Kategorie: Humans

In response to the arbitrary arrests and detentions of members of the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC) and the wave of police violence during the demonstrations in Conakry on 28 July that left five dead and at least three more injured by gunfire, Fabien Offner, a researcher in Amnesty International’s West and Central Africa office, said:

The Guinean authorities must put a stop to this excessive use of force when responding to large-scale demonstrations, including the one that took place on Thursday 28 July when five people lost their lives. The organization is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of those arbitrarily arrested and the dropping of charges against them.”  

Fabien Offner, researcher in Amnesty International's West and Central Africa office

“According to testimonies collected and documented by Amnesty International, the police fired live ammunition at demonstrators as they protested in the streets of Conakry. Amnesty International would remind the authorities that, under international law, the use of force in policing must be strictly necessary and proportional, and that the use of firearms is prohibited unless there is imminent threat of death or serious injury.

“The authorities must furthermore conduct effective, independent and impartial investigations into the suspected cases of gunshot victims and, upon completion of these investigations, prosecute and try those suspected through fair trials in competent, independent, and impartial courts.”

Background

On 28 July, the civil society organisation FNDC organised a demonstration to denounce the unilateral governance of the country. Violence broke out between the police and demonstrators. According to a statement by the authorities, five

On 28 July, FNDC, a civil society organization, convened a demonstration to denounce the unilateral way in which the transition was being managed. Violence broke out between police and demonstrators. According to a statement from the authorities, five people died and several more were arrested, including two members of the FNDC and a leader of the UFR political party.

On 29 July, legal proceedings were commenced against Oumar Sylla alias Foniké Menguè, Ibrahima Diallo et Saikou Yaya Barry for illegal protest, destruction of public and private buildings, incitement of a crowd, assault and battery, obstruction of freedom of movement and complicity, followed by their arrest on the night of 30-31 July. They are currently being held in Conakry civil prison.

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• Beatings, gender-based violence and arbitrary arrests documented
• Myanmar must immediately free all those unjustly detained
• Profound psychological trauma experienced upon release

Authorities in Myanmar’s prisons and interrogation centres routinely subject people detained for resisting the 2021 military coup to torture and other cruel or degrading treatment, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing, more than a year and a half after the power grab shattered the country’s halting transition to civilian rule.

Based on 15 interviews carried out in March 2022 with former detainees, lawyers of prisoners and experts, as well as a review of over 100 news reports, the briefing, 15 Days Felt like 15 Years, documents the horrific experiences of individuals from the moment they are arrested, through their interrogation and imprisonment, and after their release.

Since the 1 February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has arrested more than 14,500 people and killed more than 2,000, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

From showing up without an arrest warrant and forcing confessions through torture or other ill-treatment, to enforceable disappearances, reprisals against relatives, and holding detainees incommunicado from family and legal counsel, military authorities flout the law at every stage of the arrest and detention process.

This was horrifically demonstrated in the unlawful execution of four men in July, including a prominent pro-democracy activist and former lawmaker, following their death sentences by a military court. The executions were the first to be carried out in more than 30 years. More than 70 people remain on death row in Myanmar while 41 have been sentenced to death in absentia, according to AAPP.

“Myanmar has stooped to unimaginable new lows in its vile and brutal treatment of detainees as part of an overall strategy intended to break their spirits and compel people to give up any resistance to the 2021 military coup,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard.  

“But it is having the opposite effect. The Myanmar people remain unbowed even after the litany of violations, including most recently the shameful and despicable executions of Kyaw Min Yu – also known as Ko Jimmy – Phyo Zeya Thaw, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw.”

“As a matter of urgency, Myanmar’s military must free thousands of people languishing in detention simply for exercising their rights, and let them return to their families. The United Nations Security Council must increase the pressure on the Myanmar military with a referral to the International Criminal Court, a global arms embargo and targeted sanctions.”  

Tased and beaten

Amnesty’s research reveals how prison officials kicked and slapped detainees, and also beat them with rifle butts, electrical wires and branches of a palm tree.

Detainees allege they were psychologically tortured with death and rape threats to force confessions or extract information about anti-coup activities. One person was presented with a parcel delivery that contained a fake bomb.

Several former detainees interviewed by Amnesty International observed that other detainees had visible injuries on their bodies, including blood, broken limbs, and swollen faces.

“When they [the police] found us sleeping, they beat us. When they caught us sitting, they beat us…They pointed G3 rifles at our foreheads and threatened that they could kill us anytime,” said one student arrested in the central Magwe Region.

During the interrogation, whenever I used feminine pronouns for myself, they said you are gay, so you must like this and exposed their male genitals in front of me.

One woman heard security forces plunging the head of another detainee in a bucket of water and using a taser on the person several times during interrogation.  

A student activist told Amnesty International that he saw police bang his friend’s head against the wall. Police also used a taser on his genitals and threatened to blow them up with a grenade.  

Ma Kyu, who was arrested in Karenni State for protesting the coup, told Amnesty what a police officer told her after she was detained:

“We can just kill you after the arrest. We do not even need to put you in jail. We can simply shoot you.”

‘They took off my clothes’

Interrogators also committed sexual and gender-based crimes.

Saw Han Nway Oo is a transwoman who was arrested and detained in September 2021 by the military on suspicion of having attended self-defence training. She was taken to the Mandalay Palace interrogation centre, which has become notorious for reports of torture.  

Over three days, she was interrogated at the palace centre and at a police station. She said the interrogators scratched her knees with sharp objects and sprayed methylated spirit over the bleeding wounds. She was not given food or water for three days.

“During the interrogation, whenever I used feminine pronouns for myself, they said you are gay, so you must like this and exposed their male genitals in front of me.”

They also looked at messages with her doctor and asked if she had had a sex-change operation. They then took off her clothes, looked at her naked body and mocked her.

Other LGBTI people also experienced thorough body checks of their private body parts to ‘‘ensure whether they are males or females,” according to one detainee.

Humiliating and invasive body searches may constitute torture or other ill-treatment, particularly for transgender detainees.

Blindfolded and cut off

Arrests are typically conducted during the night. During these night raids, soldiers and police break down doors, beat residents, ransack houses, confiscate electronics such as phones and laptops, and occasionally take valuable items such as jewellery.  

Protest leader Ma Win was arrested while travelling on a passenger bus in Mandalay Region. She was slapped in the face, handcuffed, blindfolded and driven to an unknown location.

During an interrogation lasting more than 24 hours, security forces wearing heavy boots beat and kicked her and repeatedly threatened to kill her.

Lawyers who Amnesty International spoke to described facing difficulties when trying to discover their clients’ whereabouts. At times, they resorted to paying bribes to get basic information.

The prison facilities are crowded, with one person describing staying with 50 people in a cell meant for 10. Detainees also found dead insects and worms in their food.  

Though the experience of detention has exacted a profound psychological toll on those who have survived it, many activists are determined to keep resisting.

“We will never give up,” Saw Han Nway Oo told Amnesty. “We are like phones, we will recharge once we run out of batteries.”

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The New York Police Department (NYPD) has been ordered to disclose thousands of records of how the force procured and used facial recognition technology against Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters, after the New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of Amnesty International and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) on their joint Article 78 lawsuit.

“New Yorkers demanding racial justice have a right to know the full details of NYPD’s use of facial recognition technology during the BLM protests. 

Matt Mahmoudi, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights.

“New Yorkers demanding racial justice have a right to know the full details of NYPD’s use of facial recognition technology during the BLM protests. This ruling recognizes that the NYPD broke the law in withholding this information and is a significant step in holding the NYPD accountable for its use of discriminatory surveillance. It is a damning indictment of the NYPD’s lack of transparency and accountability to the public that it took a lawsuit to achieve this,” said Matt Mahmoudi, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights.

“A ban on facial recognition for mass surveillance is a much-needed first step towards dismantling racist policing in New York. We all have a right to peacefully protest without fear of surveillance.”

New York Supreme Court Judge, Justice Laurence Love, declared on Friday that the NYPD’s withholding of documents and argument that the volume of information would impart a burden on the police department had been “utterly refuted” by Amnesty International. 

Justice Love ordered the NYPD to share 2700 of documents and emails between March 1, 2020, to September 1, 2020, related to procurement and usage of facial recognition surveillance at the BLM protests, upon resubmission of Amnesty’s original FOIL request.  This will enable Amnesty International and S.T.O.P. to thoroughly investigate the NYPD’s procurement and usage of facial recognition technology throughout New York City.

“It was wrong for the NYPD to surveil BLM protesters, and it was wrong to hide the evidence,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn.

“This department systematically hides the ways it watches us, but today the surveillance cover up just won’t work. This ruling was crystal clear: the NYPD broke the law when it hid its records. When the police operate in the shadows and violate oversight laws, it’s not only a threat to public safety, but to democracy. I hope that Mayor Adams’ NYPD quickly complies with the order. New Yorkers deserve to know how political dissent is policed in this city. More importantly, these records can help us prevent more abuses in the future.”

Background

In September 2020, Amnesty International USA filed a public records request under New York’s Freedom of Informational Law (FOIL) to obtain NYPD records on its surveillance of the historic Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020. The request was rejected by the NYPD along with a subsequent appeal. In July 2021, Amnesty International and S.T.O.P, a privacy and civil rights group, announced the lawsuit against the NYPD for refusing to disclose its records.

Facial recognition exacerbates discriminatory policing and prevents the free and safe exercise of peaceful assembly, by acting as a tool of mass surveillance. Black and minority communities are at far greater risk of being targeted.

In February 2022, new research by Amnesty International and partners revealed New Yorkers living in areas at greater risk of stop-and-frisk by police are also more exposed to invasive facial recognition technology. The analysis, part of the global Ban The Scan campaign, showed how the NYPD’s vast surveillance operation particularly affects people already targeted for stop-and-frisk across all five boroughs of New York City. In the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, the research also shows that the higher the proportion of non-white residents, the higher the concentration of facial recognition compatible CCTV cameras.

Amnesty International is calling for a total ban on the use, development, production, sales, and export of facial recognition technology for mass surveillance purposes by both states and the private sector.

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Iranian authorities used a guillotine machine to amputate the fingers of a man convicted of theft on 27 July 2022, Amnesty International can confirm. Pouya Torabi, who is in his late thirties, was transferred on an emergency basis to a hospital immediately after his fingers were cut off in the presence of several officials and a doctor at Tehran’s Evin prison.

Less than two months ago, on 31 May, Iranian authorities also amputated the fingers of Sayed Barat Hosseini, without giving him anaesthetic. He has since been imprisoned in isolation in Evin prison and denied adequate mental and physical health care for infections and trauma suffered after the amputation.

Amputation is judicially-sanctioned torture and, therefore, a crime under international law.

Diana Eltahawy, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa

“These amputations are particularly harrowing displays of the Iranian authorities’ contempt for human rights and dignity. Amputation is judicially-sanctioned torture and, therefore, a crime under international law, and all those who were involved in ordering or implementing these corporal punishments should be prosecuted in fair trials,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“At least eight other prisoners in Iran are currently at risk of having their fingers amputated. With impunity rife in Iran, more and more people will be subjected to this unspeakably cruel punishment unless the international community takes action. We call on all member states of the UN to forcefully condemn and do everything in their power to pressure the Iranian authorities to immediately abolish corporal punishments. We further urge all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to criminally investigate and prosecute Iranian officials suspected of criminal responsibility for such crimes under international law.”

With impunity rife in Iran, more and more people will be subjected to this unspeakably cruel punishment unless the international community takes action.

Diana Eltahawy

Pouya Torabi and Sayed Barat Hosseini were sentenced in separate cases to amputation about three years ago after criminal courts in Semnan and Kermanshah, respectively, convicted them of theft. According to an informed source interviewed by Amnesty International, both amputation sentences were carried out at a clinic inside Evin prison in the presence of multiple officials, including the prosecutor of Tehran, the associate prosecutor (dadyar) of Evin prison, the judge overseeing the implementation of sentences in Evin prison, the head of Evin prison and the chief doctor at the prison medical clinic.

The same source told Amnesty International that before amputating Sayed Barat Hosseini’s fingers, authorities told him he could pay to “freeze” the fingers and then have them surgically reattached. Sayed Barat Hosseini did not have the money to pay for this.

After having his fingers cut off, Sayed Barat Hosseini immediately lost consciousness due to blood loss and severe pain and was transferred to a hospital outside prison. He was returned to prison three days later, before he had recovered from his ordeal, and his wounds became infected. After weeks of being denied adequate treatment, a further trip to hospital followed in mid-July, but he was returned to jail the same day. He has since been held in isolation in Evin prison without contact with the outside world, in an attempt to prevent news of his punishment and current ill health emerging.

Both Sayed Barat Hosseini and Pouya Torabi were transferred to Evin from provincial prisons for the implementation of their amputation sentences. In April, a special guillotine machine was installed in Evin to centralize the implementation of amputation sentences issued across the country.

The victims of judicial amputations in Iran are overwhelmingly from impoverished backgrounds and lack legal representation of their choosing. It is extremely difficult for victims and their families to alert human rights organizations and media of looming amputations due to threats of reprisal from Iranian authorities, who enforce silence and secrecy around the imposition and implementation of amputation sentences.

Amnesty International renews its calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately abolish, in law and in practice, all forms of corporal punishment. They must halt all planned amputations, and grant Pouya Torabi, Sayed Barat Hosseini and all other victims of judicial amputation access to effective remedies and reparation for harm suffered, including restitution, compensation and rehabilitation.

Background

In June 2022, Amnesty International warned that the Iranian authorities were preparing to amputate the fingers of eight other men, including Hadi Rostami, Mehdi Sharfian and Mehdi Shahivand.

According to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre, since January 2000, the Iranian authorities have amputated the fingers of at least 131 men.

Cruel and inhuman corporal punishments constitute torture, which is prohibited under Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a state party. Despite this, Iran’s Islamic Penal Code provides for various corporal punishments amounting to torture, including amputation flogging, blinding, crucifixion and stoning.

The law states that for certain types of theft, those convicted shall “have four fingers on their right hands completely cut off so that only the palm of their hands and their thumbs are left”.

Iranian law requires that a physician be present during the implementation of corporal punishments, in direct violation of ethical guidelines and international standards which expressly prohibit health providers’ involvement in torture.

The Iranian authorities have consistently defended amputation as the best way to deter theft, and have expressed regret that it cannot be practiced in public because of international condemnation.

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Responding to news that a court in Belarus has begun a “conspiracy to seize power” trial against prominent political activists, including the leader of the Belarusian Popular Front party, Ryhor Kastusyou, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said:

“Today, another show trial begins in Minsk with the sole purpose of punishing Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s critics and discouraging any challenge to his repressive policies. Unlike other sham trials which are usually held behind closed doors, this one will be open to the public so that all the world can see it for what it is – a desperate attempt to crush dissent.

Unlike other sham trials which are usually held behind closed doors, this one will be open to the public so that all the world can see it for what it is – a desperate attempt to crush dissent

Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia

“All critics of the Belarusian authorities detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression must be immediately and unconditionally released and all charges against them must be dropped.”

Background

On 29 July, the Minsk Regional Court began hearings in a trial against the leader of the Belarusian Popular Front party Ryhor Kastusyou, political consultant Alyaksandr Fyaduta, lawyer Yury Zyankovich, his former employee Volha Halubovich and Dzyanis Krauchuk, an activist.

Fyaduta and Zyankovich were detained on 12 April 2021 in Moscow and later transferred to Belarus. On the same day, Kastusyou and Halubovich were put behind bars in Minsk followed by Krauchuk on 26 April.

Fyaduta, Zyankovich and Kastusyou are charged with “conspiracy to seize power” under Article 357(1) of the Criminal Code. Zyankovich is additionally charged with “creating of an extremist group” (Article 361-1(1)), “public calls for the seizure of power” (Article 361(3)) and “incitement of social hatred” (Article 130(3)). Halubovich and Krauchuk are charged with “gross violation of public order” (Article 342(1)).

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