Labour Rights

Court also acquits Dow Jones on the charge of dismissal over Selina Cheng’s leadership role with the Hong Kong Journalists Association.

A Hong Kong court has convicted Dow Jones for trying to deter a journalist from taking a union role, but also acquitted the publisher on the charge of dismissal over the role, in a case that raised concerns about media freedom in the city.

Selina Cheng, who was fired by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in July 2024, had accused the newspaper’s publisher Dow Jones of unlawfully terminating her employment over her role chairing the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) and of trying to prevent her from standing for a union position.

The court found the company guilty on Thursday of trying to prevent Cheng’s right to run for the union chairmanship.

However, the judge sided with Dow Jones’ argument that she was made redundant because of corporate restructuring, and not due to her role as HKJA chair.

The right to take part in a trade union is protected by Hong Kong’s labour laws. An employer found guilty on “prevent or deter” charges could be fined up to 100,000 Hong Kong dollars ($12,755).

“If reporters’ employment rights are not sufficiently safeguarded, or when their rights are violated and not enforced in law, then we can no longer work safely as reporters,” Cheng told reporters outside the court after the ruling.

The judge said the company’s requirement that Cheng seek prior permission to take a union role was an “unjustified deterrent” of her rights.

Dow Jones said it disagreed with the ruling and was evaluating next steps.

“The Wall Street Journal has a long and proud history as an employer in Hong Kong. Throughout that time, we have remained deeply respectful of its labour laws and supportive of our employees’ rights, while publishing excellent, impartial journalism about the region,” a spokesperson said.

Sentencing is expected to be handed down at a later date.

Cheng launched a private prosecution last year for illegal termination, after filing a complaint with the Labour Department that did not result in a prosecution.

Founded in 1968, the HKJA is Hong Kong’s longest-established journalists’ organisation and one of the last remaining groups advocating for media rights in the city.

Although Hong Kong was once known for its independent news outlets, media freedom has come under strain and many outlets have disbanded since Beijing imposed a 2020 national security law following sometimes violent pro-democracy protests, according to international rankings and HKJA surveys.

The Eiffel Tower was temporarily closed on Monday after workers went on strike to protest the sidelining of female staff during a private visit by a Hindu religious group.

The tower, which has since reopened, shut after members of Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a global socio‑spiritual Hindu denomination, visited the site. Female staff were reportedly asked to give way to male staff for the group’s tour, prompting protests from the workers’ union, outrage from French politicians and an apology from the Hindu group.

Here is more about BAPS and how the controversy unfolded.

What’s the controversy about?

The Eiffel Tower closed after staff walked out over the removal of women staff during a weekend visit by BAPS.

The Societe d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, or SETE, which runs the Paris landmark, acknowledged that the group had requested the Saturday visit be organised in a way that limited “interactions with women”, and said “these conditions should not have been accepted”.

The BAPS monks, or sadhus, practise strict celibacy, which requires them to avoid physical contact with women and being alone in their company, and to minimise personal interaction or attention towards the opposite sex.

Wider community members of BAPS are not bound by these celibacy rules. According to news reports, the BAPS delegation visiting the Eiffel Tower comprised both monks and community members.

Eiffel Tower staff said in a statement that they condemned “professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced and made invisible because of their sex” during the visit by the delegation.

“Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas. In some posts they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present,” the staff union said, adding they were shocked to have been put in such a situation.

Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said an investigation would be launched “as soon as possible”. In a post on social media, he said he was aware of the employees’ anger and agreed their dissatisfaction was legitimate.

What is BAPS and how have they responded?

BAPS was founded in India in 1907 and began expanding internationally from the 1960s. It is a spiritual organisation which works on community building, constructing temples, helping with disaster relief and running medical camps, environmental drives and educational programmes.

It now also runs an extensive network of temples and cultural centres across the world, including more than 100 in the United States and more than 1,000 worldwide, including across Europe, Africa and Asia. BAPS also runs a temple in Paris.

On Tuesday, the BAPS Paris account posted a statement on X responding to the controversy.

“To our knowledge, at no time was access to the Eiffel Tower denied to anyone,” the account wrote, originally in French.

“Nevertheless, we wish to offer our sincere apologies to anyone who may have been hurt or inconvenienced by this situation,” it added.

How has the response in France been?

Leaders within France expressed outrage over reports of women being removed from the premises.

Aurore Berge, the minister delegate for gender equality and fight against discrimination in France, wrote in an X post on Monday: “In France, we do not ask women to step aside. No dogma, no religion is superior to the laws of the Republic.”

Yael Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly, wrote in a post on social media: “Welcoming others never means giving up our values. In France, women are fully present in public life. No one tells them to become invisible.”

Former French President Francois Hollande, now an MP, wrote on X on Tuesday: “We do not ask women to step aside to satisfy religious demands.”

He expressed support for the Eiffel Tower staff who walked out.

“Equality between women and men is a fundamental achievement of our Republic. It applies everywhere, to all women and all men, without exception,” Hollande wrote.

Parliamentarian and former PM Michel Barnier wrote on X: “It is therefore utterly unacceptable that an order aimed at making women disappear from this space could have been issued.”

Barnier added that “women are not hidden. They are not erased. They are respected, and their freedom is defended”, demanding an explanation from the SETE.

Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally, wrote on X on Tuesday: “This degrading demand should never have been met. In a free country like France, gender equality is respected, and no religious reason can override women’s dignity.”

Prominent far-right MP and leader of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen wrote in an X post: “In France, we will never accept that the presence of women be ‘limited.’”

Is BAPS linked to the Modi government?

BAPS is not officially part of a political party in India, and has long insisted that it is apolitical.

But researchers have long pointed to a close, cooperative relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

In fact, the Eiffel Tower closure came just a day after Modi virtually inaugurated the BAPS temple in Paris.

Modi also attended the physical inauguration of the BAPS temple in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2024.

Has BAPS faced other controversies in the past?

BAPS has faced a series of high-profile controversies in the past.

During a landmark legal battle in 1966, BAPS leaders argued in court that their sect was not part of Hinduism but a distinct religion. They did so in an attempt to avoid the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act, which required Hindu temples to open their doors to Dalits, a historically marginalised caste group. The Indian Supreme Court rejected the appeal made by BAPS.

In 2013, two former BAPS monks filed a complaint accusing senior BAPS leaders of sexual assault dating back to the 1970s. BAPS leaders denied the allegations. The complaint did not result in any publicly reported criminal charges.

In 2021, a US federal class‑action lawsuit accused BAPS of exploiting low‑caste labourers from India to work on its temples. The case, brought on behalf of about 200 Indian workers, alleged they were lured from India, coerced into employment agreements, and forced to work more than 12 hours a day with only five days off a year at a temple in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey.

The suit says they were paid as little as $1.20 an hour, far below the US federal minimum wage of $7.25 and New Jersey’s $12 statewide minimum.

A US federal investigation into labour trafficking at the Robbinsville temple has since been closed without criminal charges, but the civil class‑action lawsuit brought by the workers continues.

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has found that the networking technology company Cisco may have violated the civil rights of Middle Eastern and Muslim employees amid a wave of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments on internal messaging platforms at the company.

In June, the EEOC, which is tasked with enforcing the US’s anti-discrimination laws, said Cisco subjected its employees to a hostile work environment, according to a letter of determination obtained by Al Jazeera.

The letter, which was first reported by Politico Pro, stemmed from a complaint filed with the EEOC in December 2024 by a group of Cisco employees called “Bridge to Humanity” (B2H), who had been voicing concerns that the company’s technology was provided to the Israeli military for use in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Several months earlier, the group of employees had sent a separate open letter calling on the San Jose, California-based company to stop providing its technology to the Israeli government. The document was signed by more than 1,700 of the company’s more than 86,000 employees.

In its December complaint filed with the EEOC, the employees alleged that Cisco had removed the open letter from an internal site and that it was “under review”, and that subsequently, many of the signatories were harassed. Among the allegations was a remark that one employee had told another to “quit living”.

The employees also alleged that Cisco had not responded to their complaints until they created a 76-page report cataloguing the hate comments they had been subjected to in an internal messaging group called Connected Jewish Network.

The report, which was provided to Cisco’s Employee Relations and Ethics offices, according to documents made public by The Guardian, outlined the waves of hate comments. In one of these, from November 2023, an unnamed employee had said that “Israeli passersby killed 2 members of a Palestinian family in Jerusalem this morning, and I for one am extremely grateful.”

“These Cisconians have, among other things, repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths, likened Palestinians and those with opposing viewpoints to animals, labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent terrorists, joked about respecting a person’s gender identity,” the 76-page report said. It added that the Connected Jewish Network was not even a “safe space for all of our Jewish colleagues”.

The EEOC’s determination said that the company had retaliated against one unnamed staffer for “her involvement in pro-Palestine efforts by terminating the individual”.

‘Important step’

The employees’ complaint with the EEOC was filed by Legal Aid at Work, a nonprofit legal services organisation.

“The EEOC’s determination is particularly significant because it appears to be the first time in any legal context where a governmental or judicial finding has sided with Big Tech workers who have collectively organised to fight for corporate accountability around their employers’ sales of their technology to Israel,” Christopher Ho, director of the national origin and immigrants’ rights programme at Legal Aid at Work, told Al Jazeera.

Advocacy groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) praised the decision.

“The EEOC’s finding is an important step toward accountability and a reminder that federal civil rights protections apply equally to Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and other employees who speak out about Palestine,” civil rights managing lawyer Jeffrey Wang at CAIR’s San Francisco Bay-area chapter said in a statement.

“Employers have a legal responsibility to address harassment and discrimination fairly and consistently. Workers should not have to fear retaliation or a hostile work environment because of their religion, national origin, or association with protected communities.”

According to reporting by The Guardian, although the EEOC issues its determination in June, the agency’s mediation with the company has “not gone anywhere”.

Legal Aid at Work told Al Jazeera that it has also submitted a complaint against Cisco to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the California Labor Commissioner.

“[The complaints] allege, respectively, that Cisco unlawfully interfered with our clients’ federally protected right to engage in concerted activity to improve working conditions, and unlawfully interfered with their right to engage in political activities that is protected by the California Labor Code. Both these complaints are still pending at the respective agencies,” Ho said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the EEOC for comment.

“Under federal law, both charges filed with, and charge inquiries made to the EEOC are confidential. The EEOC can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any charge or charge inquiry,” an EEOC spokesperson said.

Cisco did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.