Fortify Rights

Ensuring #Rights4All by investigating violations 🔍, engaging people with power 🤝, & strengthening human rights defenders & communities 💪.

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

NEW: The U.K. should lead a coalition of states to refer the situation in #Myanmar to the International Criminal Court under Article 14 of the Rome Statute, impose targeted sanctions on the Myanmar military, and increase support for human rights defenders.

The recommendations follow testimony by @FortifyRights CEO @matthewfsmith before the U.K. Parliament on atrocity prevention and the Integrated Security Fund.

“The people of Myanmar have endured genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with total impunity. The U.K. should also use every available … to deny the Myanmar military the money, weapons, aviation fuel, and impunity it needs to continue committing atrocities,” says @matthewfsmith, CEO at @FortifyRights.

https://t.co/czbUHB5dT6

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its handover, @BenedictRogers @FortifyRights reflects on the city’s continued erosion of freedoms under Beijing’s rule.

Six years after the National Security Law took effect, political prisoners remain behind bars, civic space continues to shrink, and fundamental rights remain under attack.

https://t.co/6V4x68HgTC

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

NEW: More than three weeks after the reported detention of Myanmar scholar and ISP-Myanmar Executive Director Min Zin in China, the authorities have failed to disclose credible evidence or the legal basis for his detention.

Chinese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Min Zin.

“The detention of Min Zin raises serious concerns not only for his rights and well-being, but also for scholars, researchers, journalists, and those engaged in public affairs,” said @BenedictRogers, Senior Director of @FortifyRights.

https://t.co/ztvthlztm6

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

465 people, including 12 children, have died in Malaysia’s immigration detention from 2021 to 2025.

This record highlights the urgent need to end indefinite detention of refugees and improve conditions in detention.

@FortifyRights has documented the indefinite and inhumane detention of refugees in #Malaysia and calls on the government to end arbitrary detention of refugees.

https://t.co/VuKr4jIAeq

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

Today, on the 29th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to #China and the sixth anniversary of the imposition of the draconian National Security Law in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party's new “Ethnic Unity and Progress Law” will take effect.

@BenedictRogers, Senior Director at @FortifyRights, warns how the law threatens freedom of religion, cultural rights, and the safety of critics living overseas.

https://t.co/khvugNpzAj

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

🚨 NEW: #China’s new "Ethnic Unity and Progress" law, which takes effect on July 1, will serve as a tool for its “sinicization of religion” campaign and threatens freedom of religion and other human rights for Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and other communities.

The law mandates the use of Mandarin in schools, restricts indigenous languages, promotes Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, and forces religious institutions to adapt CCP teachings.

"This new law is not … about achieving ethnic unity or progress, but about tightening the Chinese Communist Party's ideological and political grip on ethnic and religious communities,” said @BenedictRogers, Senior Director at @FortifyRights.

“As we mark the 29th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong ... it is clear how the Chinese Communist Party has broken promises ... to uphold Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy, and instead imposed repressive laws which violate the basic human rights of Hong Kongers."

https://t.co/R2djrBe4D7

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

On June 4, during a House of Lords debate on "Combating Atrocity Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide", Lord Alton referenced Fortify Rights and @truth_hounds report investigating the trafficking and forced recruitment of Bangladeshi men to fight in #Russia’s war against #Ukraine.

Watch full clip: https://t.co/ygBkyWvlcV

Read our report: https://t.co/sO75Lt8ycR

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

LIVE TODAY: @FortifyRights CEO @matthewfsmith will testify before the UK Parliament on preventing atrocity crimes, with a focus on #Myanmar and the international response to ongoing abuses.

The testimony will draw on years of Fortify Rights’s documentation of crimes against civilians and provide recommendations for UK leadership on accountability.

🕗 9:00 a.m. EDT | 8:00 p.m. Bangkok Time
Watch live on https://t.co/lefwTTeBCd

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

Ahead of the Bangladeshi PM’s visit to #Malaysia, the Migrant Welfare Network urges both governments to dismantle recruitment syndicates that profit from exploiting Bangladeshi workers seeking employment in Malaysia.

https://t.co/6T0kmgPUTh

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

Thai authorities must “take concrete actions to uphold human rights, including for its sizable refugee population,” said Thanida Piyachot, Human Rights Specialist at @FortifyRights, in a news release issued ahead of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of #Thailand’s human rights record this November.

https://t.co/s93mBsAw7u

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

ပဲခူးတိုင်းတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်ရဲ့ လေကြောင်းတိုက်ခိုက်မှုနဲ့ အစုလိုက်အပြုံလိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်မှုတွေနဲ့ပတ်သက်ပြီး တာဝန်ယူမှုတာဝန်ခံမှုလိုအပ်ကြောင်းနဲ့ နိုင်ငံတကာ တရားစီရင်ရေးပြုလုပ်နိုင်မယ့် နည်းလမ်းများကို @FortifyRights ရဲ့ အကြီးတန်း လူ့အခွင့်အရေး အထူးတာဝန်ခံ @sengchit @RFABurmese အားရှင်းပြထားပါတယ်။

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

အသက် ၈၁ နှစ်အရွယ် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည် ဆက်လက်ဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းခံထားရပြီး ကျန်းမာရေးအခြေအနေနဲ့ပတ်သက်ပြီး သိရှိခွင့်မရနိုင်တာကြောင့် နိုင်ငံတကာအသိုင်းအဝိုင်းအနေနဲ့ အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်ကို ဖိအားပေးသင့်တယ်လို့ Fortify Rights ရဲ့ အကြီးတန်းဒါရိုက်တာ @BenedictRogers က @DVB_English အား ပြောကြားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

Ahead of #Thailand’s Universal Periodic Review this November, @FortifyRights calls on the Thai government to end the arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and forced return of refugees.

“U.N. Human Rights Council member states should use this review to hold Thailand accountable to its commitments to protect refugees,” said Thanida Piyachot, Human Rights Specialist at @FortifyRights.

https://t.co/iEP2lxZLvm

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

Today, on #WorldRefugeeDay, and every day, we stand in solidarity with refugees around the world and call on governments to uphold refugee rights, dignity, and protection.

In recent years, @FortifyRights has:
✅ Documented the indefinite detention and abuse of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia.

✅ Called on Thailand to end the arbitrary arrest, detention, extortion, forced return of refugees, and forced repatriation of Uyghur refugees to China.

✅ Called on China to stop its policies of forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, in violation of international principles of non-refoulement.

✅ Advocated for protection, accountability, and human rights for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Learn more about our work: https://t.co/IjaaH8KLWl

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

✍️ On Aung San Suu Kyi’s 81st birthday, @BenedictRogers calls on the #Myanmar military junta to provide proof that she is alive and release her without delay.

More than five years after the coup, the junta continues to hold Aung San Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners in arbitrary detention.

“It is vital that the international community steps up its efforts to end Myanmar’s suffering … and call for all political prisoners to be freed.”

https://t.co/y9Rcy4sFIf

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

🚨 On June 14, Chinese authorities raided a Sunday worship service of Early Rain Covenant Church in Sichuan Province, detaining dozens of Christians and sentencing two church leaders to administrative detention.

The Chinese authorities should immediately release those arbitrarily detained and respect the fundamental right to freedom of religion or belief.

“The persecution of Christians and Falun Gong practitioners, and grave atrocity crimes against Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghur Muslims, make the Chinese Communist Party one of the world’s most egregious human rights violators,” said @BenedictRogers, Senior Director at @FortifyRights.

Read the full news release: https://t.co/lnfSDcSDcN

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

Fortify Rights retracted a news release dated June 17, 2026 calling for the release of U.S. citizens Adam Castillo in Myanmar and Min Zin in China, following new developments and additional information regarding the arrest of Mr. Castillo. Their respective cases are linked in no way.

The Chinese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Min Zin unless they promptly present credible evidence of a recognizable criminal offense and guarantee his due process rights, including access to legal counsel and U.S. consular officials.

[US Campaign 4 Burma @uscb]

Please join us next week on Wed, June 24th, at 9 AM ET, 8 PM BKK, 7:30 PM MM for the next epi in our Burma's Breaking Points series. The panel will examine the junta’s #HRVs in #Karenni State, including displacement & airstrikes.
RSVP Here: https://t.co/Eq52WHnmdH

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

We are pleased to share that @PuttaneeKangkun, Director of @TheFortSpace and @FortifyRights, has been elected to a second term as Chair of @AmnestyThailand.

As a long-time human rights activist, Puttanee has spent more than two decades working alongside refugees, human rights defenders, and communities affected by human rights abuses in Thailand and across the region.

In this volunteer role, she will continue supporting Amnesty International Thailand’s work to promote human rights while continuing her leadership at The Fort and Fortify Rights.

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

At the International Uyghur Forum @IUFforum, @FortifyRights Senior Director @benedictrogers spoke on a panel in Berlin on transnational repression, resilience, building sustainable human rights advocacy and avoiding burnout, alongside two courageous Uyghur women activists and two of the world's leading psychiatrists.

He shared some of Fortify Rights's work and principles, his own experiences, and a message of encouragement for the fight for human rights which must go on.