On June 7, 2022, the rectorship of the Ankara based Middle East Technical University (METU) sent an email to all students, declaring the campus-based Pride march on June 10, 2022 ‘categorically banned’, threatening the participants with police intervention if the march proceeds.
The rectorship’s action represents an unjustifiable attempt to restrict the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly of METU students and staff and must be reversed.
The U.S. government has allowed gun violence to become a human rights crisis. An average of 109 people are killed every day by gun violence, and Black and Brown communities nationwide suffer disproportionately.
But we know the facts that on key principles of gun safety, Americans are united: In 2021, a Pew Research Center study showed that 81% of Americans support universal background checks.
Amnesty International has analyzed the human rights impact of the gun violence crisis in the U.S. Our reporting examines how all aspects of American life have been compromised in some way by the unfettered access to guns, with no attempts at meaningful national regulation.
No one’s human rights can be considered secure as long as U.S. leaders fail to do anything about gun violence.
Here are four major ways you can help move solutions forward:️
Do you know the origins of Wear Orange Day?
In 2013, Hadiya Pendleton, a fifteen-year-old girl from Chicago, was shot and killed on a playground in her hometown. Soon after this unspeakable tragedy, Hadiya’s childhood friends started commemorating her life by wearing orange each year on her birthday, June 2.
Since then, the movement has grown and spread across the country — and orange has been the defining color of the gun violence prevention movement.
I hope you’ll join us and thousands of others across the country to honor Hadiya’s life and all those whose lives have been cut short by gun violence in the U.S.
Mohamed Imaam Mohamed Imran was 20 years old when he was detained, on May 9, 2019, under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
Three years after his arrest, the now 23-year-old has still not been charged with an offence, and the state has yet to provide any evidence of him committing an internationally recognizable crime.
Mohamed Imran must be immediately released, or promptly charged with recognizable offense, in accordance with international standards.
A Tibetan political prisoner is free. But there’s little reason to celebrate.
According to news reports, Norzin Wangmo, from the eastern Tibetan region of Kham, was released unexpectedly on May 2 in extreme poor health. Because of the torture and abuse she faced in prison, she can barely stand on her own two feet. To make matters worse, she is not allowed to get treatment at a hospital.
What crime did Norzin Wangmo commit to merit such harsh punishment? She shared information about a fellow Tibetan who self-immolated in 2013. For that, Norzin Wangmo was interrogated for about 20 hours, subjected to a secret trial and handed a three-year sentence in May 2020. In short, she did not get a fair trial. But because of China’s denial of access to Tibet, news of her arrest did not reach the Tibetan exile community and the outside world until months later.
Political activist Ebrahim Babaei was forcibly disappeared by Iranian authorities amidst his efforts to flee Iran on 21 December 2021 to escape unjust sentences consisting of imprisonment and flogging.
His fate and whereabouts remain concealed from his family and he is at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Clarence Dixon, a 66-year-old Native American man, is scheduled to be put to death in Arizona on May 11, 2022 for a murder committed in January 1978. He has a long history of serious mental disability, including paranoid schizophrenia, predating the 1978 crime, and impacting his 2007/8 trial.
A recent psychiatric evaluation concludes that he does not have a rational understanding of the reason for or reality of his punishment, which would render his execution unconstitutional and in violation of international law. Amnesty International is urging the Governor to stop this execution and to commute Clarence Dixon’s death sentence.
