Amnesty International, USA, March 2, 2020.
Today Amnesty International issued Human rights in the Middle East and North Africa: A review of 2019, which describes how governments across the Middle East and North Africa displayed a chilling determination to crush protests with ruthless force and trample over the rights of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets to call for social justice and political reform during 2019.
Instead of listening to protesters’ grievances, governments in the Middle East and North Africa have once again resorted to relentless repression to silence peaceful critics both on the streets and online. In Iraq and Iran alone, the authorities’ use of lethal force led to hundreds of deaths in protests; in Lebanon police used unlawful and excessive force to disperse protests; and in Algeria the authorities used mass arrests and prosecutions to crack down on protesters. Across the region, governments have arrested and prosecuted activists for comments posted online, as activists turned to social media channels to express their dissent.
