Guinea: Respect Rights of Opposition
Morocco: New Jail Term for Western Sahara Activist
(Washington, DC) – The conviction and imprisonment of the Western Sahara human rights defender Naâma Asfari on August 27, 2009, for "showing contempt toward a public agent" shows that Morocco continues to punish peaceful activists who show their support for independence for that region, Human Rights Watch said today.
Third mass killing of Colombia’s Awá Indigenous Peoples in 2009
The killing of 12 Indigenous Peoples in Colombia, including four children, is a consequence of the failure of the authorities to heed warnings that unless measures were taken to protect the community, more attacks would take place, said Amnesty International on Thursday.
“Yesterday, the Awá Indigenous Peoples were victims of the third mass killing in less than one year,” said Susan Lee, Americas Programme Director for Amnesty International. “How many more have to die before the government acts to protect these communities?.”
Unidentified gunmen entered the Indigenous reservation of Gran Rosario in the south-western department of Nariño on Wednesday and killed 12 people thought to be members of the same family, including four children.
Amongst the Indigenous Peoples killed was Tulia García, who had received a series of death threats after the killing of her husband Gonzalo Rodríguez Guanga in May. She had denounced the killing saying she believed the Colombian Army was responsible.
Over 50 members of the Awá communities of Nariño have been killed since September 2008 by guerrillas, the security forces and their paramilitary allies, who are contesting control of the region.
The latest killings follow a series of attacks against the Awá community. According to the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), on 11 February 2009 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) guerrilla group killed 10 Awá in the department of Nariño. This followed the killing of 17 Awá on 4 February, also reportedly carried out by the FARC.
These attacks come after a spate of death threats made by army-backed paramilitary against the indigenous organization Awá Indigenous Union, (Unidad Indígena para el Pueblo Awá) UNIPA.
“The killing of the Awá people demonstrates once again that it is the civilian population that bears the brunt of the conflict and that protection of the civilian population in areas of conflict is not given due priority by the Colombian Government,” said Susan Lee.
Amnesty International warned that it is still not clear what action the Colombian Government is taking to protect the Awá community from further attacks while it welcomed the announcement made by the Colombian authorities on Wednesday, committing State investigative bodies to advance criminal investigations into the killings.
Iran: New Judiciary Chief Should Tackle Rights Abuses
(New York) -The new head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Ardishir Larijani, should immediately open an impartial investigation to determine the role of high-ranking officials in attacks on largely peaceful demonstrators and torture of detainees, Human Rights Watch said today.
Malaysia indefinitely postpones caning of woman
Authorities in Malaysia have indefinitely postponed the caning of a Muslim woman convicted of drinking alcohol in public. The postponement was initially until the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. However reports suggest that the sentence is being revised by the Shariah Court of Appeal in the Malaysian State of Pahang.
Welcoming the temporary reprieve, Amnesty International called on the Malaysian government to stop using the penalty of caning altogether.
"This case highlights the epidemic of caning and flogging going on in Malaysia," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director. "Since 2002, more than 35,000 people have been caned or flogged, most of them irregular migrants."
Kartika Sari Devvi Shukarno was to be remanded at the Kajang women’s prison in the state of Pahang from Monday, where she was to be caned within seven days.
According to media reports, she was being driven from her father’s house to the prison, when the van she was in turned around and brought her back.
Authorities in Pahang said on Monday that the delay would run until the month of fasting ends. Monday was the third day of Ramadan.
Kartika Sari Devvi Shukarno, 32, was sentenced to six strokes of the cane for drinking beer in a hotel bar in December 2007. She was also fined RM5,000 (approximately US$ 1,400) by a court administering Islamic Shariah law in the state of Pahang after she pleaded guilty to the offence.
She has not appealed against her sentence. If the caning had gone ahead, she would have been the first woman in Malaysia to be punished in such a way.
In June 2009, the Malaysian government announced that they had sentenced 47,914 migrants to be caned for immigration offences since amendments to its Immigration Act came into force in 2002. At least 34,923 migrants have so far been caned between 2002 and 2008, according to the country’s prison department records.
Amnesty International called for the government to repeal all laws providing for caning and all other forms of corporal punishment.
"Caning is a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and is prohibited under international human rights law," said Sam Zarifi. "The Malaysian government should do all it can to stop this inhumane punishment being used in any circumstance."
Caning is currently used as a supplementary punishment for at least 40 crimes in Malaysia, but this is the first time it has been used against anyone found guilty of violating the country’s religious laws. The Shariah law applies only to Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the country’s 28 million population.
Over 500 families in São Paulo left homeless after forced evictions
More than 500 families in São Paulo, Brazil, are now sleeping under plastic sheeting opposite the remnants of their homes, after they were forcibly evicted by military police on Monday.
Riot police are reported to have used rubber bullets, tear gas and helicopters during the eviction at the Olga Benário encampment in Capão Redondo in the south of São Paulo, early on Monday morning. Witnesses and members of the community stated that residents were unarmed when the large-scale police operation took place.
There were no representatives of state or municipal authorities present nor did the the police try negotiating with the families or offer them alternative housing. The eviction followed more than a year of failed negotiations between the municipal authorities and community representatives and several appeals against the eviction order.
The homeless families had occupied the land for over two years. During that time, they had built simple homes, often wooden shacks, which offered them a base from which to gain employment and bring up their children.
During the eviction, fires broke out across the settlement and there were scenes of panic as residents tried to help children and the elderly escape the conflagration safely. Many families did not have time to clear their houses, losing all their belongings – including personal documents – in the fires and when police bulldozed the remaining shacks.
Eyewitnesses claim that police fired rubber bullets at point blank range against unarmed residents and that the fires that broke out during the eviction were caused by tear gas canisters. Police said that they were responding to residents who were resisting the eviction by erecting barricades, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Three residents were seriously injured during the eviction.
Of the 800 families forcibly evicted, 500, including many elderly, 200 children and babies as young as one month old, remain homeless, living in precarious conditions on land opposite the site of the eviction. They are without food or blankets in cold, wet conditions. After several days’ rain, the site has turned to mud and families have been left exposed to rats and diseases. Fifty police officers are stationed nearby.
Despite repeated pleas from local NGOs, the municipal authorities have offered only mattresses – which were deemed impractical because of the mud – and food. Negotiations continue to secure both emergency assistance and a long term solution to the families’ housing problem.
During two years of negotiations with representatives of the community, the municipal authorities failed to present adequate solutions to address the needs of the families. The best offers made to them, of places in council hostels, provided only short-term accommodation and forced women and children to be separated from their husbands and fathers.
Amnesty International called on the municipal authorities to immediately provide emergency relief including food, water and access to medical assistance to people who have been made homeless as a result of the forced eviction.
The organization called on the authorities to ensure that all the families who were forcibly evicted are provided with adequate alternative accommodation and compensation for all losses and guaranteed the right to an effective remedy.
It also called on the authorities to order an immediate, thorough and independent investigation into the possible use of excessive force by police officers on Monday, with special attention to the failure of those in chain of command responsibility to ensure the protection of the evicted families.
A Flickr gallery of images taken during the forced eviction at Olga Benário
Colombia: Investigate Massacre in Southern Region
(Washington, DC) – The Colombian government should ensure a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation of the killings of 12 members of the Awá indigenous community, and take immediate measures to protect the community, Human Rights Watch said today.
Uzbekistan: New Abuse of Jailed Dissident
(New York) – Uzbek authorities should promptly investigate new allegations of abuse against a political prisoner, Yusuf Jumaev, and ensure that his family is permitted regular visits, Human Rights Watch said today.
Remembering the world’s disappeared in 2009
Rosendo Radilla was 60 when he was forcibly disappeared in August 1974. A social activist and former mayor of Atoyac municipality, Guerrero state, Mexico, he was last seen in a military barracks, days after he was detained at a roadblock. Fellow detainees reported that he had been tortured.
As in other enforced disappearance cases, successive Mexican governments have refused to clarify what happened to Rosendo Radilla. But his family also refused to give up and took his case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This year, they hope that the court ruling will force the Mexican government to tell them the truth and ensure their right to justice.
"People ask ‘why don’t you forgive?’", says Rosendo Radilla’s daughter Tita Radilla Martinez. "Because they don’t tell me what they did to my father. Is he dead or alive? I don’t know. I remember he would often feel cold. When he was detained I thought about that. Is he cold, hungry or thirsty? Is he in pain? How is he? We’ve spent our whole life like this. They say ‘Don’t reopen the wound’. ‘Reopen’? The wound is open, it never healed."
All around the world, families are waiting to find out what happened to those loved ones who have been taken away from them by agents of the state or by people acting with its support or acquiescence.
Friends and relatives have no means to find out what has happened to them. The disappeared are beyond the protection of the law. Anything could happen to them. Many are tortured. Many are killed.
Sunday 30 August marks the 26th International Day of the Disappeared. Every year, Amnesty International, along with other NGOs, families associations and grassroots groups, remembers the disappeared and demands justice for victims of enforced disappearances through activities and events.
Governments use enforced disappearance as a tool of repression to silence dissent and eliminate political opposition, as well as to persecute ethnic, religious and political groups.
More than 3,000 ethnic Albanians were the victims of enforced disappearances during the armed conflict in Kosovo in 1999. These were at the hands of the Serbian police, paramilitary and military forces. More than 800 Serbs, Roma and others were abducted by armed ethnic Albanian groups. Some 1,900 families in Kosovo and Serbia are still waiting to find out what happened to their relatives.
Enforced disappearances often take place in connection with counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism operations. Chechnya, which tried to secede from the Russian Federation in 1991, has since been ravaged by two armed conflicts and a counter-terror operation. Both Russian federal forces and Chechen law enforcement officials have been implicated in enforced disappearances, which run into the thousands.
In the Philippines, over 1,600 people have disappeared since the 1970s, mostly during counter-insurgency operations against left-leaning or secessionist groups.
James Balao, an Indigenous Peoples’ rights activist and researcher, disappeared in September 2008, while driving to visit his family in La Trinidad, Benguet province.
He was stopped and bundled into a white van by armed and uniformed men claiming to be police officers. Eye-witnesses signed affidavits describing his capture and are now in hiding in fear of being persecuted.
The families and friends of those who disappear are left in an anguish of uncertainty, unable to grieve and go on with their lives. Chief Ebrima Manneh, a Gambian journalist, was arrested in July 2006 for trying to publish a BBC article critical of the Gambian government. His whereabouts remain unknown despite a landmark ruling by a West African regional court ordering the Gambian government to release him and pay damages. Ebrima Manneh’s mother says she finds it hard to enjoy anything because her son is constantly on her mind. The family told Amnesty International that they felt increasingly isolated because other people were afraid to associate with them. They also face hardship because the depended on Ebrima Manneh’s salary.
To combat enforced disappearance, in 2006 the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Once entered into force, the Convention will be an effective way to help prevent enforced disappearances, establish the truth about this crime, punish the perpetrators and provide reparations to the victims and their families
The Convention’s definition of enforced disappearance is:
"The arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons, or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law."
The Convention addresses the violations linked to an enforced disappearance and the problems facing those who try to investigate and hold perpetrators to account. It also recognizes the families’ rights to know the truth about the fate of a disappeared person and to obtain reparations.
The Convention obliges states to protect witnesses and to hold any person involved in an enforced disappearance criminally responsible. It also requires states to institute stringent safeguards for people deprived of their liberty; to search for the disappeared person and, if they have died, to locate, respect and return the remains.
The Convention also requires states to prosecute alleged perpetrators present in their territory, regardless of where they may have committed the crime,unless they decide to extradite them to another state or surrender them to an international criminal court.
A Committee on Enforced Disappearances will oversee the Convention’s implementation and will review complaints from individuals and states.
The Convention is now only a few ratifications away from entering into force. Amnesty International calls on all governments that have not done so already to ratify the Convention as soon as possible. Ratification will send a powerful signal that enforced disappearances will not be tolerated and will give those searching for their loved ones a much needed new tool.
CIA detention programme: Criminal investigations long overdue
US Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement on Tuesday that he has ordered a "preliminary review" into some interrogations of some detainees in the secret detention programme operated by the CIA after the attacks of 11 September 2001, while a welcome first step, does not go far enough, Amnesty International said.
"The USA needs to ensure that every case of torture is submitted for prosecution, whether or not perpetrators claim to have been following orders, and those who authorized or ordered the commission of torture or other criminal abuse of detainees must also be brought to justice," said Rob Freer, Amnesty International’s researcher on the USA. “The USA should also establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate all aspects of the USA’s detention practices in what the previous administration called the ‘war on terror’", he said.
"The establishment and operation of such a commission, however, must not be used to block or delay the prosecution of any individuals against whom there is already sufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing."
The Attorney General’s announcement came on the same day that a 2004 review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation activities by the CIA Inspector General was released as part of Freedom of Information Act litigation. Suppressed for more than five years, the report covers the period between September 2001 and October 2003. Parts of it remain Top Secret and have been redacted from the published version.
"The Attorney General’s announcement is unquestionably a significant step forward from the years of total denial and the consequent climate of near-zero accountability or remedy that has prevailed to date," said Rob Freer.
"But it is not nearly enough to satisfy US obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law, including the most basic notions of accountability and remedy for gross and systematic human rights violations."
Allegations of torture, enforced disappearance and other crimes under international law committed as part of the CIA detention programme have been in the public realm for years. No one has been prosecuted for authorizing or committing these crimes.
It is over four years since the leaking of a Department of Justice memorandum written for the CIA in mid-2002, arguing among other things that "under the current circumstances" necessity or self-defence could justify interrogation methods amounting to torture.
The third anniversary of President George W Bush’s speech confirming the existence of the secret detention programme, effectively admitting that the USA had been conducting a programme of enforced disappearance, is fast approaching.
The Attorney General’s announcement comes on the heels of fresh allegations by unnamed CIA sources to ABC News last week that Lithuania hosted a secret prison where terrorism suspects were detained and interrogated by the CIA.
Poland and Romania have also been named as having provided detention facilities to the CIA for use as secret prisons. The Polish government has an ongoing investigation into the presence of secret CIA interrogation sites on its territory and the Lithuanian government pledged this week to commence a parliamentary inquiry into allegations that such a facility existed outside Vilnius until late 2005. Romania continues to deny that it conspired with the US to host a secret prison on its territory, but has failed to adequately investigate those charges.
A year and a half ago, the then CIA Director, General Michael Hayden, confirmed that "water-boarding", a torture technique under which the perception of drowning is induced in the victim, had been among the "enhanced" techniques used against detainees in CIA custody. It is four months since it was revealed that Abu Zubaydah had been subjected to waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed some 183 times in March 2003.
"The USA has a basic legal obligation, expressly provided for by treaties such as the UN Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, not to look away from crimes such as torture and enforced disappearance but rather to bring the full force of the criminal justice system to bear upon them," said Rob Freer. "Refusing to bring to justice perpetrators of torture is simply not tenable if the USA is to live up to its obligations."