Human Rights Glance
Viola Ford Fletcher, who as one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Oklahoma spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child, has died. She was 111.
Her grandson Ike Howard said on Monday that she died surrounded by family at a Tulsa hospital. Sustained by a strong faith, she raised three children, worked as a welder in a shipyard during the second world war and spent decades caring for families as a housekeeper.
Tulsa’s mayor, Monroe Nichols, said the city was mourning her loss. “Mother Fletcher endured more than anyone should, yet she spent her life lighting a path forward with purpose,” he said in a statement.
She was seven years old when the two-day attack began on Tulsa’s Greenwood district on 31 May 1921 after a local newspaper published a sensationalized report about a Black man accused of assaulting a white woman. As a white mob grew outside the courthouse, Black Tulsans with guns who hoped to prevent the man’s lynching began showing up. White residents responded with overwhelming force. Hundreds of people were killed and homes were burned and looted, leaving about 35 city blocks decimated in the prosperous community known as Black Wall Street.
“I could never forget the charred remains of our once-thriving community, the smoke billowing in the air, and the terror-stricken faces of my neighbors,” she wrote in her 2023 memoir, Don’t Let Them Bury My Story.
Donald Trump said on Friday night that he’s “immediately” terminating temporary legal protections for Somali migrants living in Minnesota, further targeting a program seeking to limit deportations that his administration has already repeatedly sought to weaken.
The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold.
A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse have warned they have received death threats and are worried about an escalation as they wait for the release of the files related to the late paedophile financier.
Women carry children as Israeli forces forcibly displace them from Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank, with Israeli soldiers looking on, one with his weapon raised, on February 10, 2025. © 2025 Wahaj Bani Moufleh.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who participated in protests at Columbia University and was detained by Ice earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit demanding the Trump administration release its communications with anti-Palestinian groups he says contributed to his March arrest and efforts to detain him.
OHCHR condemned this week’s attacks as abhorrent and said they reflected a wider pattern of increased violence against Palestinians.
