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(New York) – The long awaited national prison rape elimination standards issued on May 17, 2012 by the Justice Department, if fully implemented, may end widespread prison rape in the United States, Human Rights Watch said today.

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(Beirut) – Jordanian authorities are about to deport nine detained Eritrean refugees, including a 7-year-old girl, to Yemen where they risk indefinite detention and possibly deportation to persecution in Eritrea.

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Discrimination and persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in South Africa and Cameroon must be halted, Amnesty International said as activists around the world mark the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Instances of harassment, discrimination, persecution, violence and murders committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity are increasing across sub-Saharan Africa.

Political leaders in some countries in Africa not only fail to protect people’s rights not to be discriminated against, but also often used statements or actions to incite discrimination and persecution.

In Cameroon, seven men are currently imprisoned under the laws prohibiting same-sex sexual conduct, while homophobic and transphobic hate crimes are widespread in South Africa, where attacks on LGBTI people are inadequately investigated, creating a climate of impunity for perpetrators.

“It is deeply disturbing that in 2012, people are still being persecuted because of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International’s director for Africa.

“It is high time that the Cameroonian government moves to repeal laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual activity.”

“In South Africa, authorities must ensure that hate crimes against LGBTI people are thoroughly investigated and their constitutional right to equality upheld.”

Since March 2011, 13 people in Cameroon have been arrested under the law criminalizing ‘sexual relations with a person of the same sex’.

Most have been targeted on the grounds of their perceived sexual orientation, rather than on any alleged participation in prohibited consensual acts. In virtually no cases have the police or other eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the alleged sexual acts.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has found that laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual activity are in violation of international human rights law.

In Cameroon, a court in Yaounde sentenced Jean-Claude Roger Mbede to three years in prison under this law in April 2011. Two other men were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in July 2011, while four more men who were arrested in August 2011 remain in detention awaiting trial.

In South Africa, sexual assaults and other physical attacks against LGBTI people are all too common, particularly against those living in townships and rural areas.

In the early hours of 24 April last year, 24-year old lesbian Noxolo Nogwaza was murdered on her way home from a night out with friends. Her attackers raped, repeatedly beat and stabbed her – apparently because of her sexual orientation – before dumping her body in a drainage ditch.

A year after her death, no progress has been made in the investigation into her murder and her killers remain at large.

Noxolo, who was also a human rights defender, lived and died in KwaThema, a township east of Johannesburg in Gauteng Province.

In the last five years, there have been at least 10 cases reported of rape followed by murder of lesbian women in townships in different parts of the country. South African civil society and Amnesty International are campaigning against widespread failure to investigate homophobic and transphobic hate crimes which contributes to a climate of impunity for perpetrators.

A prominent journalist has told Amnesty International how Syrian government forces tortured and detained him in deplorable conditions before deporting him to Jordan on Monday.

Salameh Kaileh, a 57-year-old Jordanian national of Palestinian descent, has lived and worked in the Syrian capital Damascus since 1981.

On 24 April, plain clothes officials from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence arrested him during a raid on his flat in Barzah, a Damascus suburb. Amnesty International considered him to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

“The main reason for my arrest, from what I understood, is a conversation I had on Facebook with a friend outside Syria about my position on the revolution and my opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood and so on,” Kaileh told Amnesty International.

Following his arrest, Kaileh was held at a Syrian Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, where he was insulted and beaten for days. Officers used the falaqa torture method on him, whipping the soles of his feet with a thin bamboo stick.

One unidentified official targeted the journalist’s background by shouting insults against Palestinians.

Throughout his interrogation Kaileh was repeatedly asked about his role in publishing a leftist political publication – he denies any such role, saying he collects the publication for his journalism work.

On 3 May, Kaileh was transferred to another Air Force Intelligence branch, where medical professionals referred him to a military hospital in al-Mezzeh after confirming he bore signs of having been tortured.

While at the military hospital, he faced even more torture than before.

Kaileh and the other patients were crammed in, two or three to a bed, their hands and feet bound and their faces covered with blankets. They were forced to defecate and urinate in the beds.

“Unfortunately, the hospital was much worse than what I was subjected to in prison. It was not a hospital, but a slaughterhouse,” Kaileh said.

“I stayed in this hellish condition for a week … I forced myself not to eat or drink so that I did not urinate in bed. I needed to take medication for a thyroid problem but was not given it.”

During his time in the hospital, Kaileh was subjected to frequent and severe beatings while blindfolded and tied to a bed.

The doctors joined the military officials in shouting insults at the patients, but he was unable to see if they also took part in the beatings.

While in detention, there were serious concerns for Kaileh’s health, as he is required to take daily medication since recovering from throat cancer in 2004.

On 10 May, Kaileh was taken from the hospital to a Department of Immigration branch. Officials there and at several other ministry offices interrogated him before deporting him by aeroplane to the Jordanian capital Amman on Monday.

Kaileh said he wants to return to Syria and plans to file a lawsuit against his deportation.

To Amnesty International’s knowledge, Kaileh did not take part in the ongoing popular protests in Syria and his detention and torture by the Syrian authorities were solely in relation to his political writing and journalism.

Kaileh was previously arrested in 1991 and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment in Damascus for his alleged membership of the Party for Communist Action.

“Salameh Kaileh’s dreadful ordeal shows the extent to which the Syrian authorities will go to attempt to crush dissenting voices,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Programme Director.

“His horrendous account mirrors the reports we’ve received about thousands of detainees being tortured and ill-treated in detention – often in extremely poor prison conditions – amid the Syrian government’s crackdown over the past 15 months.

“This is not the first time that we have documented the involvement of doctors in human rights violations. They should be doing their best to restore people to health rather than allowing patients to be held in appalling conditions and subjected to torture in hospitals.”

Amnesty International published a report in October 2011, Syria: Health crisis: Syrian government targets the wounded and health workers, which documented the abuse of perceived government opponents by medical staff, health personnel and security officials in several government-run or military hospitals.

Since the beginning of widespread, largely peaceful pro-reform protests in Syria in February 2011, a crackdown on dissent has led to thousands of suspected opponents being arrested. During that time, many, if not most, detainees have been tortured and at least 350 people have died in custody.

In the year since then, although peaceful demonstrations have continued, the unrest has turned increasingly violent, with armed opposition groups, many loosely under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) carrying out attacks mainly against Syrian security forces. The FSA and other armed individuals are also reported to have carried out abuses, although not on the same scale as those by government forces.

Amnesty International has obtained the names of more than 9,200 people reported to have died or been killed in connection with the unrest since mid-March 2011. Many of those were killed amid the protests or during army incursions into villages and towns, as a result of extrajudicial executions, a shoot-to-kill policy and indiscriminate shooting/shelling of residential areas.

Members of the security forces have also been killed, some by defecting soldiers who have taken up arms against the government.

Despite the presence of a small UN observer mission to monitor the situation, the violence has continued in recent weeks, with ongoing clashes reported between Syrian government forces and armed groups including the FSA.

Amnesty International has repeatedly called for the situation in Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court, for an international arms embargo to be imposed on the country, and for President Bashar al-Assad and his close associates to have their assets frozen.

The organization is also calling for a more robust and adequately resourced UN observer mission with a clear human rights monitoring component.

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(Beirut) – Bahraini authorities should drop politically motivated criminal charges against Nabeel Rajab, a human rights activist, and release him immediately.

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(Moscow) – Police arrested hundreds of people following clashes with demonstrators at a major protest rally in Moscow on May 6, 2012, the day before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as presi

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Two thousand Palestinians held in Israeli prisons suspended a month-long hunger strike after Israel agreed several measures to improve prison conditions – a move seen by Amnesty International as a step toward compliance with Israel’s human rights obligations.

Under the Egyptian-brokered deal, Israel has agreed to end solitary confinement for 19 prisoners – held in isolation for up to 10 years – and lift a ban on family visits for prisoners from the Gaza Strip, among other things.

“We hope that these commitments signal a new approach by the Israeli authorities founded on respect for prisoners’ human rights,” said Ann Harrison, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“However, 2,000 prisoners and detainees should not have had to put their health on the line in order to ensure respect for their human rights which the Israeli authorities have been violating for years.”

Amnesty International has repeatedly called for a resumption of family visits for prisoners from Gaza, which were completely suspended in June 2007.

”These repeated violations by the Israel Prison Service (IPS) against hunger-striking prisoners require a full, independent and impartial investigation, and those responsible must be held accountable,” said Ann Harrison.

“Such prolonged solitary confinement – based on information withheld from the prisoners and their lawyers – is a violation of their rights to due process and constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Under the agreement, these prisoners are expected to be moved to cells where they will have contact with other inmates by the end of this week.

“Those in the Ramleh IPS medical facility who have been on hunger strike for between six to 11 weeks must be transferred to a civilian hospital immediately until their lives are no longer in danger and must be treated humanely at all times,” said Ann Harrison.

Administrative detention is a procedure under which detainees are held under military orders without charge or trial for periods of up to six months which can be renewed indefinitely. Based on regulations initially passed under the British Mandate, Israel has used the measure against its citizens since 1948, and since 1967, against thousands of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Administrative detention orders are based on secret information which is not disclosed to the detainees or their lawyers, denying detainees the opportunity to effectively exercise their right to mount a legal challenge.

At the end of April 2012, some 308 Palestinians were held as administrative detainees according to IPS statistics. Some are held as prisoners of conscience, held solely for their peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression, association or assembly.

For many years, Amnesty International has urged Israel to end the practice and to release administrative detainees unless they are charged with a recognizable criminal offence and promptly tried according to international standards.

“Israel’s reported commitment under the deal not to renew the detention orders of current administrative detainees unless significant new intelligence information is presented does not fulfil these recommendations, but would – if implemented – be a first step towards meeting its international human rights obligations,” said Ann Harrison.

Amnesty International and local human rights organizations have documented repeated violations by the IPS against hunger-striking detainees since administrative detainee Khader Adnan began a hunger strike in December 2011.

These include punishing detainees on hunger strike by placing them in solitary confinement and imposing punitive fines; denying them urgent medical care; preventing access to independent doctors and lawyers; banning family visits; physical assaults; and forcibly administering treatment including injections against the detainees’ will.

Amnesty International is also concerned that in recent weeks Israeli forces and police are reported to have used excessive force against non-violent protesters demonstrating in solidarity with the prisoners on hunger strike in both the West Bank and Israel.

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(Rabat) – The failure of Moroccan authorities to follow through on investigating the beating by police of a Human Rights Watch research assistant is a case study of impunity for police violence, Human Rights Watch said today.

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(New York) – President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan should not sign a bill creating a national human rights commission until it is revised to authorize investigations of the military and the intelligence agencies for human rights violations.

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The perpetrators of a car bomb attack on 15 May, which killed two people and injured more than 50 in the Colombian capital Bogotá, demonstrated a complete and reprehensible disregard for human life and must be brought to justice, Amnesty International said today.

The explosion injured former interior minister Fernando Londoño, and killed his driver and bodyguard, and more than 50 passers-by were also injured.

No group has yet claimed responsibility and the Colombian authorities have thus far refused to blame any organization.

“Whoever was responsible for these attacks should be identified and brought to trial. Any criminal investigation must be impartial and independent, and the results made public,” said Marcelo Pollack, Colombia researcher at Amnesty International.

“Should investigations into yesterday’s bombing uncover the responsibility of a party to the armed conflict, this would constitute a serious breach of international humanitarian law, which prohibits direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks which may result in civilian casualties,” said Marcelo Pollack.