you should not need to work’, and advises that time spent in the tax havens of Jersey, Guernsey, or the Isle of Man counts towards the period of continuous residence.

Meanwhile, the Stansted 15 are facing trial for taking a stand against the brutal treatment of people on deportation flights. Amnesty International considers them to be human rights defenders, and is monitoring the trial amid concerns that their case is being used ‘to discourage other activists from taking non-violent direct action in defence of human rights’. You can read about the case as it happens here, and show support to the Stansted 15 here.

Find out more:

Open Democracy: What the Mubenga trial jury was not told

The Guardian: Activists accused of blocking Stansted flight go on trial over terror charge

Transparency International: EU member states in race to the bottom to sell golden visas to the super-rich