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	Muslim judge in India faces death threats after convicting 'cow vigilantes' by Cherylann Mollan BBC World News   12 July 2026   An Indian judge has become the target of online abuse and death threats days after she sentenced 14 men to life imprisonment for lynching a man to death.   On 12 June, the additional district and sessions judge of a court in Madhya Pradesh state, Tabassum Khan, found the men guilty of offences including murder, attempt to murder, rioting and wrongful restraint.   The crime took place in 2022, when 50-year-old Nazir Ahmad was transporting cattle at night and was intercepted by a group of self-styled "gau rakshaks" (cow protectors), armed with sticks and rods. Hindus consider cows sacred and killing them is illegal in many states.   The men dragged Ahmad and his two companions out of the vehicle and brutally assaulted them on suspicion of smuggling cows. Ahmad later succumbed to his injuries while his companions survived to tell the court what happened.   In her judgement, Khan noted that the crime was a clear case of mob lynching.   But the verdict has made her the target of religious hate. In the days following the judgement, numerous videos abusing and threatening Khan, a Muslim, surfaced online. The videos implied that Khan had acted against the men because they were Hindu.   While judgments are often criticised, the attacks on Khan have focused not on her legal reasoning but on her religion. The scale of the abuse has prompted leading judicial bodies to rally behind her, and she has been given police protection.   The attacks on Khan began soon after the verdict, when family members of the convicted men gathered outside the courtroom reportedly protested against the judgement and attempted to stop the police convoy from transporting the men to prison. They alleged that the men were being punished for "saving cows".   Then began an online campaign of abuse, as videos of Hindu right-wing influencers abusing Khan with communal slurs and issuing rape threats and death threats against her began to surface.   In one video, a man warned of "bloodshed" across the country unless the convicted men were freed within 10 days. At the time of writing, many of the videos remained online, attracting thousands of likes and shares. The speakers' faces and social media handles were clearly visible as they issued threats and incited violence.   An anchor of Sudarshan News, a right-wing Hindi news channel, expressed solidarity with the families of the convicted men, saying that "they might have never imagined that their family members, who had put everything on the line to save cows, would be imprisoned for it". He also urged his viewers to "speak up" as "now was the time to fight for the sake of the protectors of cows".   Many self-described cow protection organisations and Hindutva groups also held massive protests against the verdict.   On 22 June, the Gau Raksha Parishad (which roughly translates to the council of cow saviours) staged a protest in Punjab state during which protesters assaulted and burnt an effigy of Khan. Three days later, the Rashtriya Bajrang Dal held a protest in Uttar Pradesh state, demanding that the "cow protectors" be freed.   In a post on social media, former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju noted how these videos and protests did not merely criticise the verdict but sought to "delegitimise Judge Khan's authority as a judicial officer by reducing her identity to her religion".   "Her Muslim identity became the principal basis upon which the legitimacy of the judgement was questioned. This represented a dangerous inversion of justice. Judicial decisions are meant to be evaluated through legal reasoning, not through the religious identity of the individual delivering them," he wrote.   Katju later said Khan had sent him a message thanking him, saying that the abuse had traumatised her and made her feel like she had committed a crime by delivering her verdict.   Khan has also received support from prominent judicial organisations - the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA) and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) have condemned the threats against her and demanded that action be taken against the culprits.   Vikas Singh, president of the SCBA, told the BBC that threats against a judge were a grave issue as the judiciary was interlinked with the fundamentals of democracy.   "If we allow this to happen, no judge will be able to dispense justice," he said. "In a democracy, a judge must be able to perform their duty without fear or favour."   Meanwhile, police official Sudhakar Baraskar told the BBC that a case had been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and two people had been arrested. He said the cyber cell was tracing those sharing inflammatory videos and continuously monitoring social media for more such content.   But Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde argued that the state and the judiciary should do more to ensure Khan's safety.   In an article in Live Law, a legal news website, Hegde gave the example of how another case involving threats against a former judge was dealt with recently.   Gautam Patel, a former judge of the Bombay High Court, and his family were facing threats for more than 10 months following his 2024 judgment in the a succession dispute within a Muslim community.   Following a public interest litigation filed by three judicial organisations, the Bombay High Court ordered the Maharashtra government to provide protection to Patel. It told the Mumbai police commissioner to supervise the investigation and demanded a status report.   "If a retired judge of a high court deserves state protection and judicial supervision of his case, so does a serving sessions judge in a district court. The principle cannot bend to rank. It cannot bend to religion. It cannot bend to the political weather around a particular verdict," Hegde wrote.   Last week, the Madhya Pradesh High Court asked senior officials to explain what steps had been taken to protect Khan and identify those behind the threats. It also ordered that her police protection continue. Visit the related web page
	International Court of Justice rules the right to strike is protected by key ILO labor treaty by UN News, agencies   21 May 2026   The UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that the right to strike is protected under a core International Labour Organization (ILO) convention, in a landmark advisory opinion settling a long-running dispute between workers and employers worldwide.   The 14-judge panel of the International Court of Justice, said the right to strike is protected under the ​International Labour Organization's 1948 Freedom of Association treaty signed ⁠by 158 countries.   "Freedom of association is instrumental in facilitating workers’ organizations to take collective action to further and defend the interests of their members, including through the exercise of the right to strike. Therefore, the Court considers that the protection of the right to strike is in line with the object and purpose of ILO Convention No. 87".   The case was referred to the Court by the ILO’s Governing Body in November 2023, after years of disagreement among the agency’s core constituents – governments, employers and workers – over whether Convention No. 87 protects the right to strike, even though the treaty does not explicitly mention strikes.   At the heart of the dispute was whether the right to organize under Convention No. 87 includes the right of workers and their organizations to take strike action. Workers’ representatives argued that the right to strike is inherent in freedom of association and has long been recognized by ILO supervisory bodies. Employers’ groups claimed that the convention contained no provision to include strike action.   The Court acknowledged that Convention No. 87 “does not contain an explicit reference to the right to strike,” but said the absence of such a provision “does not necessarily mean that the issue is excluded” from the treaty.   The judges found that strike action could fall within the ordinary meaning of workers’ organizations’ “activities” under the Convention, alongside provisions protecting the right of workers and employers to form organizations and defend their interests.   The judges noted that in some cases, the right to strike may be restricted. The opinion “does not entail any determination on the precise content, scope or conditions for the exercise of that right,” court president Yuji Iwasawa said.   The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) representing 191 million workers across 169 countries welcomed the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, confirming that the right to strike is protected under International Labour Organization Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise.   "The International Court of Justice has an important constitutional role to play in the institutional governance of the ILO, and the Court has effectively discharged this role making an invaluable contribution to the ILO and multilateralism more broadly.   The Court’s opinion reaffirms decades of consistent international labour jurisprudence and restores legal certainty and credibility within the international labour standards system.   The right to strike is an essential component of freedom of association and a fundamental means through which workers defend their interests, secure decent work and contribute to democratic societies.   The ITUC stresses that today’s opinion is important not only for workers and trade unions, but also for governments and responsible businesses. Legal clarity and predictability on such a critical aspect of international labour law and the ILO standards supervisory system are indispensable for stable industrial relations and effective social dialogue..".   “As any trade unionist will tell you, there is no right to organize without the right to strike!” Christy Hoffman, general-secretary of UNI Global Union, said. “The two are inseparable foundations of any functional and fair industrial relations system.”   Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO—the largest US labor federation—said that “this decision affirms decades of judicial precedent and what workers around the world know: There is no right to organize and bargain collectively without the right to strike.”   “When workers are barred from taking collective action on the job, they cannot defend their rights and demand the workplace conditions and contracts they are owed.. At a moment when workers’ organizations face sustained attacks around the world, this opinion reaffirms that the freedom to withhold one’s labor is not a privilege granted by the powerful, but a fundamental human right grounded in international law”.   During hearings in October 2025, the court heard from 18 countries and five international organizations, including the ILO, with a number of other countries submitting writing arguments. The majority of participants favored the right to strike, a protection which is already granted in most European countries.   Presenting on behalf of the ITUC at the October ICJ hearings Professor of International Law Harold Hongju Koh from Yale University said: “Simply put, the choice before you is asymmetric. Should this Court answer the advisory question ‘yes,’ you would simply reconfirm what was the settled legal understanding until 2012, when the Employers abruptly abandoned it. … You would strengthen industrial democracy and order by reaffirming a social compact based on peaceful bargaining between employers and workers. But should you rule the other way, Employers will claim that the legality of the right to strike must be decided from country to country, offering multiple positions on interpretive issues regarding other ILO treaties.”   Koh challenged the Employers’ claim that legal recognition of the right to strike would threaten social order. “In real life,” he observed, “the right to strike is a safety valve, a nonviolent bulwark of social peace. Every day, we are served meals and drinks, ride in cars and buses, and work in offices on equipment that is built, prepared, and maintained by committed and conscientious workers. They don’t want to strike; they want to work; to do their jobs for a fair and honest wage. But behind their toil is constant awareness that if their rights are abused, they hold the fundamental right to withhold that work in fellowship with their co-workers.”   In closing, he argued: “your decision here will affect every worker in the world. However you rule, workers will still strike. Will you be the judges who tell them that, under Convention No. 87, they no longer have that right?”   The ILO said its Governing Body is expected to consider the matter at its November session, including any follow-up. The case is only the second time in ILO history that a question concerning interpretation of an international labour convention had been referred, and the first such request to the ICJ since its creation in 1945.   ICJ advisory opinions are not binding judgments, but they carry significant legal and political weight, shaping debates and national and international law. Based in The Hague, the ICJ is the United Nations’ principal judicial organ and is composed of 15 judges elected by the UN General Assembly and Security Council.   http://www.icj-cij.org/case/191 http://www.icj-cij.org/multimedia/205741 http://www.ituc-csi.org/ITUC-welcomes-ICJ-confirmation-of-the-right-to-strike http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/10/1166044 http://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/freedom-association-and-protection-right-organize-convention
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