Schlagwort: Amnesty International

On 28 July, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) will consider a resolution on universal recognition of the right to a healthy environment. The resolution was introduced by a diverse coalition of UN member states, in recognition of the human and financial cost of accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, and toxic pollution. 

There will be no human rights when the world we live in is scorched, sunken and toxic.

Chiara Liguori, Researcher and Advisor on Climate Justice

“The world will be watching closely on Thursday as UN member states publicly assert their positions on the future of the planet. A healthy environment is clearly a prerequisite for the enjoyment of all other human rights – there will be no freedom or equality when the world we live in is scorched, sunken and toxic,” said Chiara Liguori, Amnesty International’s Researcher and Advisor on Climate Justice. 

“The wildfires, droughts and floods that are currently causing upheaval and suffering around the world are just a taster of the dystopia we can expect if we don’t change course. Amnesty International is calling on all states to prove their commitment to protecting the environment, and to upholding the whole spectrum of human rights, by supporting this resolution at the General Assembly. 

“States who plan to oppose it should be aware that they are about to permanently forfeit their credibility and authority on climate-related issues. Those states who have been engaged in attempts to water down the resolution text also risk finding themselves firmly on the wrong side of history.” 

“States who plan to oppose this resolution will  be permanently forfeiting their credibility on climate-related issues.

Chiara Liguori

The resolution has been endorsed by numerous UN agencies, civil society organizations, and organizations representing Indigenous peoples. Encouragingly, dozens of states have already indicated their support by formally cosponsoring the resolution. 

Last year, the 47-member UN Human Rights Council adopted a similar resolution recognizing a clean, safe, healthy and sustainable environment as a universal human right. 

This was a milestone moment which provided a huge morale boost to climate activists worldwide. Affirming this right at the General Assembly – a body which represents all 193 UN member states – would demonstrate that there is unequivocal and widespread political will to protect human rights from environmental catastrophe.   

“A General Assembly resolution would put pressure on those states who have not yet recognized the right to a healthy environment in their national legislation to do so,” said Chiara Liguori.   

“It would also provide a new tool for environmental human rights defenders who work tirelessly to protect their fellow human beings from the impact of environmental destruction.” 

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Authorities in Benin and Togo must ensure that the fight against armed groups respects human rights, Amnesty International said today, amid reports of arbitrary arrests and detentions and violations of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, and as French President Emmanuel Macron visits Benin on 27 and 28 July 2022. 

People have been arbitrarily arrested and detained in both countries, including on the basis of community affiliation. In Togo, at least two opposition party assemblies were banned on the pretext of national security, and the editor of a newspaper was summoned by an administrative authority for reporting on suspicions of a “blunder” by the army in the death of seven children – claims which later turned out to be true, according to testimonies gathered by Amnesty International.

Security forces are committing human rights violations in the context of the fight against armed groups in Benin and Togo, particularly against members of the Fulani ethnic group. There is a risk that human rights violations will become systematic and worsen, as is the case in neighbouring countries that have been fighting the same armed groups for several years. The Beninese and Togolese authorities must put an end to this now.”   

Samira Daoud, Amnesty International's Regional Director for West and Africa

“The threat of armed groups is also being used as a pretext to restrict civil and political rights. In his upcoming discussions with the Beninese authorities, French President Macron must not gloss over these abuses in the name of a common global fight against terrorism, or France’s economic and political interests.”

Since the end of 2021, the northern regions of Benin and Togo have been subject to increasingly frequent and deadly attacks attributed to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda-linked armed group formed in Mali that now extends to the northern regions of several countries in the Gulf of Guinea.

State of emergency

The authorities of Benin and Togo have adopted exceptional measures in response to attacks by armed groups.  

On 13 June 2022, a state of security emergency was established in the northern Savanes region of Togo for 90 days, which authorizes “the prohibition of movement and assembly of people on the public highway”, and allows the police and military to question nany person whose behaviour may lead to the belief that there is a risk that this person could commit an attack”, according to comments made on national television by the Minister of Territorial Administration.

On 29 June 2022, the Beninese authorities announced that “any refusal or abstention to collaborate with the Security and Defence Forces and local authorities in the fight against terrorism will be considered as support to armed groups and treated as such”. 

As reaffirmed in a resolution on the Rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in July 2022, emergency measures must be necessary, proportionate to the assessed risk and applied in a lawful and non-discriminatory manner, even in times of crisis. They cannot be legitimately used to justify a crackdown on the exercise of human rights, especially in a context where people are likely to be intimidated or threatened by armed groups.

Samira Daoud

Arbitrary arrests and detentions

In north-east Benin on 19 March 2022, a 70-year-old man was arrested by the police in the town of Tanguiéta, in the Atacora Department bordering Burkina-Faso. He was released almost two weeks later without being charged. First, he was taken on a days-long 587km journey from Tanguiéta to Cotonou on the southern coast, followed by a week in detention there.

“He had come to Tanguiéta to take someone to hospital. When he left the hospital the police appeared and asked him if he was Fulani. He replied that he was, and he was taken away with several other men arrested the same day,” said one of his relatives, whose anonymity has been preserved to ensure their safety.

“During the journey the police hit them on the back with the butt of their guns. They drove at night and remained in custody during the day. One of the policemen told them that it is the Fulani who kill the policemen.”

In Togo, several dozen people were arbitrarily arrested on 16 May 2022 in the town of Timbou in the Savanes region on the basis of their membership of the Fulani ethnic group, according to the testimony of two people interviewed by Amnesty International. They were detained by the military forces of Timbou, Dapaong, Biankouri and Cinkassè without access to a lawyer, photographed and released on 20 and 21 May 2022 without being charged. 

In Kpinkankandi, a man was arrested at his home by soldiers on the night of 24 May 2022 and taken to detention in Dapaong, where he remains.

“The military told him that a wanted person had entered his house. They handcuffed him and put him in a cell at the Mandouri gendarmerie before transferring him to the Borgou gendarmerie, where he remains until now,” said one of his relatives.

“We do not understand the reason for his detention, as no documents have been communicated to us. One of our neighbours was arrested in the same conditions and is still in detention in Dapaong.”

‘Turning point’ for peaceful assemblies and the human right to expression

Several assemblies of opposition political parties have been banned in recent months by the authorities in Togo under the pretext of national security, while assemblies of the ruling party have been authorized.

On 22 June 2022, the Ministry of Security and Civil Protection banned a scheduled assembly of a coalition of opposition parties stating that “the current worrying sub-regional and national security context, marked in particular by volatility and unpredictability, is likely to compromise ongoing efforts to preserve public order and national security”. On 29 June 2022, the prefect of Agoe-Nyieve banned a scheduled assembly of the opposition party citing the “current sub-regional and national security context and the need to preserve security and public order”.

The right to freedom of expression is also under threat. On 11 July 2022, Togo’s High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication summoned the director-in-chief of the daily newspaper Liberté following a front page referring to a possible “blunder” in the death of seven children in the village of Margba on 9 July 2022. The army later acknowledged responsibility for the deaths of the children, who were killed after being targeted by an aircraft that “mistook them for a column of jihadists”.

In Benin, two journalists were arrested near Pendjari Park while investigating the African Parks organization. Suspected of espionage, they were arrested and detained for four days outside of any legal framework.

Benin and Togo are at a turning point as they are increasingly targeted by armed groups. The international community, including France, must impress on the authorities of these two countries on the need to fulfil their international obligations in terms of human rights and humanitarian law, and by ensuring that the security context does not serve the abusive/arbitrary practices observed in recent months. 

Samira Daoud

Background

Benin has experienced nearly twenty attacks by armed groups since the end of 2021, according to the vice-president as reported by Agence France-Presse, although authorities have only communicated some of them. Togo has suffered at least four attacks targeting members of the defence and security forces and civilians since November 2021.

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Responding to the news that after yesterday’s referendum, Tunisia has adopted a new flawed constitution that dismantles or threatens key institutional safeguards for human rights, Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:

“It is deeply worrying that Tunisia has adopted a new constitution that undermines human rights and jeopardizes the progress made since the 2011 revolution. The new constitution dismantles many of the guarantees to the independence of judiciary, removes protection for civilians from military trials and grants the authorities the power to restrict human rights or renege on international human rights commitments in the name of religion.

“This new constitution, that has now replaced the 2014 constitution, was drafted behind closed doors in a process entirely controlled by President Kais Saied. The Tunisian people were not provided with any transparency as to why the process was designed in this way, nor for that matter why the 2014 constitution needed to be replaced.

“This comes exactly one year after President Saied’s power-grab during which the authorities targeted high-profile critics and political opponents through criminal investigations and prosecutions, eroding Tunisia’s human rights protections at an alarming rate. This new constitution must not serve as justification to go back on Tunisia’s commitments under international human rights law. The provisions of any constitution should be fully consistent and compatible with Tunisia’s obligations under international human rights law.”

Background

On 25 July 2021, President Kais Saied invoked exceptional measures citing article 80 of the 2014 constitution, suspended the parliament and dismissed the government. He later granted himself the exclusive right to rule by decree, suspended most of Tunisia’s 2014 constitution, and dissolved parliament before giving himself the mandate to change the constitution. 

A referendum on the new constitution was held in Tunisia on 25 July 2022. Now accepted with low turnout of 30.5%, it is set to come into force on 27 August 2022 and replace the constitution adopted by Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly in January 2014 through a two-year-long inclusive and transparent process and contained strong human rights safeguards.

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The Iranian authorities have embarked on an execution spree, killing at least 251 people between 1 January and 30 June 2022, according to research by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre for Human Rights in Iran and Amnesty International. The organizations warned that if executions continue at this horrifying pace, they will soon surpass the total of 314 executions recorded for the whole of 2021.

Most (146) of those executed in 2022 had been convicted of murder, amid well-documented patterns of executions being systematically carried out following grossly unfair trials. At least 86 others were executed for drug-related offences which, according to international law, should not incur the death penalty. On 23 July, the authorities executed one man in public in Fars province, after a halt in public executions for two years during the pandemic.

“During the first six months of 2022, the Iranian authorities executed at least one person a day on average. The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life. Iran’s staggering execution toll for the first half of this year has chilling echoes of 2015 when there was another shocking spike,” said Diana Eltahawy, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“The renewed surge in executions, including in public, shows yet again just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world, with 144 countries having rejected the death penalty in law or practice. The Iranian authorities must immediately establish an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty completely,” said Roya Boroumand, Executive Director of Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre, an Iranian human rights organization.

The figures compiled by Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre and Amnesty International draw from a variety of sources, including prisoners, relatives of those executed, human rights defenders, journalists, and reports by state media as well as independent media outlets and human rights organizations.

The real number is likely higher, given the secrecy around the number of death sentences the authorities impose and carry out.

Mass executions in prisons

Information gathered shows that since early 2022, the authorities have regularly carried out mass executions across Iran.

On 15 June 2022, authorities in Raja’i Shahr prison in Alborz province executed at least 12 people. This followed the mass execution of at least 12 people on 6 June 2022 in Zahedan prison in Sistan and Baluchistan province.

On 14 May 2022, the authorities executed nine people: three in Zahedan prison, one in Vakilabad prison in Khorasan-e Razavi province, four in Adelabad prison in Fars province, and one in Dastgerd prison in Esfahan province.

The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International

According to an informed source interviewed by Amnesty International in June 2022, since early 2022, authorities in Raja’i Shahr prison, which has one of the largest numbers of people on death row, have been executing five people each week on average, with up to 10 executions carried out some weeks. The figure corresponds with public letters written separately in recent months by human rights defenders Saeed Eghabli and Farhad Meysami who are unjustly jailed in Raja’i Shahr prison. The former referred to weekly executions of up to 10 people in Raja’i Shahr prison while the latter warned that the total number of executions there could surpass 200 by the end of 2022.

The informed source also said that Raja’i Shahr’s associate prosecutor (dadyar) recently told prisoners that the Office for the Implementation of Sentences had written to the families of about 530 murder victims, asking them to decide whether to pardon or seek the execution of those convicted of murdering their kin by late March 2023. 

The same source said repeated statements by the head of judiciary Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei and other senior judicial officials in recent months about the need to address prison overcrowding have raised widespread fears among prisoners that the rise in executions is related to official efforts to reduce prisoner numbers. The fears expressed are supported by past patterns monitored by Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre that indicate spikes in executions coincide with periods when the authorities make repeated public statements about their goals to address case backlogs and reduce overcrowding.

Renewed surge in drug-related executions

The execution of at least 86 people for drug-related offences in the first six months of 2022 has grim echoes of the authorities’ anti-narcotics practices in the years between 2010 and 2017, when most recorded executions were for drug-related offences.

In November 2017, following intense international pressure, which included several European countries cutting off funds to anti-narcotics operations by Iran’s law enforcement forces, the authorities adopted some legal reforms to eliminate the death penalty for certain drug-related offences.

Between 2018 and 2020, the authorities considerably reduced drug-related executions. However, in 2021, at least 132 people were executed for drug-related offences, accounting for 42% of overall recorded executions and representing more than a five-fold rise from 2020 (23).

The international community, including the EU and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, must urgently undertake high-level interventions, calling on the Iranian authorities to end the death penalty for all drug-related offences. They must ensure that any cooperation in anti-drug trafficking initiatives does not directly or indirectly contribute to the arbitrary deprivation of the right to life, which is the defining characteristic of Iran’s anti-narcotics operations.

The Iranian authorities must immediately establish an official moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty completely.

Roya Boroumand, Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre

Baluchi minority disproportionately affected

At least 65 (26 %) of those executed since 2022 were members of Iran’s impoverished Baluchi ethnic minority, who make up about 5% of Iran’s population. Over half (38) were executed for drug-related offences.

“The disproportionate use of the death penalty against Iran’s Baluchi minority epitomizes the entrenched discrimination and repression they have faced for decades and further highlights the inherent cruelty of the death penalty, which targets the most vulnerable populations in Iran and worldwide,” said Roya Boroumand.

Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre and Amnesty International oppose the death penalty without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to kill the prisoner. The death penalty is a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Background

The number of executions in Iran in 2021 was the highest since 2017. The rise began in September 2021, after the head of judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi, rose to the presidency and the Supreme Leader appointed a former Minister of Intelligence, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, as the new head of judiciary.

The Iranian authorities carried out one public execution in 2022, none in 2021, one in 2020, 13 in 2019 and 13 in 2018. Official announcements indicate that in early 2022, at least two other people in Esfahan province and one person in Lorestan province were sentenced to be executed in public.

The death penalty is imposed in Iran following trials that are systematically unfair, with torture-tainted “confessions” routinely used as evidence. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran has stated that “entrenched flaws in law … mean that most, if not all, executions are an arbitrary deprivation of life.”

Under Iranian law, the death penalty applies to numerous offences including financial crimes, rape and armed robbery. Activities protected by international human rights law such as consensual same-sex sexual conduct, extramarital sexual relations and speech deemed “insulting to the Prophet of Islam” as well as vaguely-worded offences such as “enmity against God” and “spreading corruption on earth” are also punishable by death.

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