Schlagwort: Amnesty International

States across the Americas are failing to provide international protection and safety for Haitians on the move, exposing them to a range of human rights violations, including detentions and illegal pushbacks by authorities; extortion; anti-Black racial discrimination; abuses by armed groups, including gender-based violence; and lack of access to adequate housing, healthcare, and employment, said Amnesty International and Haitian Bridge Alliance in a new briefing published today.

“As the political and economic situation continue to deteriorate in Haiti, facilitating massive human rights violations, kidnappings, and generalized violence, states across the Americas are failing to protect Haitians on the move, who are searching for stability and safety, as well as assurances they will not be deported to Haiti where they face serious risks to their lives and safety,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

“Today we are calling on states across the region to stop deportations to Haiti and urgently provide Haitians with protection measures, including asylum, and other routes to legal residency so they can re-build their lives in safety.”

Not safe anywhere: Haitians on the move need urgent international protection is the result of an investigation by a team of researchers who spent a week conducting interviews in Tapachula, southern Mexico, where tens of thousands of Haitians are awaiting the outcome of their asylum applications in inhumane conditions, after making the dangerous voyage through South and Central America in search of safety.

States across the Americas are failing to protect Haitians on the move, who are searching for stability and safety

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International

More than 26,000 Haitians have requested asylum in Mexico this year. Less than half the claims for international protection that Haitians made in 2020 and 2021 were successful, compared with a 97-98% success rate for Venezuelans or 84-85% for Hondurans in that period, according to data from the Mexican authorities. 

The briefing finds that Mexico is implementing measures that, in practice, may be restricting access to protection for Haitians in several ways. This includes conducting unlawful forced returns and pushbacks to Haiti and Guatemala without assessments of protection, violating the principle of non-refoulement, restricting all Haitian asylum applicants to Tapachula, and failing to consider the range of options for regularization as allowed by Mexican law. In turn this is overloading the system and leading to unsafe conditions and destitution due to lack of access to shelter, food, and other basic needs.Many of the Haitians in Mexico had been living in Chile but felt forced to leave after facing anti-Black racist discrimination and difficulties in regularizing their immigration status, particularly under the Sebastián Piñera administration.

International and regional human rights law prohibits states from returning people to places where their life or freedom would be at risk – a situation that clearly applies to Haiti, a country challenged by widespread gang violence; massive human rights violations, including allegations of crimes against humanity; widespread food insecurity; a recent earthquake; and political instability following the recent assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Nonetheless, states across the region, especially the United States and Mexico, have continued deportations to Haiti in recent weeks.

Today we are calling on states across the region to stop deportations to Haiti and urgently provide Haitians with protection measures

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International

According to International Organization for Migration, between 19 September and 19 October, countries across the region returned some 10,800 Haitians back to Haiti, mostly from the United States. The recent, much publicized mass expulsions of Haitians from Del Rio, Texas, reportedly to Haiti and Mexico under Title 42 policies – a measure initially implemented by the Trump administration under the pretext of COVID-19 that authorizes expulsions without screenings or asylum protection – clearly demonstrate that the US authorities are similarly restricting access to international protection for Haitians.

“Our research shows us that Haitians are not safe anywhere. Countries across the region must immediately end all deportations to Haiti and provide Haitians with unrestricted access to international protection,” said Nicole Phillips, Legal Director at Haitian Bridge Alliance. “States must also take swift and effective measures to combat racism and other intersecting forms of discrimination targeting Haitian migrants, including by enforcing rules that forbid racial profiling by public officials, and by implementing public anti-discrimination campaigns that address racism and xenophobia in wider society.”

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Duncan Tucker: duncan.tucker@amnesty.org

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28 October 2021

Spokespeople available

Ahead of today’s discussion in the Polish Parliament (Sejm) about the proposed ‘Stop LGBT’ bill which would ban Pride marches and other LGBTI gatherings, Amnesty International warned that signing the citizens’ initiative into law would put the rights of LGBTI people in Poland at greater risk than ever.

“Pride is an important moment for LGBTI people and their allies to celebrate their love.  It is also a protest against exactly the kind of discrimination that the Polish authorities are gradually writing into the law. This proposal, which is part of a wider crackdown on LGBTI rights, has no place in any parliament. We call on Polish MPs to recognise that love is love, and reject this hateful proposal which is discriminatory to its core,” said Nils Muižnieks.

“This proposal would restrict people’s rights to peacefully protest. Such restrictions are never acceptable, let alone when supposedly ‘justified’ by discrimination. This initiative may not have originated with the Polish government, but let us be clear: the government’s normalisation of hateful rhetoric has created an environment in which people feel empowered to spew bigotry.”

Nils Muižnieks

The ‘Stop LGBT’ bill originated as a citizen’s legislative initiative, which can be submitted to parliament if it receives signatures from at least 100,000 citizens. If passed, the bill would ban Pride parades, and any other public gatherings that “promote” non-heterosexual sexual orientations and diverse gender identities.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Alison Abrahams on alison.abrahams@amnesty.org or +32 483 680 812

Out of hours contact details

email: press@amnesty.org  +44 20 7413 5566 twitter: @amnestypress 

Amnesty Poland Aneta Stańczak-Boużyk aneta.stanczak-bouzyk@amnesty.org.pl +48691357935

BACKGROUND

A debate on the bill will take place on Thursday 28 November at 18.00. The vote will take place on 29 November 2021.

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Russian human rights activist Yan Sidorov is facing the prospect of three years under harsh probation conditions, when he is released next week from the penal colony where he has spent the last two years, Amnesty International said today.

Yan Sidorov is a prisoner of conscience, whose attempts to hold a peaceful protest in 2017 resulted in an imprisonment at a Dimitrovgrad penal colony after he had spent two years in pre-trial detention. He is set to be released on 3 November, but on 29 October Dimitrovgrad City Court will hear a request by the authorities to impose a severely restrictive probation period.

“Russian authorities are sending a clear signal to all young activists that participation in peaceful protests can come at huge personal cost. Yan Sidorov has already served four years in prison; he may now have to spend three more under strict police surveillance, forbidden to go out after 10 pm and banned from travelling outside the Krasnodar region,” said Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director.

Russian authorities are sending a clear signal to all young activists that participation in peaceful protests can come at huge personal cost

Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director

“The Russian penitentiary authorities must immediately withdraw their request to impose additional arbitrary restrictions on Yan Sidorov and release him unconditionally. Yan Sidorov has done nothing but exercise his rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and this outrageous campaign of punishment must end.”

Background

Two weeks ahead of Yan Sidorov’s release from penal colony IK-10 in Dimitrovgrad (Central Russia), the penitentiary administration requested that the court impose a three-year probation period on him. Conditions include obligatory biweekly registration at the local police station and a curfew between 10 pm and 6 am; Sidorov would also be banned from leaving his native Krasnodar region, and banned from attending or participating in any mass events. The Dimitrovgrad City Court will hear this case on 29 October. On 15 October, the penal colony authorities accused Yan Sidorov of violation of the prison regime regulations – allegedly for not attending morning workout – and placed him in a punishment cell for seven days.

In October 2019, Yan Sidorov and his friend Vladislav Mordasov, who spent almost two years in pre-trial detention, were found guilty of “attempted organization of mass disturbances”, and each sentenced to more than six years imprisonment for organizing a peaceful protest in November 2017. The protest was in support of dozens of people in Rostov-on-Don (Southern Russia) who had lost their homes in mass fires. Their sentences were subsequently reduced to four years on cassation. Vladislav Mordasov serving his sentence in IK-9 penal colony in Shakhty (Rostov-on-Don region) is due to be released on 3 November as well.

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Algerian authorities must quash the conviction of Christian convert Foudhil Bahloul, under a law that is being used to crack down on religious minorities and restrict the right to freedom of religion and belief, Amnesty International said ahead of his appeal hearing on 27 October.

A court in Ain Defla, a city west of the capital Algiers, had on 21 July sentenced Bahloul to six months imprisonment because of a 200-euro transfer into his bank account deemed an “unauthorized donation” under a discriminatory law regulating non-Muslim worship.

“Algerian authorities must immediately quash Foudhil Bahloul’s conviction and drop all charges against him. He shouldn’t have been tried in the first place. This discriminatory law is being used as a weapon to repress those who do not follow Islam in an assault against their fundamental freedoms,” said Amna Guellali, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“Instead of targeting non-Islamic believers, Algeria authorities must work on protecting the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief – which includes the freedom to manifest that belief.”

On 17 April, gendarmerie officers arrested Foudhil Bahloul and three of his friends in Ain Defla before searching his house and seizing books and materials related to the Christian faith.

Bahloul told Amnesty International that the officers asked him if he had received money for his beliefs, if those funds came from abroad, and if he had a bank account. They further interrogated him about 200 euros Bahloul said he had received from a friend in Germany as financial support because he was jobless.

Bahloul went to trial without a lawyer and witnesses were not allowed to testify before the court.

Amnesty International reviewed the tribunal’s ruling which was based on Bahloul’s statements on the day of his arrest, in which he acknowledged receiving money from an individual in Germany. The verdict mentioned that Foudhil Bahloul “spread poisonous ideas to the unemployed youth,” and that he “destabilized their faith in Islam” by distributing books. He was sentenced to six months in prison and fined 100,000 Algerian dinars (around US$730).

The authorities should stop harassing and arresting those who belong to minority religious groups and leave people to practice their faith as they see fit.

Amna Guellali, Amnesty International

Background 

In March 2021, a court in Oran convicted on appeal a pastor and his friend, also a Christian, for “proselytism”. They were sentenced to a year in prison and fined based on Article 11 of decree law 06-03. The authorities also closed a bookshop the pastor owned.

On 4 June, a tribunal in Oran ordered the closure of three churches for not conforming to restrictive laws’ provisions on association.

In 2017, Amnesty International documented that judicial authorities prosecuted at least 280 individuals from the minority Ahmadi religious movement including on charges of “collecting donations without authorization” based on law 06-03.

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