The Angolan authorities are tightening their grip on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association by preventing civil society meetings from taking place ahead of the general election in August, Amnesty International said today.
The harassment and intimidation of activists and repression of civil society organizations, who are merely exercising their rights and trying to hold a conference, is a worrying development for human rights in Angola
Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International's Director for East and Southern Africa
On 21 May, Angolan police prevented two NGOs — Omunga, and Associação para Desenvolvimento da Cultura e Direitos Humanos (ADCDH) — from holding a conference on peace building. The police blocked the entrance to Hotel Maiombe in Cabinda to prevent attendees from entering, saying they were following orders from their superiors.
“The harassment and intimidation of activists and repression of civil society organizations, who are merely exercising their rights and trying to hold a conference, is a worrying development for human rights in Angola — especially ahead of the August election,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southern Africa.
By preventing this conference from taking place, the authorities are showing their growing intolerance of criticism.
Deprose Muchena
“By harassing and intimidating the activists and preventing this conference from taking place, the authorities are showing their growing intolerance of criticism. The repression of independent civil society organizations, debate and critical views on issues such as the economy and human rights must stop.
“The muzzling of this civil society conference is reminiscent of previous election years, when human rights came under repeated attack. The Angolan authorities must stop targeting activists and civil society groups and instead respect, protect and promote their human rights and provide a conducive environment for them to operate.”
Guest speakers scheduled to present at the meeting included the economist Belchor Tati, human rights lawyer Arao Tempo, Father Celestino Epalanga of the Catholic Church, and Rev. Dr. Daniel Ntongi-Nzinga, a peace building activist and pastor of the Baptist Church.
The muzzling of this civil society conference is reminiscent of previous election years, when human rights came under repeated attack. The Angolan authorities must stop targeting activists and civil society groups and instead respect, protect and promote their human rights and provide a conducive environment for them to operate.
Deprose Muchena
The conference was not being held at a public venue. It was a private event that was taking place in a private venue. By banning attendees from entering, the authorities violated the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, which is enshrined in the Angolan Constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to which Angola is a state party. Angola authorities must end the repression and harassment of independent Angolan civil society.
Background
Cabinda, which is Angola’s most militarized province, tightly restricts civic space. The province has been mired in an armed conflict between government security forces and the rebel group Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC).
Restrictions on the operations of civil society organizations and civic space have been increasing in Angola in recent months. On 9 April 2022, the police arbitrarily arrested 26 young people who were planning a march to demand the release of political prisoners. They were accused of disobeying and insulting the police.
All of the 26 detainees were eventually released, although the two organizers were convicted and made to pay fines.
Iran records highest known execution figure since 2017
Despite regression, 2021 global execution figure represents the second-lowest figure Amnesty International has recorded since at least 2010
Easing of Covid-19 restrictions sees surge in number of recorded death sentences
Almost 90 known to have been sentenced to death under martial law in Myanmar
2021 saw a worrying rise in executions and death sentences as some of the world’s most prolific executioners returned to business as usual and courts were unshackled from Covid-19 restrictions, Amnesty International said today in its annual review of the death penalty.
At least 579 executions were known to have been carried out across 18 countries last year—a 20% increase on the recorded total for 2020. Iran accounted for the biggest portion of this rise, executing at least 314 people (up from at least 246 in 2020), its highest execution total since 2017. This was due in part to a marked increase in drug-related executions—a flagrant violation of international law which prohibits use of the death penalty for crimes other than those involving intentional killing. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia more than doubled its number of executions, a grim trend that continued in 2022 with the execution of 81 people in a single day in March.
“After the drop in their execution totals in 2020, Iran and Saudi Arabia once again ramped up their use of the death penalty last year, including by shamelessly violating prohibitions put in place under international human rights law. Their appetite for putting the executioner to work has also shown no sign of abating in the early months of 2022,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
Executing countries in 2017-2021
As Covid-19 restrictions that had previously delayed judicial processes were steadily lifted in many parts of the world, judges handed down at least 2,052 death sentences in 56 countries—a close to 40% increase on 2020—with big spikes seen in countries including Bangladesh (at least 181, from at least 113), India (144, from 77) and Pakistan (at least 129, from at least 49).
“Instead of building on the opportunities presented by hiatuses in 2020, a minority of states demonstrated a troubling enthusiasm to choose the death penalty over effective solutions to crime, showing a callous disregard for the right to life even amid urgent and ongoing global human rights crises,” said Agnès Callamard.
Despite these setbacks, the total number of recorded executions in 2021 constitutes the second-lowest figure, after 2020, that Amnesty International has recorded since at least 2010.
As in previous years, the recorded global totals for death sentences and executions do not include the thousands of people that Amnesty International believes to have been sentenced to death and executed in China, as well as the extensive number of executions believed to have taken place in North Korea and Viet Nam. Secretive state practices and restricted access to information for these three countries made it impossible to accurately monitor executions, while for several other countries, recorded totals must be regarded as minimum figures.
Instead of building on the opportunities presented by hiatuses in 2020, a minority of states demonstrated a troubling enthusiasm to choose the death penalty over effective solutions to crime, showing a callous disregard for the right to life even amid urgent and ongoing global human rights crises,
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General
“China, North Korea and Viet Nam continued to shroud their use of the death penalty behind layers of secrecy, but, as ever, the little we saw is cause for great alarm,” said Agnès Callamard.
Iran maintains a mandatory death penalty for possession of certain types and quantities of drugs—with the number of executions recorded for drug-related offences rising more than five-fold to 132 in 2021 from 23 the previous year. The known number of women executed also rose from nine to 14, while the Iranian authorities continued their abhorrent assault on children’s rights by executing three people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, contrary to their obligations under international law.
As well as the rise in executions seen in Saudi Arabia (65, from 27 in 2020), significant increases on 2020 were seen in Somalia (at least 21, from at least 11) South Sudan (at least 9, from at least 2) and Yemen (at least 14, from at least 5). Belarus (at least 1), Japan (3) and UAE (at least 1) also carried out executions, having not done so in 2020.
Significant increases in death sentences compared to 2020 were recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (at least 81, from at least 20), Egypt (at least 356, from at least 264), Iraq (at least 91, from at least 27), Myanmar (at least 86, from at least 1), Viet Nam (at least 119 from at least 54), and Yemen (at least 298, from at least 269).
Death penalty as a tool of state repression
In several countries in 2021, the death penalty was deployed as an instrument of state repression against minorities and protestors, with governments showing an utter disregard for safeguards and restrictions on the death penalty established under international human rights law and standards.
An alarming increase in the use of the death penalty under martial law was recorded in Myanmar, where the military transferred the authority to try civilian cases to military tribunals, which conducted summary proceedings without the right to appeal. Close to 90 people were arbitrarily sentenced to death, several in absentia, in what was widely perceived as a targeted campaign against protestors and journalists.
Egyptian authorities continued to resort to torture and mass executions, often following unfair trials before Emergency State Security Courts, while in Iran, death sentences were disproportionately used against members of ethnic minorities for vague charges such as “enmity against God”. At least 19% of the recorded executions (61) were members of the Baluchi ethnic minority, who constitute only around 5% of Iran’s population.
Victims of Saudi Arabia’s deeply flawed justice system included Mustafa al-Darwish, a young Saudi Arabian man from the Shi’a minority who was accused of participating in violent anti-government protests. He was executed on 15 June following a grossly unfair trial based on a “confession” extracted through torture.
Positive signs towards global abolition
Despite these alarming developments, positive signs of a global trend toward abolition continued throughout 2021. For the second consecutive year, the number of countries known to have executed people was the lowest since Amnesty International began keeping records.
Trend towards abolition
In Sierra Leone, an Act which abolishes the death penalty for all crimes was unanimously adopted by parliament in July, although it is yet to come into effect. In December, Kazakhstan adopted legislation to abolish the death penalty for all crimes, which came into effect in January 2022. The Government of Papua New Guinea embarked on a national consultation on the death penalty, which resulted in the adoption of an abolition bill in January 2022, which is yet to come into force. At the end of the year, the Government of Malaysia announced that it would table legislative reforms on the death penalty in the third quarter of 2022. And, in Central African Republic and Ghana, lawmakers started legislative processes to abolish the death penalty, which remain ongoing.
In the US, Virginia became the 23rd abolitionist state and first southern state to have abolished the death penalty, while, for the third consecutive year, Ohio rescheduled or halted all set executions. The new US administration also established a temporary moratorium on federal executions in July. 2021 marked the lowest number of executions in the US since 1988.
Gambia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan continued to observe official moratoriums on executions.
The minority of countries that still retain the death penalty are on notice: a world without state-sanctioned killing is not only imaginable, it is within reach and we will continue to fight for it.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General
“The minority of countries that still retain the death penalty are on notice: a world without state-sanctioned killing is not only imaginable, it is within reach and we will continue to fight for it. We will continue to expose the inherent arbitrariness, discrimination, and cruelty of this punishment until no one will be left under its shadow. It is high time the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is consigned to the history books,” said Agnès Callamard.
In February 2021, Aruká Juma, the last remaining member of the Indigenous Juma people, died from Covid-19 complications. Having survived displacement from his tribal lands and the extermination of his people, he finally succumbed to the pandemic that spread rapidly through Brazil’s Indigenous communities.
Similar scenes unfurled across much of Latin America and the Caribbean: the virus spreading like wildfire and affecting the most vulnerable because governments did not do enough to protect them. As Amnesty International and the Center for Economic and Social Rights noted in the report “Unequal and Lethal” last month, the region has accounted for almost a third of the global deaths from Covid-19, despite only representing about 8% of the world’s population.
Of course, it is far from the only region to have been ravaged by the pandemic and rampant inequalities. Leaders all over the world have failed to deliver on promises to “build back better” or oversee a “global reset” of the economy, thus entrenching the systemic inequalities that have exacerbated the impact of the pandemic – instead of reducing them.
But as the world’s most unequal region, the devastation in Latin America and the Caribbean has been particularly pronounced. Structural inequalities and systemic discrimination have afflicted the region for far too long, with the richest 1% holding almost a quarter of total income, while the poorest 20% hold less than 5%. The pandemic has further jeopardized access to economic and social rights, including the right to health and a decent standard of living, with an additional 16 million people falling into extreme poverty in the region in the last two years.
Deeply ingrained and intersecting forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, mean that certain groups who have been historically and systematically denied their rights have also borne the brunt of the pandemic. Women are enduring the worst part of the labor crisis that has left millions without means of subsistence: besides having more precarious jobs without social security, many women have also had to undertake significantly more unpaid care and domestic work due to the closure of schools and other spaces. Meanwhile, in the face of decades of negligence from the region’s governments to provide essential, culturally acceptable health services, Indigenous peoples have had to resort to community-based solutions to protect themselves from the health and social crises.
Being born with a certain skin colour or growing up in a particular postcode should not condemn you to a life of poverty or determine your chances of dying from Covid. Overturning the legacy of hundreds of years of colonial injustices is not a simple task, but governments can take an important step towards equality through more progressive taxation models and guaranteeing universal access to health care.
Being born with a certain skin colour or growing up in a particular postcode should not condemn you to a life of poverty or determine your chances of dying from Covid
Agnes Callamard and Erika Guevara-Rosas
According to the Pan American Health Organization, states must invest at least 6% of GDP in health to achieve universal coverage. Besides Uruguay and Argentina, none of the other 15 countries analysed in “Unequal and Lethal” achieve this minimum. As a result, more than a third of total health expenditure in the region comes from out-of-pocket expenditure from households. For millions of people, a serious disease or health-related problem could endanger their livelihood and push them to the brink of poverty.
Most countries will not be able to fulfil their obligations on social and economic rights without major tax reforms to fund their policies. Taxes – and the accountability that must come with them – are crucial to providing the tools for governments to respect, protect and guarantee human rights.
According to international law, states must seek the maximum available resources to gradually achieve the full realization of economic and social rights. Yet, on average, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean collect just 18% of their GDP in taxes, compared to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s average of 33%. Moreover, a significant proportion of this this already relatively low revenue comes from regressive indirect taxes, such as value-added tax, which disproportionately impact poorer sectors of the population.
Against this backdrop it’s no surprise that in much of the region fiscal policy does little or nothing to lessen income inequality. A bolder, fairer approach to taxation would not only enable Latin America and the Caribbean to redress the socioeconomic crises that devastate those who are most vulnerable; it would also provide a pathway out of the health crisis that has gripped the region and futureproof it against future catastrophes.
Every crisis brings an opportunity for change. Last year should have been a time of healing and recuperation all over the world. Instead, through government inaction, it became an incubator for greater inequality and instability that will plague us for many years to come.
For Latin America and the Caribbean, to avoid continuing to be at the epicenter of global disasters – and the extinction of other Indigenous peoples like the Juma tribe – governments must implement an economic recovery that is rights based, inclusive and fair, and address the structural inequality hurting the region. Decisive actions are urgently needed. Not empty slogans.
Agnes Callamard is the Secretary General of Amnesty International. Erika Guevara-Rosas is Americas Director at Amnesty International.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights must address crimes against humanity and gross human rights violations when her team visits China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region this week, Amnesty International said today as the UN’s long-awaited trip got under way.
A team led by High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet will spend six days in China including Xinjiang, where Amnesty International has documented systematic arbitrary imprisonment, torture and persecution of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
“Michelle Bachelet’s long-delayed visit to Xinjiang is a critical opportunity to address human rights violations in the region, but it will also be a running battle against Chinese government efforts to cover up the truth. The UN must take steps to mitigate against this and resist being used to support blatant propaganda,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“Lasting six days, this visit will only be able to scratch the surface of addressing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. But at the very least Bachelet’s visit must focus on the victims of China’s crackdown: the Uyghurs and other Muslims who have been targeted and the many families overseas who are tormented by not knowing where their relatives are held and how to pursue justice, truth and reparation.”
Amnesty International and other human rights groups have repeatedly called on the Chinese authorities to allow independent UN human rights experts and other human rights monitors access to Xinjiang – a demand that is finally being granted with this brief visit by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The UN must avoid becoming complicit
The High Commissioner committed to speaking to key stakeholders prior to her visit. However, the UN team faces a serious challenge to ensure this visit meets their stated standard of being truly “unfettered”, “meaningful” and “including unsupervised interviews”.
“Bachelet will be aware of repeated steps taken by the Chinese authorities during previous visits by UN human rights envoys to impose strict surveillance and undermine access, including by detaining identified interviewees and potential interlocutors and warning others to feign absence.”
Amnesty International has also documented instances of detainees from minority groups in Xinjiang being coached for days in preparation for foreign visitors, instructed to respond to visitors’ questions with pre-scripted lines on threat of punishment.
“The OHCHR must avoid becoming complicit in the Chinese government’s attempts to cover up human rights violations, potentially by using the visit itself as ‘proof’ of their falsity,” Callamard said.
“The itinerary of the visit should not be imposed by the Chinese authorities but guided by the mandate of the visit and grounded on human rights methodology, including by being victim-centered. Above all, Bachelet’s team must be able to conduct an impartial assessment of the situation on the ground and be fully transparent about the details of the trip, the terms of their agreement with the government and its delivery on the ground.”
Since September 2018, when the High Commissioner first sought access to Xinjiang “in light of deeply disturbing allegations of large-scale arbitrary detentions of Uighurs and other Muslim communities”, numerous organizations have published further detailed and well-corroborated information on the situation. In June 2021, Amnesty International launched a comprehensive report documenting how China’s crackdown against predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang amounted to crimes against humanity.
Based on dozens of testimonies, the report described a “dystopian hellscape” encompassing grave violations against detainees, systematic state surveillance of millions of people, and efforts to root out the religious traditions, cultural practices and local languages of the region’s Muslim ethnic groups.
Amnesty International launched an international campaign, initially focusing on more than 70 individuals, calling for the release of all people arbitrarily detained in camps and prisons, and for the closure of the internment camps. Just this month Amnesty has collected details of a further 40 missing or detained individuals as news of Bachelet’s visit has prompted more families to come forward seeking justice for relatives in Xinjiang who have disappeared and are believed to be detained.
Bachelet’s visit is also a chance to secure a long-lasting communication channel between the OHCHR and the local authorities with regards to future queries from families about the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones.
“Hundreds of thousands of Chinese Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are looking to Bachelet’s team to start the process of holding China to account over its campaign of terror in Xinjiang,” Callamard said.
“This UN visit must amplify victims’ efforts to track down their loved ones by actively seeking out known detainees and leaving no stone unturned in trying to find them. It must contribute to uncovering the truth that the Chinese government has long been trying to hide.”
Calls to release OHCHR report
The OHCHR has already compiled its own report on human rights violations in Xinjiang, which Bachelet said was being “finalised” last year. It has not yet been made public, despite repeated requests from Amnesty International and almost 200 other NGOs.
“It is crucial that the findings of the UN mission to China are released in a timely manner. Their publication must not suffer the same unexplained delays as the OHCHR report on Xinjiang, which the world is still waiting to see. The OHCHR must make public all its findings about human rights violations in China without further delay,” Callamard said.
Israeli authorities must scrap plans to demolish a Palestinian Bedouin village and forcibly transfer its residents to a segregated Bedouin-only town, Amnesty International said today. On 22 and 23 May the Beersheba Magistrate’s Court will hear an appeal submitted by 127 residents of the Negev/Naqab village Ras Jrabah who are at imminent risk of forced eviction and displacement, in the latest example of strategies used to maintain the system of apartheid. They are represented by lawyers from the human rights group Adalah, who argue that the planned demolitions also perpetuate Israel’s policies of racial segregation.
Israeli authorities do not officially recognize Ras Jrabah, and its 500 residents are cut off from essential services. Israel’s Land Authority plans to demolish the village in order to expand the nearby town of Dimona, which is mostly home to Jewish Israelis, and in 2019 issued eviction orders to 129 residents.
“This eviction plan is steeped in the cruelty of apartheid. Five hundred people are at risk of losing the only homes they have ever known and being forcibly transferred to an impoverished new location, where they will be separated from the Jewish Israeli population,” said Saleh Higazi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Israeli authorities must cancel all eviction and demolition orders in Ras Jrabah, and immediately grant legal recognition and status to all unrecognized villages in the Negev/Naqab.”
Israeli authorities intend to move and resettle the residents of Ras Jrabah in the nearby Bedouin village of Qasr al-Sir. Although the Israeli authorities recognize this village, residents remain excluded from the state’s development plans, making it difficult for them to acquire building permits or receive state services and infrastructure.
Amnesty International visited Ras Jrabah in January 2022 and heard how residents fear their community would have to split up to fit into the planned zones of Qasr al-Sir.
Adalah lawyer Myssana Morany told Amnesty International that, in terms of governance, the Bedouin are separated from Jewish citizens of Israel and that a municipal plan to expand Dimona will not include the Bedouin.
In May, Ras Jrabah resident Musa al-Hawashlah, told Amnesty International:
“We can’t move to a different place. Our whole lives are based here, in this location… Everyone in the village is nervous about the courts, and we are preparing ourselves as best we can.”
Since 2019, three newly built homes have been demolished in Ras Jrabah, according to Adalah lawyer Marwan Abu Frieh. Residents of unrecognized villages are unable to apply for building permits to legalize their homes or to build new ones, which means they are considered illegal and are under constant threat of demolition.
“Israeli authorities must cancel all eviction and demolition orders in Ras Jrabah, and immediately grant legal recognition and status to all unrecognized villages in the Negev/Naqab.
Saleh Higazi, Amnesty International
The non-recognition of Bedouin villages is central to Israeli policies of segregation and urbanization of the Bedouin and to the Israeli denial of Bedouin traditional way of life in the Negev/Naqab. For decades, Bedouins in the Negev/Naqab have struggled to gain ownership and recognition of their villages by Israeli authorities. Israeli authorities have enforced home demolitions, forced evictions, and other punitive measures disproportionately against Bedouins as compared with Jewish citizens of Israel not conforming to planning laws in the Negev/Naqab.
“Across Israel and the OPT, displacement is a key strategy used to dominate the lives of Palestinians living under Israel’s system of apartheid. There is no alternative to international justice in the face of Israel’s continued discriminatory policies and practices and the complicity of Israeli courts in their establishment,” said Saleh Higazi.
Background
In June 2013, the Israeli Knesset approved the Law for Regularizing Bedouin Habitation in the Negev, or what is also known as the Prawer-Begin Bill, to “regularise” the land and housing question, including the 35 unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev/Naqab through their forcible transfer in the area. Although the law was shelved in 2013, after a campaign to which Amnesty International contributed, the Southern Directorate of Land Law Enforcement, established under the Prawer-Begin Bill, continues to enforce land and planning laws in Bedouin localities, and coordinates the administrative home demolitions with other enforcement bodies, including the Israel police. In stark contrast, Israel has viewed the development of the Negev/Naqab, as “one of the most important national tasks.” In 2005, the Israeli Government adopted the Negev Development Plan which aimed to increase the Jewish population in the region from 535,000 to 900,000 by 2015. In pursuit of the Plan’s goals, law enforcement agencies increased house demolitions in excluded Bedouin villages, and intensified legal efforts to take over Bedouin land by declaring it state land.
When the state of Israel was established, Ras Jrabah and 45 others became effectively invisible on zoning maps and in state development policies. The Israeli authorities refuse to provide “unrecognized villages” with essential state services, and they are cut off from the water network and electricity grid. Residents of unrecognized villages also struggle to access adequate healthcare and education.
Across Israel and the OPT, including in the Naqab/Negev, Israeli authorities have employed a set of interrelated discriminatory policies and practices that have directly caused the displacement and dispossession of Palestinian communities, created unbearable living conditions for Palestinians that have coerced their displacement, or put them at high risk of forced displacement, amounting to a state-sanctioned policy of forcible transfer of population. These policies have been carried out in a widespread and systematic manner, combined with violent acts.
Israel’s discriminatory state policies, regulations and conduct against Palestinians have involved the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer in violation of fundamental rules of international law as provided in the Rome Statute, as well as denying to members of a racial group the right to freedom of movement as prohibited in the Apartheid Convention.
