Artists and writers support Russian exhibition organizers charged with ‘inciting hatred’
Yuri Samodurov, a former Moscow museum director, and the art curator Andrei Yerofeev, are due in court on Friday, facing charges of inciting hatred and offending human dignity – that could see them jailed for up to five years – after organizing a Moscow exhibition called Forbidden Art 2006.
International artists and writers have joined forces to write an open letter to Russia’s President Medvedev, expressing their deep concern at the criminal charges being brought against the two men.
Intended to promote a debate on censorship and contemporary art in Russia, the exhibition gathered together works that had been refused inclusion at various exhibitions in Russia during 2006.
The open letter, signed by such artists and writers as Irish writer Roddy Doyle, UK playwright Tom Stoppard, French journalist and essayist Galia Ackerman and Russian artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, said:
“We are concerned and disturbed that in bringing the charges against both men that the guarantee of freedom of expression in the Russian Constitution is being set at naught. International human rights law does not permit, still less require, freedom of expression to be restricted or prohibited simply on the grounds that some people find the views expressed offensive.”
“Russia is a secular state where, under current law, everyone is guaranteed freedom of religious or atheist ‘belief’ and where everyone can freely choose, have or disseminate religious or atheist views. International law does not permit restrictions of the expression of opinions or beliefs, which stray from the religious beliefs of the majority of the population or the State-prescribed religion.”
The letter concluded: “We firmly believe that Andrei Yerofeev and Yurii Samodurov should not be prosecuted and we call upon the Russian authorities to respect their right to freedom of expression.”
Amnesty International has called on the Russian authorities to respect the right to freedom of expression and to stop the criminal prosecution of Yurii Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeev.
The full list of signatories to the open letter is:
Galia Ackerman (journalist and essayist, France)
Roddy Doyle(writer, Ireland)
Boris Groys (professor and art critic, Germany)
Enrique Juncosa (Director of Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland)
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov(Russian artists, USA)
Julia Kisina (artist, Ukraine)
Azar Nafisi (academic and writer, Iran)
Peter Sis (writer, artist, illustrator, Czech Republic)
Tom Stoppard (playwright, UK)
Ludmila Ulitskaya (writer, Russia)
Global day of support for Iran’s victims of human rights abuse
Thousands of activists worldwide will participate in a Global Day of Action on Saturday, to demonstrate international solidarity with those whose human rights are being abused in Iran.
Amnesty International and a coalition of organizations will be holding the Global Day of Action to pressure the Iranian authorities to stop all violence against demonstrators and release the hundreds – possibly thousands – of people currently detained for peacefully protesting against the disputed outcome of Iran’s presidential election in June.
Iranian authorities have acknowledged up to 21 deaths during demonstrations in Tehran, but the true number across the country is likely to be much higher. Scores have been wounded. Many are reported to have been injured by the paramilitary Basij.
The date for the Global Day of Action was chosen as initial reports suggested that President Ahmadinejad could be inaugurated on 26 July or shortly afterwards. However, more recent reports suggest that the inauguration will be between 2 and 6 August.
The day will consist of public demonstrations in more than 105 cities, including Barcelona, Beirut, Caracas, Chicago, Dakar, Istanbul, London, Montevideo, Ougadougou, Prague and Santiago.
Each demonstration will be calling for:
- an end to state-sponsored violence and accountability for crimes committed by state officials;
- the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience, including journalists, students and civil society activists;
- the protection of freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the Iranian Constitution and Iran’s obligations under international human rights covenants that it has signed;
- the immediate initiation of a UN investigation into the grave and systematic human rights violations which have taken place in recent weeks.
The London part of the Global Day of Action will take place on Saturday at 1-4pm, at the Embassy of Iran, 16 Prince’s Gate, London SW7 1PT.
For information on events in other cities around the world, please visit the United for Iran website or contact your local Amnesty International section.
US: Treaty Signing Signals Policy Shift
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which President Obama is scheduled to announce today that the US will sign, will be the first international human rights treaty signed by the United States in nearly a decade, Human Rights Watch said today. Obama is scheduled to make the announcement at a White House event this afternoon.
Thousands face mass eviction from homes and market stalls in Zimbabwe
Up to 200 people from an informal settlement in the Harare suburb of Gunhill in Zimbabwe face being forcibly evicted without being given adequate notice or any consultation or due process. Thousands of vendors across Harare also face forcible removal from their market stalls.
The majority of those to be affected are poor women whose principal source of livelihood is selling fruits, vegetables and other wares at market stalls like Mbare Musika and Mupedzanhamo in Harare.
The Deputy Mayor of the Harare City Council stated in July 2009 that the city authorities are considering evicting people from "illegal settlements and market places to restore order." He claimed that the targeted people pose a health hazard and violate the city’s by-laws.
Amnesty International has accused the Harare City Council of being insensitive to the suffering of Harare’s poor who are struggling to survive under very difficult economic conditions.
“The wholesale prohibition of unemployed people from selling their wares prevents them from earning a living and violates their right to work. Formal unemployment in Zimbabwe is reputed to be above 90 per cent. The bulk of the urban population, particularly women, survive on informal trade. The Council must desist from taking measures that drive people deeper into poverty,” said Amy Agnew, Amnesty International’s campaigner on Zimbabwe.
“Since 2005, Amnesty International has documented cases were vendors and informal traders have repeatedly been harassed by municipal police in Harare for selling wares at ‘undesignated’ places. They had there wares confiscated and fined,” said Amy Agnew.
"The Mayor of Harare should immediately stop any pending mass evictions from informal settlements or removal of vendors from markets in Harare. In particular, the council should give adequate and reasonable notice for affected people prior to any eviction and ensure that no one is rendered homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights as a consequence of eviction.
"Where those affected are unable to provide for themselves, the council must take all appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, to ensure that adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive land, as the case may be, is available."
Amnesty International said most of the people at risk of forcible eviction were victims of Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out trash), also officially known as Operation Restore Order. The programme of mass forced evictions implemented by the Zimbabwean authorities in 2005 left 700,000 people without homes and livelihoods.
Four years on, the authorities have failed to provide an effective remedy to the victims and, as a result, many continue to be at risk of being forcibly evicted from both their homes and their informal businesses.
Uzbekistan: Political Prisoner Abused in Detention
(New York) – Uzbek authorities should promptly investigate allegations of ill-treatment against the jailed dissident Yusuf Jumaev and ensure his prompt release from prison, Human Rights Watch said today.
Safety for Brazilian activist after Amnesty International action
A Brazilian organization has thanked Amnesty International after an action by the organization brought safety to a peasant farmer and land rights activist. Death threats against José Luís da Silva, his wife, Severina dos Santos Silva, and their family are now the subject of a police investigation.
José Luís da Silva and his family received death threats in relation to a court case brought against four men they allege were involved in a violent attack on their family in December 2007. The family believe that they were targeted specifically because of their fight for land rights, which has involved a long-running dispute with a local farm owner.
The family has lived in a peasant farming community on the Quirino farm in the state of Paraiba for over 20 years. In 1998, after the community had been threatened with eviction by the owner of the farmland, the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária, INCRA), the federal body responsible for the implementation of land reform, ruled that the land the community lives on should be turned over to the peasant farmers who live there as a part of the agricultural reform process.
Since this ruling, the owner of the farm has been fighting this decision in the courts, while allegedly threatening and intimidating the settlers (posseiros), some of whom have lived on the land for up to 50 years.
Amnesty International issued an Urgent Action in January 2009 calling for action on the case. The NGO Associação de apoio aos asentamentos e comunidades quilombolas (AACADE, Support association for settlers and quilombola communities), which supports the families who settled on the Quirino farm, said that Amnesty International’s campaign, had an immediate effect.
"As a consequence of the Urgent Action, a special police investigator was appointed to follow the investigations into the attack on the Silva family. This appointment was the consequence of steps taken by federal and state authorities which had received letters from Amnesty members from around the world.
"Another consequence of the campaign was the airing of a television programme called ‘I want justice’, broadcast on 14 April of this year. It was the first time that the case [of the Quirino farm] had been presented impartially and accurately. Thirdly, and most importantly, the threats diminished significantly."
Arrests and deaths continue in Iran as authorities tighten grip
Reports from Tehran on Tuesday, said that security forces deployed excessive use of force to counter peaceful demonstrations in Haft Tir Square, where more arrests were said to have been made. This news is, according to Amnesty International, a jarring reminder to the international community that the waves of arrests and killings continue unabated in Iran, as the authorities tighten their grip.
Thirty-six Iranian army officers are among people reported to have been arrested recently in connection with the disputed presidential election in Iran. Amnesty International has received the names of 24 of them.
Others reported to have been arrested in recent days include political activists, journalists, academics and lawyers. Amnesty International said it fears for their safety in detention, as torture or other ill-treatment of detainees is common in Iran.
According to media reports, the military officers planned to attend the Friday prayer sermon in Tenrah on 17 July, led by former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. They planned to do so while wearing their military uniforms as an act of political defiance.
The gesture was said to be intended to express solidarity with the demonstrators protesting against the official but widely disputed presidential election result.
Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who supported the campaign of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, expressed concern in his sermon at the handling of complaints regarding the election by the Guardian Council, and called for the release of all those detained following the protests and an end to media restrictions.
Hundreds – possibly thousands – of people have been detained for protesting against the official election result. Many are held in undisclosed locations across Iran.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, arrested on 16 June, unlike some other detainees, has not yet been allowed to call his family, nor have they been able to obtain any information concerning his whereabouts from the Iranian authorities.
Bijan Khajehpour Khoei, a business and economic consultant, was arrested on 27 June at Tehran airport when he arrived back from a trip to Vienna and London. During his brief trip abroad, he spoke to trade officials in Vienna and met the Iran British Business Chamber in London, as part of his work to support Iranian business and encourage foreign investment in Iran. His whereabouts are also unknown and his family fear for his health as he is diabetic.
Possibly as many as 197 protestors were arrested on 9 July at a demonstration marking the tenth anniversary of 18 Tir, the suppression of student-led protests in 1999, in which at least one student was killed and many others were tortured or otherwise ill-treated. The police say that about 40 demonstrators were arrested at the 9 July protest.
Dr Sheikh Hassan Aghaei, a journalist from Iran’s Kurdish minority and a political cartoonist, was detained in Mahabad, northwest Iran at 11am on 18 July by plain-clothes security officials who may be affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards, and transferred to an unknown location. No reason has been given for his arrest but he had been involved in campaign activities for Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Lawyer and human rights activist, Shadi Sadr, was violently arrested in Tehran on the morning of 17 July on her way to prayers.
Shadi Sadr was walking with a group of women’s rights activists along a busy road when unidentified plain-clothed men pulled her into a car. She lost her headscarf and coat in the ensuing struggle but managed briefly to escape. She was quickly recaptured and beaten with batons before being taken away in the car to an unknown location.
The director of Raahi, a legal advice centre for women until it was closed down by the authorities, Shadi Sadr founded Zanan-e Iran (Women of Iran), the first website dedicated to the work of Iranian women’s rights activists. She has written extensively about Iranian women and their legal rights. As a lawyer, she has represented activists and journalists, as well as several women sentenced to execution, whose convictions were subsequently overturned. She is also involved in Women’s Field, a group of women’s rights activists who have launched several campaigns to defend women’s rights, including the "Stop Stoning Forever" Campaign.
French national Clotilde Reiss was detained at Tehran airport in Iran, on her way home to France on 1 July. The 24-year-old is accused of espionage in connection with photographs she took during a demonstration in the city of Esfahan in which she participated last month, against the announcement of the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She emailed the photographs to a friend in Tehran. Amnesty International said that it believes Clotilde Reiss to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely for peacefully exercising her right to receive and impart information and ideas.
A graduate politics student from the city of Lille, Clotilde Reiss travelled to Iran after receiving a scholarship for her studies on Iran. She was detained after five months working as an assistant teacher in Esfahan University in central Iran. Clotilde Reiss is held in Evin Prison in Tehran. She has been allowed to phone and on 9 July was able to meet the French Ambassador to Iran. She said that she was being interrogated daily, though she was not being ill-treated.
Amnesty International has called for all those held solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association to be released immediately and unconditionally, and for all other detainees to be promptly charged and tried in proceedings, which meet international standards for fair trial or released. The organization said that the authorities should immediately clarify the fate of all those detained in connection with recent events.
Amnesty International has also called for a full and impartial investigation into the death of Sohrab Arabi, a 19-year-old student, who died from a bullet wound to the heart. He disappeared during a demonstration on 15 June. His family was then unable to find out any information about him until 11 July when they were summoned to court where they recognized him from photographs of dead individuals. His body had apparently been at the Coroner’s Office since 19 June. There is, as yet, no information as to what happened to him between 15 and 19 June, including either the exact date, or the circumstances, of his death.
Official Iranian figures say that up to 21 people were killed during the demonstrations. However, Amnesty International has received the names of over 30 people said by unofficial Iranian sources to have been killed. The actual figure may be even higher.
A new group has been set up, called Mourning Mothers (Madaran-e Azardar). For the past four weeks, they have been meeting silently on Saturdays in public parks between 7 and 8pm – the day and time at which Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman, was shot dead on 20 June. A video of her death was uploaded onto the internet and her face has come to symbolise the repression meted out in recent weeks.
Their peaceful protest has not gone unnoticed by the authorities – their gatherings have been broken up by security forces and several have been arrested. They include Zeynab Peyghambarzadeh, a women’s rights and student activist who is also a member of the One Million Signatures Campaign, which is demanding an end to discrimination against women in law. She was arrested at the second gathering on 4 July, held overnight and then released.
The call made by the Mourning Mothers states: "Until the release of all detainees who were arrested for protesting election fraud, and until the end of violence and until the murderers of our children are prosecuted, we will gather to mourn in silence every Saturday at 7 pm near where our dear Neda was killed, in Amirabad Street, Laleh Park, by the pond."
Czech Republic commits to international justice
The Czech Republic finally ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday. The ratification follows more than 10 years of campaigning by Amnesty International Czech Republic and other civil society groups,
"Amnesty International welcomes this important step committing the Czech Republic to international justice and working to end impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," said Christopher Keith Hall, Senior Legal Adviser on International Justice.
The Czech Republic becomes the 110th state to ratify the Rome Statute. Significantly, the ratification means that all 27 EU member states are now states parties to the Rome Statute. The EU joins South American states that completed their regional support for the Court when Chile ratified on 29 June thus year.
"Step by step, country by country, the impunity gaps that have denied justice to untold numbers of victims of these horrific crimes are being closed," said Christopher Keith Hall, Senior Legal Adviser on International Justice.
However, the organization expressed concern about the number of countries that have ratified the Rome Statute but have not yet fulfilled their commitments to the Court. Many countries that have ratified have yet to implement the Rome Statute into national law or to enter into supplementary agreements with the Court on privileges and immunities, victim relocation and enforcement of sentences.
"Ratification is a major step, but only a first step," said Christopher Hall. "In particular, national law reform is vital to ensure that the Czech Republic can cooperate fully with the Court and that its national courts can fulfil their obligations to prosecute cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes."
Sri Lanka: IMF Should Not Condone Abuses
(New York) – Members of the International Monetary Fund should insist that the government of Sri Lanka address significant post-conflict human rights abuses as part of the approval for a US$2.5 billion stand-by loan, Human Rights Watch said today. The IMF board is expected to vote on the stand-by arrangement on July 24, 2009.
Wife of Guantánamo detainee released in Syria
Usra al-Hussein, a Syrian woman imprisoned incommunicado for nearly a year without charge or trial, was released on 18 July 2009.
Amnesty International had campaigned for her to be released unless charged with a recognizably criminal offence.
Usra al-Hussein was arrested on 31 July 2008 by State Security officials from her home in the village of al-’Otayba, some 20km east of Damascus. Throughout her detention she was permitted no contact with the outside world and her family were given no information by the Syrian authorities as to where she was being held or why she had been arrested. Amnesty International does not yet have information on her treatment during detention.
Amnesty International believes that Usra al-Hussein’s imprisonment may have been related to her efforts to communicate with an international organization regarding the detention conditions of her husband, Jehad Diab, in US custody. Jehad Diab has been held without charge or trial as an "enemy combatant" in the US detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since August 2002.
Detainees in Syrian detention and investigation centres are often held incommunicado, facilitating the widespread practice of torture and other ill-treatment. Suspects of affiliation to unauthorized Islamist groups are at particular risk of arbitrary arrest and detention.
One such person who remains in detention is Nabil Khlioui, who has been held incommunicado, without charge or trial, at the Palestine Branch, a Military Intelligence interrogation and detention centre in Damascus which is notorious for torture, since his arrest in August 2008. Nabil Khlioui was among scores of individuals arrested during that month, mostly in the city of Deir az-Zawr, but also in the cities of Aleppo and Hama.
According to Syrian human rights organizations, many appeared to have been arrested because the authorities interpreted their appearance and lifestyle as indications of their affiliation to unauthorized Islamist groups.