Kategorie: Humans

Responding to the news of activist and Delhi University professor Gokarakonda Naga Saibaba’s acquittal by the Bombay High Court today after being in jail for more than five years under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Aakar Patel, chair of board at Amnesty International India, said:

“The acquittal of G.N. Saibaba today is a positive development and triumph of justice over repression. He should have never been jailed in the first place. The Indian authorities have targeted him solely for having spoken out against the violence and discrimination faced by the Dalit and Indigenous communities in India.  

The Indian authorities must honour their international human rights obligations by providing a safe and supportive environment in which human rights defenders and activists can carry out their work without fear of reprisals.

Aakar Patel, chair of board at Amnesty International India

“The Indian authorities routinely use the anti-terror law UAPA with stringent bail provisions as a tool to intimidate, harass and target activists like G. N. Saibaba who are perceived to be critical of the authorities. Amnesty International calls for the immediate and unconditional release all other human rights defenders and activists who continue to be arbitrarily detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and fearlessly standing up for the rights of the marginalized.

“The Indian authorities must honour their international human rights obligations by providing a safe and supportive environment in which human rights defenders and activists can carry out their work without fear of reprisals.”

Background:

G.N. Saibaba was initially arrested by the police in 2014 and accused of links to banned Maoist organisations. In March 2017, he was convicted by a sessions court in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and sentenced to life in prison.

On 14 October, 2022 the Bombay High Court acquitted G. N. Saibaba and five other co-accused in the case and directed prison authorities to release them unless accused in other matters. One of the five, Pandu Narote, has already died in prison.

G. N. Saibaba has a disability due to polio and other severe health issues including a heart condition. His health had suffered a serious deterioration exacerbated by his detention conditions and lack of access to adequate medical care. He contracted Covid-19 twice in jail, in January 2021 and in February 2022.

The courts had denied repeated appeals for parole and even requests for medical bail.

In June 2022, Amnesty International and six other international human rights groups had in a joint statement called for the immediate release of G. N. Saibaba.

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Responding to the news that Lebanon’s General Security agency will start sending Syrian refugees back to their country next week in a so-called voluntary process, Diana Semaan, Amnesty International’s Acting Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:

“The Lebanese authorities are scaling up the so-called voluntary returns, a plan which has been in place for four years, when it is well established that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are not in a position to take a free and informed decision about their return due to restrictive government policies on movement and residency, rampant discrimination, lack of access to essential services as well as unavailability of objective and updated information about the current human rights situation in Syria. 

“In enthusiastically facilitating these returns, the Lebanese authorities are knowingly putting Syrian refugees at risk of suffering from heinous abuse and persecution upon their return to Syria

Diana Semaan, Amnesty International

“In enthusiastically facilitating these returns, the Lebanese authorities are knowingly putting Syrian refugees at risk of suffering from heinous abuse and persecution upon their return to Syria. Lebanon should respect its obligations under international law and halt its plans to return Syrian refugees en-masse.

“Amid the country’s spiralling economic crisis, the international community must continue to support more than one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon to prevent a further rise in unsafe returns.”

Background

On 12 October, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Lebanon’s General Security agency will start sending Syrian refugees back home “in batches” from next week. On 13 October, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, head of Lebanon’s General Security, said that 1,600 Syrian refugees will be returned after the Syrian government approves.  

According to the General Security agency, refugees apply for return at the registration offices run by them across Lebanon. The agency then proceeds in compiling all the names of registered refugees and organizes transportation in buses to the Syrian border. As per the bilateral agreement, the Lebanese General Security also sends lists of names of registered refugees to the Syrian government for pre-approval before their return to Syria.

For the return of refugees to their country of origin to be truly voluntary, it must be based on their free and informed consent. However, the dire conditions in Lebanon raise doubts about the ability of Syrian refugees to provide truly free consent.

International law prohibits “constructive” refoulement, which occurs when states use indirect means to coerce individuals to return to a place where they would be at real risk of serious human rights violations.

Amnesty International believes that, in many cases, the Lebanese government’s unfair policies represent a fundamental factor in the decision to leave the country. In these cases, the refugee’s consent to repatriation cannot be considered free.

Amnesty International has previously documented how Syrian refugees have faced torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention upon returning home. Those who left Syria at the beginning of the conflict are at grave risk of facing reprisals upon their return, due to their perceived political opinions or as a punishment for fleeing the country. 

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In response to the Biden Administration’s announcement about a new process for Venezeulans seeking safety, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International said,

“Within days of the Interagency Coordination for Refugees and Migrants R4V revealing that there are 7.1 million Venezuelans seeking international protection, the Biden administration shamefully announced a new plan to block access to asylum for Venezuelans seeking safety at the US border. While we acknowledge the important step taken by the Biden administration in the creation of a new parole program for 24,000 Venezuelans, we are greatly alarmed at the expansion of the application of Title 42. This new policy aimed at stopping Venezuelans from seeking safety at the border is again demonstrating that Title 42 has no basis in public health and runs contrary to US and international obligations to uphold the rights of all to seek safety. All people have a right to seek safety, regardless of familial or financial ties, and any parole program should not supplant the right to seek asylum.

“We are also concerned with media reports that the Title 42 expansion is due to also include nationals of Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. Last month, Amnesty International released a groundbreaking report finding that Haitians expelled under Title 42 were subject to arbitrary detention and discriminatory and humiliating ill-treatment that amounts to race-based torture. We urge the Biden administration to reconsider this and to instead work diligently to put an end to Title 42, not to expand it. Eradicating this deadly policy is a critical first step towards restoring asylum and preserving the human rights of asylum seekers; anything else is a band-aid that is not solving the issues at hand.” 

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Iranian security forces’ unlawful killings of at least 23 children shed further light on the authorities’ deadly resolve to crush the widespread, ongoing protests, which were sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa (Zhina) Amini on 16 September and grew into what many in Iran say is a broader uprising against the Islamic Republic establishment, Amnesty International said today.

In a detailed statement, the organization lists the names and circumstances surrounding the killing of 23 children as a result of unlawful force during protests from 20 September to 30 September 2022. The victims included 20 boys aged between 11 and 17; and three girls, two of whom were 16 years old and one 17 years old. Most of the boys were killed by security forces unlawfully firing live ammunition at them. Two boys died after being shot with metal pellets at close range, while three girls and a boy died after fatal beatings by security forces.

If the international community were a person, how would it look these children and their parents in the eye?

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International

Children represent 16% of overall deaths of protesters and bystanders recorded by Amnesty International. The organization has so far recorded the names and details of 144 men, women and children killed by Iran’s security forces between 19 September and 3 October. The victims recorded are limited to those whose names the organization has been able to identify thus far. The organization is continuing its investigations into reported killings and believes the death toll is higher.

“Iran’s security forces have killed nearly two dozen children in an attempt to crush the spirit of resistance among the country’s courageous youth. If the international community were a person, how would it look these children and their parents in the eye? It would lower its head in shame over its inaction against the pervasive impunity enjoyed by the Iranian authorities for their systematic crimes and gross violations of human rights,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The Iranian authorities have repeatedly ignored all calls to cease the unlawful use of force and to prosecute those responsible for unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment of protesters, bystanders and of people deprived of their liberty. The price of this systematic impunity is being paid with human lives, including children’s. Member states engaging at the UN Human Rights Council should urgently hold a special session and adopt a resolution to establish an international independent investigative and accountability mechanism on Iran.”

Ten of the recorded child victims belonged to Iran’s oppressed Baluchi minority and were killed by security forces on the deadliest day of the crackdown, 30 September, in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchistan province. Evidence gathered by Amnesty International shows at least seven of the children killed in Zahedan were shot in the heart, head or other vital organs.

According to informed sources and audio-visual evidence examined by the organization, one of them, Javad Pousheh, aged 11, was shot in the back of his head with live ammunition fired by security forces during a violent crackdown on a protest taking place after Friday prayers outside a police station and near a large prayer site. The bullet exited through his right cheek leaving a large gaping hole.

The remaining 13 children were killed in the provinces of Tehran (5), West Azerbaijan (4), Alborz (1), Kermanshah (1), Kohgilouyeh and Bouyer Ahmad (1), and Zanjan (1). Two of the children killed were of Afghan nationality – a 14-year-old boy, Mohammad Reza Sarvari, and a 17-year-old girl, Setareh Tajik. 

Authorities spreading false narratives

On 7 October, the lawyer of Mohammad Reza Sarvari who was shot dead by security forces during protests in Shahr-e Rey, Tehran province, on 21 September, published online a copy of the child’s burial certificate, which listed the cause of death as “bleeding and shattered brain tissue” caused by “being hit with a fast-moving projectile”. The lawyer wrote that he felt obliged to share the official document given the propagation of false narratives by the authorities in state media and through statements by officials increasingly attributing the death of children killed by security forces to “suicide”.

Security forces fired both metal pellets and live ammunition at Amir Mehdi Farrokhipour, aged 17, during protests in Tehran on 28 September. According to informed sources, he died from gunshot wounds in his chest, while intelligence officials forced his father to record a video statement stating that his son died during a car accident, threatening to kill or otherwise harm his daughters if he refused.

Other examples of state cover up efforts include the cases of two 16-year-old girls, Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, who were killed after security forces fatally beat them on their heads. Intelligence and security forces have subjected the girls’ families to intense harassment and intimidation to coerce them into recording video statements reiterating the official narrative that their children committed “suicide” by jumping off a roof.

The latest wave of protest killings is rooted in a deep crisis of systemic impunity for the most serious crimes under international law that has long prevailed in Iran and which, given the scale and severity of past and ongoing human rights violations, has not been sufficiently addressed by the UN Human Rights Council. An international investigative and accountability mechanism is urgently needed to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyze evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran and other serious violations of human rights in a manner that meets general standards of admissibility in criminal proceedings and to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those suspected of criminal responsibility.

“The Iranian authorities are systematically harassing and intimidating victims’ families to hide the truth that they have the blood of children on their hands. These despicable methods further underline the scale and depravity of the Iranian authorities’ crackdown and provide further proof that all avenues for truth and justice are closed at the domestic level,” said Heba Morayef.

Background

Amnesty International has revealed that Iran’s highest military body instructed the commanders of armed forces in all provinces to “severely confront” protesters who took to the streets following the death in custody of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police. The organization has documented widespread, unwarranted use of lethal force and firearms by Iranian security forces who either intended to kill protesters or should have known with a reasonable degree of certainty that their use of firearms would result in deaths.

Iranian authorities have previously reacted to protests with similar patterns of unlawful use of force, including lethal force, which, for example, resulted in the death of hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including at least 21 children, during the protests of November 2019.

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Latvian authorities have violently pushed back refugees and migrants at the country’s borders with Belarus, subjecting many to grave human rights violations, including secret detention and even torture, according to new findings published in a report by Amnesty International.

Latvia: Return home or never leave the woods reveals the brutal treatment of migrants and refugees – including children – who have been held arbitrarily in undisclosed sites in the Latvian forest, and unlawfully and violently returned to Belarus. Many faced beatings and electric shocks with tasers, including on their genitals. Some were unlawfully forced to return ‘voluntarily’ to their home countries.

“Latvia has given refugees and migrants a cruel ultimatum: accept to return ‘voluntarily’ to their country, or remain stranded at the border facing detention, unlawful returns and torture. In some cases, their arbitrary detention at the border may amount to enforced disappearance,” said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.

“The Latvian authorities have left men, women and children to fend for themselves in freezing temperatures, often stranded in forests or held in tents. They have violently pushed them back to Belarus, where they have no chance of seeking protection. These actions have nothing to do with border protection and are brazen violations of international and EU law.”

On 10 August 2021, Latvia introduced a state of emergency following an increase in numbers of people encouraged to come to the border by Belarus. In contrast with EU and international law and the principle of non-refoulement, the emergency rules suspended the right to seek asylum in four border areas and allowed Latvian authorities to forcibly and summarily return people to Belarus. 

Latvian authorities have repeatedly extended the state of emergency, currently until November 2022, despite the decrease of movements over time, and their own admission that the number of attempted entries were the result of multiple crossings by the same people.

Dozens of refugees and migrants have been arbitrarily held in tents at the border in unsanitary conditions, A small percentage of people were allowed into Latvia, the vast majority of whom were placed in detention centres and offered limited or no access to asylum processes, legal assistance or independent oversight.

Amnesty’s report on Latvia follows and supplements similar reports focussing on abuses against refugees and migrants by Belarus, Poland and Lithuania.

Violent pushbacks, arbitrary detention and possible enforced disappearances

Under the state of emergency, Latvian border guards, in cooperation with unidentified “commandos”, the army and the police, repeatedly subjected people to summary, unlawful and violent forced returns. In response, Belarusian authorities would then systematically push people back to Latvia.

Zaki, a man from Iraq who was stranded at the border for around three months, told Amnesty International that he had been pushed back more than 150 times, sometimes eight times in a single day.

Hassan, another man from Iraq who spent five months at the border, said: “They forced us to be completely naked, sometimes they beat us when naked and then they forced us to cross back to Belarus, sometimes having to cross a river which was very cold. They said they would shoot us if we didn’t cross.”

In between pushbacks, people were forced to spend prolonged periods stranded at the border or in tents set up by the authorities in isolated areas of the forest. Latvian authorities have so far denied using tents for anything other than providing “humanitarian assistance”, but Amnesty International’s findings show that tents were heavily guarded sites used to arbitrarily hold refugees and migrants and as outposts for illegal returns.

Those not held in tents sometimes ended up stranded in the open at the border, as winter temperatures at times fell to -20C. Adil, a man from Iraq, who spent several months in the forest since August 2021, told Amnesty International: “We used to sleep in the forest on the snow. We used to light fire to get warm, there were wolves, bears.”

At the border and in the tents, authorities confiscated people’s mobile phones to prevent any communication with the outside world. Some families searched for people who were last known to be in Latvia but could not be reached by phone. A Latvian NGO reported that between August and November 2021, they were contacted by the relatives of more than 30 refugees and migrants feared to have gone missing.

Holding migrants and refugees in tents in undisclosed locations or leaving them stranded at the border without access to communication or safe alternatives to being continuously shuttled back and forth between Latvia and Belarus constitutes ‘secret detention’ and could amount to enforced disappearance.

Forced returns, abuse and torture

With no effective access to asylum under the state of emergency, Latvian officers coerced some people held at the border into agreeing to return ‘voluntarily’ to their countries of origin as the only way to be taken out of the forest.

Others were coerced or misled into accepting voluntary returns in detention centres or police stations.

Hassan, from Iraq, told Amnesty International that he tried to explain that his life would be in danger if he was returned: “The commando responded: ‘You can die here too’”.

Another Iraqi, Omar, described how an officer hit him from behind and forced him to sign a return paper: “He held my hand and said you should do the signature, and then with force, he made me do the signature.”

In some cases, the IOM representative for Latvia ignored evidence that people transferred as part of “voluntary” return procedures had not provided their genuine consent to returning.

“Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, continue to commit grave abuses, under the pretext of being under a ‘hybrid attack’ from Belarus. As winter approaches and movements at the border have resumed, the state of emergency continues to allow Latvian authorities to unlawfully return people to Belarus. Many more could be exposed to violence, arbitrary detention and other abuses, with limited or no independent oversight,” said Eve Geddie.

“Latvia’s shameful treatment of people arriving at its borders presents a vital test for European institutions, which must take urgent measures to ensure that Latvia ends the state of emergency and restores the right to asylum across the country for everyone seeking safety, irrespective of their origin or how they crossed the border.”

Background

As pushbacks at the Belarus border with Latvia, Lithuania and Poland re-intensify, the EU Council is prioritizing the adoption of a Regulation on the “instrumentalization” of migrants and asylum seekers. This would allow member states facing situations of “instrumentalization” – as experienced by Latvia – to derogate from their obligations under EU asylum and migration law. The proposal disproportionately impacts the rights of refugees and migrants and risks undermining the uniform application of EU asylum law.

In June, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that the Lithuanian law on asylum and migration, which limited people’s ability to make asylum applications under the state of emergency and provided for the automatic detention of asylum seekers, was incompatible with EU law.

The Court’s analysis and conclusions should apply directly to the situation in Latvia, where, since August 2021, the state of emergency effectively prevents most people entering or attempting to enter “irregularly” from Belarus from accessing asylum.

See Amnesty International reports on Belarus, Poland and Lithuania.

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