Human rights lawyer Mohamed el-Baqer and activist Alaa Abdel Fattah have been arbitrarily detained for 20 months without trial over unfounded terrorism-related accusations. They are held in a maximum-security prison in inhumane conditions and subjected to discriminatory and punitive treatment.
Iranian women’s rights activist, Saba Lord Afshari, was arrested in June 2019 for her activism against Iran’s enforced dress code, including compulsory hijab that all women in Iran must don in public. Though initially sentenced to 24-years in prison for “encouraging corruption and prostitution” and “propaganda against the state” her sentence was reduced to 7.5 years.
Any punishment for the simple act of removing her headscarf in public and for advocating for women’s freedom is an affront to basic human rights.
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Quintin Jones’ execution is scheduled for May 19, 2021. He is on death row in Texas, USA in connection with the 1999 murder of his 83-year-old great aunt when he was just 20 years old.
The sentencing jury was presented with a since discredited theory regarding his “future dangerousness”, which proved to be a key factor leading to his death sentence.
His first postconviction attorney filed both the state habeas application and federal habeas petition late, which prevented meaningful review of his case. The victim’s sister and great-nephew have called for clemency for Jones. We urge Governor Abbott to grant clemency.
Nader Mahmoud Mohammed Al-Thom, from the al-Salatin neighbourhood in Beit Lahia, told Amnesty how his home was attacked without warning shortly after midnight on 15 May;
“There was no warning missile, no warning call, the house was bombed, and we were inside… Thank God no one was badly hurt but we lost our house. We are now in the street; we do not know where to go or what to do.”
Since 10 May, Israeli forces have carried out airstrikes killing at least 198 Palestinians, including 58 children.
The systemic discrimination, dispossession and displacement of Palestinians is at the root of what we see today.
In recent weeks Palestinians have been peacefully protesting the threatened forced evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. The threatened evictions are to make way for Israeli settlers — a war crime and crime under international humanitarian law.
Those protesters have been met with tear gas, stun grenades and excessive force from Israeli security forces.
The international community is too often silent when faced with Israel’s violations of human rights, and the Israeli authorities suffer no consequences for their crimes. Israel’s allies like America and Australia have a responsibility to pressure Israel to end these systematic violations against Palestinians.
We need to show the Australian and American authorities that we won’t stay silent until they speak up.
Thank you!
The eight members of the Municipal Committee for the Defence of Common and Public Assets (CMDBCP, in Spanish) continue in prison in Honduras after more than 19 months.
Seven share the same cell in Olanchito prison, Yoro department (North), and one is being held in La Ceiba Penal Center, Atlántida department (North). The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared their detention as arbitrary and asked for their immediate release.
We urge authorities to review the preventive detention of all eight defenders and take all necessary measures to immediately release them.
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Human rights lawyer Chang Weiping was officially charged with “subversion of state power” on April 16, 2021, six months after police officers took him away for publicly detailing incidents of torture that he experienced during an earlier detention in January 2020. He is currently being held incommunicado at Feng County Detention Centre.
Given his isolation and the reports of the torture Chang previously endured, there are grave concerns for his physical and mental wellbeing.
Below is a press release that Amnesty International issued today about how Iranian authorities are banning members of the persecuted Baha’i minority from burying their loved ones in empty plots at a cemetery near Tehran that they have used for decades, instead insisting they bury them between existing graves within the cemetery or at the nearby Kharavan mass grave site for victims of the 1988 prison massacres.
The Kharavan mass grave site, believed to contain the remains of up to several hundred victims of the mass enforced disappearances and secret extrajudicial executions of 1988, has been bulldozed multiple times in recent decades gaining national significance in the struggle for truth and justice. By pressuring Baha’i families to bury their loved ones there, Iranian authorities are putting the mass grave site at further risk of destruction, tampering with forensic evidence, and continuing to commit the crimes against humanity of enforced disappearance, torture and other inhumane acts against the families of those forcibly disappeared and secretly killed.
The press release is also available online at the following link: