On 4 October 2020, Mohammed al-Sulaiti, a Qatari citizen, was arbitrarily detained after vocally criticizing his government on Twitter.
This is the second time he has been arbitrarily detained, having spent five months in detention in 2018 with no charges.
He was then put under travel ban with no legal justification. After protesting the ban on Twitter, he has again been detained without charge.
On 2 October 2020, five activists who were charged for “unauthorized gathering” were granted a discharge not amounting to acquittal (DNAA) by the Ipoh Magistrate.
The charges stemmed from the activists’ participation in a peaceful picket on 2 June 2020 by a government hospital cleaners’ union against a cleaning services company.
During the picket, they called out the alleged unfair treatment of union members and insufficient personal protective equipment for cleaners.
Nassima is in prison for her work defending women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. She goes months without seeing her children or lawyer.
Nassima has dedicated her life to campaigning for human rights, including the rights of women and minorities in Saudi Arabia. She has bravely campaigned for an end to the male guardianship system and the driving ban on women.
JOIN US THIS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15 FOR A BOOK LAUNCH!
Amnesty International USA cordially invites you to a discussion with William F. Schulz and Sushma Raman, the authors of new book entitled The Coming Good Society: Why New Realities Demand New Rights.
Drawing on their vast experience as human rights advocates, William Schulz and Sushma Raman challenge us to think hard about how rights evolve with changing circumstances and what rights will look like ten, twenty, or fifty years from now. The authors argue that those who would hold that rights are static and immutable must adapt to new realities or risk being consigned to irrelevance.
Sign up now to join this important conversation and share the event invitation! Tickets available now for this online event.
William F. Schulz, a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, was the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA from 1994 to 2006.
Sushma Raman is Executive Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She was a Program Officer with the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation focused on human rights, philanthropic collaboratives, and social justice initiatives.
We look forward to having you join us!
For more than 40 years, Amnesty International USA has hosted regional conferences in cities across the country. This year, given the pandemic, we will be hosting one virtual Activism Conference over 3-days, November 13 — 15, 2020.
This year’s conference theme, Activism is the Art of Disruption, is a call to action. As we continue to challenge bad public policies that violate human rights, we need to increase our activism and build people power!
We will disrupt human rights abuse. We will disrupt unjust systems. And, we will win!
Our program is full of transformative human rights education and skills-building sessions alongside virtual networking opportunities. We’re so excited to have you join us! Take a look at our agenda, register for our conference and join us on the right side of history.
Iran has released Narges Mohammadi, a prominent human rights activist who campaigned against the death penalty.
Mohammadi, arrested in May 2015, was freed late on October 7 after her 10-year prison sentence had been reduced.
Judiciary official Sadegh Niaraki was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency as saying that Mohammadi was released based on a law that allows a prison sentence to be commuted if the related court agrees.
The 2020 Right Livelihood Laureates are:
- Imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh from Iran - Civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson from the US - Indigenous rights and environmental activist Lottie Cunningham Wren from Nicaragua - Pro-democracy activist Ales Bialiatski and the non-governmental organization Human Rights Centre “Viasna” from Belarus. The Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” has been honoring courageous changemakers since 1980.
As COVID-19 runs rampant in USA family detention centers, immigration authorities continue to lock up nearly ninety families who travelled to the US seeking safety from violence and persecution in their home countries.
As of 6 August, at least 130 detained family members and facility staff tested positive for COVID-19. In July, a judge ordered authorities to release children because of COVID-19, but she did not have jurisdiction over parents.
Authorities refused to release them together. Releasing children but continuing to detain parents constitutes family separation. We demand authorities release all families together immediately to protect them from the pandemic.
The situation in the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh is bad. Really bad.
Nearly one million Rohingya refugees are living in threadbare camps after they fled their homes in Myanmar due to the military’s crimes against humanity.
Conditions have always been bad at the camp, and COVID-19 has made them worse. These conditions will only improve when Bangladeshi authorities give the Rohingya a voice in the decisions that affect them.