Schlagwort: Amnesty International

Responding to today’s decision by the Israeli Prison Service to renew the solitary confinement of Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian prisoner who has developed serious mental health problems since his arrest as a child seven years ago, Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:

“It is outrageous that the Israeli authorities have renewed Ahmad Manasra’s spell in solitary confinement. Continuing to detain Ahmad Manasra in such inhumane conditions is a callous act of injustice. Ahmad has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is severely depressed.

“Ahmad Manasra was just 13 years old when he was arrested. The decision to detain him should always have been a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible time. Now, he is said to be a shadow of his former self and has threatened to take his own life. The Israeli authorities must immediately revoke their decision to renew his solitary confinement, and urgently release him from detention.”

On Wednesday the Israeli Prison Service rejected a request to move Manasra out of solitary confinement at Eshel prison. There will be a further hearing regarding his solitary conditions at Beersheba District Court on 16 August. His lawyer Khaled Zabarqa told Amnesty International: “He is in danger for his life, actual danger, and the repeated extensions of his solitary confinement are destroying him.”

Background

Manasra has been held in prolonged solitary confinement since November 2021, aside from a two month stay in hospital, after Israeli authorities claimed he is a danger to other prisoners. This is in breach of the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Manasra was arrested in October 2015 over the stabbing of two Israelis in Pisgat Zeev, an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to nine years and five months in prison despite being only 13 years old at the time of his arrest and the court finding that he did not take part in the stabbings. He was also questioned with no lawyer or a parent present and subjected to alleged torture or other ill-treatment during the interrogation. Amnesty International is not aware of any investigations into the conduct of security officers.

A request from Manasra’s family calling for his early release was rejected, even though he has already served two-thirds of his sentence. Under Israeli law, those convicted of murder, rape and child abuse are eligible for their sentences to be commuted by a third. Prosecutors say he is ineligible for early release because he was convicted of “terrorist acts” —under a law enacted after he was first detained.

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The international community must hold the Iranian authorities to account for the torrent of violence which their security forces unleashed on protesters in the south-west of Iran in May 2022 with complete impunity, Amnesty International said today. 

The organization’s new research briefing “They are shooting brazenly”: Iran’s militarized response to May 2022 protests documents how Iran’s security forces unlawfully fired live ammunition and birdshot in May 2022 to crush largely peaceful protests over soaring food prices and a deadly building collapse.

Amnesty International verified that four people were killed in connection with the protests and documented a pattern of birdshot injuries amounting to torture amongst protesters and bystanders, including children. The authorities imposed internet shutdowns and mobile network disruptions to block peoples’ ability to communicate with each other and to conceal their crimes. 

“In May, people took to the streets in cities across the south-west of Iran to protest rising food prices and demand justice for the victims of a deadly building collapse. The authorities’ militarized response laid bare once again their utter disregard to the sanctity of human life and international legal standards on the use of force and firearms,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Rightful outrage among people in Iran about state corruption, inflation, unemployment, low or unpaid wages, food insecurity, as well as political repression is likely to lead to more protests, and Iran’s security forces will continue to feel emboldened to kill and injure protesters if they are not held accountable. With avenues for justice completely closed domestically, Amnesty International reiterates the urgent need for the UN Human Rights Council to establish an independent investigative and accountability mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve, and analyse evidence of the most serious crimes under international law committed in Iran to enable future prosecutions.”

To investigate the authorities’ unlawful use of force, Amnesty International reviewed and analysed extensive video footage, official statements and state media reports, and spoke to human rights defenders and journalists in contact with affected individuals and communities.

Unlawful use of force and documented deaths

Amnesty International found that Iran’s security forces demonstrated a total disregard for the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality in crushing widespread protests over soaring food prices that erupted in Khuzestan province in early May and then spread to Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, both in south-west Iran, between 12 and 17 May. 

Audiovisual evidence examined by the organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab indicates that security forces fired weapons loaded with live ammunition and birdshot on multiple occasions during the protests. 

At least three people, Behrouz Eslami, Jamshid Mokhtari and Sa’adat Hadipour were killed in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in connection with the protests between 14 and 17 May. Another person, Hamid Ghasempour, was critically injured on 13 May and a local resident reported that he died shortly afterwards, but Amnesty International was unable to obtain corroborating information. A member of parliament also reported on 15 May the death of an unnamed person in Khuzestan province, in connection with the protests over rising food prices. 

The authorities’ militarized response laid bare once again their utter disregard to the sanctity of human life and international legal standards on the use of force and firearms.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International

While a minority of protesters engaged in stone-throwing and acts of arson and vandalism, security forces responded with unnecessary or excessive force, preventing the vast majority of protesters who remained peaceful in exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression. In all the video footage reviewed by Amnesty International, protesters posed no imminent threat of death or serious injury to security forces or others, which is the threshold required for the use of lethal force under international standards. 

In separate widespread protests between 23 and 31 May 2022 in the city of Abadan, Khuzestan province, following the deadly collapse of an unfinished building that killed dozens of people, the authorities unleashed force, wholly unlawfully as protests were peaceful in nature. This involved security forces firing shotguns at crowds of grieving protesters. In at least one video examined by Amnesty International, audible shots were likely from discharging live ammunition.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Security forces unlawfully fired birdshot in both sets of protests, injuring protesters and bystanders. Videos reviewed by Amnesty International show classic spray patterns of birdshot wounds to the backs, buttocks, legs and/or heads of those injured. 

Birdshot is inherently indiscriminate and designed to cause a level of widespread harm that is always unnecessary and excessive for the achievement of legitimate objectives and their use violates the prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment.  

Reviewed footage also shows security forces beating a woman and a restrained man, and misusing tear gas and water cannon to disperse peaceful protesters.

International action needed for cycles of protest bloodshed

The Iranian authorities’ unlawful use of force during the crackdown on the May 2022 protests reflects increasing militarization of the policing of protests in recent years, which has left hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including children, dead and thousands of others injured since December 2017. 

This is fuelled by the country’s crisis of systemic impunity where crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings by security forces, have gone uninvestigated and unpunished. 

Amnesty International echoes the concerns of the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran that given the absence of conditions for accountability at the domestic level, the international community must respond to the “alarmingly high numbers of injuries and deaths” and fulfil its “important role in ensuring accountability”.

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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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