Posts Tagged ‘illegal detention’
September 30, 2013
The Ahlul Bayt News Agency reports today that a court in Bahrain sentenced today political detainees, including activists and human rights defenders, to total of more than 400 years’ imprisonment and upheld the sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment against two children. All of the sentences were delivered under the internationally criticized and vague terrorism law. The court also reduced the sentences of two police officers who tortured a detainee to death from 10 years’, to 2 years’ imprisonment. On 29 of September 2013, the court held the ruling session in the case known as “February 14th Coalition”, in which 50 individuals were tried under the terrorism law, including human rights defender Naji Fateel, political activist Hisham Al-Sabbag and activist Rihanna Al-Mosawi. In first session when defendants spoke about the torture they were subjected to, but were ignored by the court. On the 5th of September, the legal defense team submitted a letter requesting a change of court due to the conflict of interest, and requested a medical committee to investigate the torture allegations from the defendants. The defense team then withdrew from the session based on Article 211 of the Criminal Procedure Law of Bahrain, which stated that the defense team can refuse the judges ruling in the cases mentioned in the previous article and in other cases which are prescribed by the law. Moreover, the defendants issued a statement boycotting the trial stating that the lack of an independent judiciary as one of the reasons. On the 29 September 2013, the court continued the trial and sentenced the 50 defendants in the case to a total of 430 years in prison: 16 defendants were sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment including Naji Fateel and political activist Hisham Al-Sabbag, 4 were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and 30 to 5 years. The BCHRs Acting President Maryam Al-Khawaja stated: “There was no due process in the entirety of this case which is why the defendants and their lawyers decided to boycott. From the time that the defendants were abducted, tortured and then sentences, nothing was done according to international standards of a fair trial. If these fifty people were really guilty of a crime, why was the only evidence presented confessions extracted under torture? This was a sham trial with a political verdict, they should be released immediately”.
via Bahrain Court Sentences 50 Shia Muslims to Total 430 Years Imprisonment / Names.
Posted in human rights | 2 Comments »
Tags: activism, Bahrain, Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, Criminal procedure, fair trial, Human rights defender, illegal detention, independence of the judiciary, Maryam Al-Khawaja, Naji Fateel, Shia Islam, torture
September 29, 2013
On 4 September human rights groups in Angola denounced an escalation in police brutality against civilians since the start of the year in the oil-rich nation. “In recent months we have seen high levels of police violence in Angola against peaceful protests, street vendors, journalists, activists and human rights defenders,” a group of 20 organisations said in a statement. The groups criticised the “inhumane and cruel” treatment of prison inmates, after a video showing police and firemen beating prisoners in the capital Luanda was widely circulated on social networks. The broad coalition of human rights, environmental and development organisations across the country collaborate under an umbrella organisation, the Working Group for the Monitoring of Human Rights in Angola. The country’s interior ministry has condemned the violence and launched an inquiry to find the culprits. Since the end of a civil war a decade ago Angola’s economy has grown fast, and the country is now Africa’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria. But most of its citizens live in poverty, and civil society groups as well as international organisations regularly complain of police abuse. “Our political governance system was built on violence and the exclusion of the poor or those who are different. That is what we should attack,” said Elias Isaac from the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa.
“The arrests and assaults on peaceful protesters and journalists are a heavy-handed attempt to silence people who have every right to express their views. Angola’s government should swiftly reverse course, free those wrongly jailed, and investigate the police officers responsible.” said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch on 23 September. On September 19, 2013, police arrested 22 protesters who sought to demonstrate near Independence Square in Luanda and hand out leaflets calling for social justice. Two released that day were quoted in local media alleging that they were beaten and otherwise mistreated in custody. On September 20, three journalists who sought to interview some newly freed protesters were themselves arrested, threatened, and beaten by the police….The three journalists told Human Rights Watch that they were conducting the interviews on the street about three hundred meters away from the court when approximately forty heavily armed rapid intervention police officers arrived in five cars with sirens, including two armored vehicles. They arrested the three journalists, seven of the just-released protesters, and a businessman who had being filming the incident from a nearby office building. All were taken to a rapid intervention police command center where they were ill-treated and threatened. The mistreatment of the journalists was a clear attempt to intimidate the media, Human Rights Watch said.
Since 2011, inspired by popular uprisings in the Middle East, a small, peaceful movement of Angolan activist groups has sought to protest corruption, restrictions on free speech and other rights, and rising inequality in the oil-rich country. Angolan police and security agents have repeatedly disrupted peaceful protests organized by different groups, including youths and war veterans. Police regularly use unnecessary or excessive force and arbitrarily detain protesters. The state media have staged a campaign calling any antigovernment protest an attempt to “wage war.” In a country at peace for the first time in the last decade, such campaigns have raised fear among the population. Journalists and other observers who seek to document the protests and the government’s response have been regularly harassed, detained, and sometimes mistreated.
via Angola rights groups denounce rising police violence | GlobalPost and
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/23/angola-new-crackdown-peaceful-dissent
Posted in HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: AFP, Africa, Angola, arbitrary arrest, freedom of demonstration, freedom of expression, GlobalPost, Human right, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, human rights groups, Human Rights Watch, ill treatment, illegal detention, journalists, Leslie Lefkow, Luanda, open society initiative, Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa., peaceful protests, police brutality, Police officer, violence, Working Group for the Monitoring of Human Rights in Angola
September 27, 2013
In five days from now, on 2 October 2013, the People’s Court in Hanoi, Viet Nam, will hear the case of human rights defender Le Quoc Quan, who has been held in detention since 27 December 2012 and whose trial was postponed on 8 July 2013. Le Quoc Quan is a prominent lawyer, blogger and human rights defender. He has a long history of being targeted by the Vietnamese authorities in retaliation for his work. As a lawyer, he represented many victims of human rights violations, but was disbarred in 2007 on suspicion of engaging in “activities to overthrow the regime”. Le Quoc Quan also runs a blog http://lequocquan.blogspot.ie/ where he writes about various issues including civil rights, political pluralism and religious freedom. On 27 December 2012, Le Quoc Quan was arrested on trumped up allegations of tax evasion, was held incommunicado for the first two months and spent fifteen days on hunger strike. Currently the human rights defender remains imprisoned awaiting trial.
More information, please see update from 12 July 2013 http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/23255
Posted in Front Line, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: blogger, freedom of expression, Front Line (NGO), Hanoi, Human right, human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Human rights defender, hungerstrike, illegal detention, Le Quoc Quan, People's Court, Quoc Quan, religion, Trial
September 26, 2013
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, whose founder and director are both jailed, wins Norway’s Rafto Prize for rights defenders. The award hopes to “turn the spotlight on systematic violations of human rights in a region where abuse is too often met with silence from Western governments,” the Rafto Foundation said in a statement on 26 September. The founder of the centre, Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja, is serving a life sentence in jail after he and several other leading opposition figures were convicted of plotting to overthrow the monarchy. They were arrested in April 2011, in the wake of the Sunni-monarchy’s crackdown on a month of Shiite-led protests that demanded political reforms. Meanwhile the centre’s director, Nabeel Rajab, has been in jail for more than 14 months, serving a three-year jail term for taking part in unauthorised protests. The prize jury commended the rights group for its non-violent protests and documentation of human rights violations, despite government attempts to shut it down. The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights was, inter alia, also one the Final Nominees for the MEA of 2012 and received the Baldwin Medal
The annual Rafto award was founded in 1986 in memory of Norwegian economic history professor Thorolf Rafto, a longtime human rights activist. The 15,000 Euro prize will be presented on November 3 in Bergen.
via Bahrain rights group wins Norwegian award | GlobalPost.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 2 Comments »
Tags: Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, Bahrain, Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, GlobalPost, human rights activist, human rights awards, Human Rights Defenders, illegal detention, judicial harassment, MEA, Middle East, Nabeel Rajab, Rafto award, Roger Baldwin Medal, Thorolf Rafto
September 26, 2013
In what could possibly put trafficking campaigners and human rights organisations on a collision course, the Uzbekistan authorities have recourse to trafficking and sexual harassment charges to put human rights defenders behind bars. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Bukhara, Central Asia, fabricated charges, Front Line (NGO), Hasan Choriyev, Human right, human rights, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, human rights group, Human Rights Watch, human trafficking, illegal detention, Mercy, prison, rape, Razzakov, Sergei Naumov, sexual harassment, sexual harassment charges, Steve Swerdlow, Uzbek, Uzbekistan
September 19, 2013
Further to my earlier blog post about Kyrgyzstan following the bad example of Russia in trying to create a ‘foreign agents’ obstacle for human rights defenders, I am happy to refer to Front Line latest update of 19 September 2013 which says that during a press interview on the outcomes of his working visit to Brussels on 17 September 2013, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev stated to journalists that Kyrgyzstan does not need a “foreign agent” law, a draft bill of which was opened for public discussion on 6 September 2013.
On 16 September 2013, ahead of President Atambaev’s visit to Brussels, Front Line Defenders and Human Rights Watch published a joint letter to the European Union urging EU leaders to raise concerns about human rights abuses in Kyrgyzstan and getting specific commitments from President Atambaev to address them. The letter also contained an appeal to the EU to press the Kyrgyz President for the immediate release of the wrongfully imprisoned human rights defender Azimjan Askarov http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/09/15/kyrgyzstan-free-human-rights-defender-ensure-fair-retrial as well as on the draft bill http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/23774. 
Posted in Front Line, HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: Almazbek Atambayev, Azimjan Askarov, Brussels, draft bill, European Union, Foreign agent, foreign funding, freedom of association, Front Line Defenders, funding restrictions, HRW, human rights, human rights abuses, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, illegal detention, Kyrgyzstan, President of Kyrgyzstan, Russia
September 19, 2013
While Iran has started to free some of its political prisoners, China does the opposite by detaining two prominent rights activists who were en route to Geneva ahead of a U.N. review of Beijing’s rights record. Beijing-based activist Cao Shunli was stopped at Beijing’s airport on 14 September and questioned by state security police, the overseas-based China Human Rights Defenders [CHRD] said in an emailed statement. On the same day, Guangdong rights activist Chen Jianfang was also intercepted at Guangzhou’s International Airport.The activists, who have been incommunicado since, had been en-route to Geneva to attend a training course at the invitation of a Geneva-based rights group ahead of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of China on 22 October. Chen, a farmer-turned-petitioner who has been repeatedly detained in illegal “black jails” and who served a 15-month term in labor camp in March 2010, said she was threatened with violence by airport police, who also tore up her plane ticket. Both women had been active in transparency campaigns around the U.N. review process, sending information requests, suing the foreign ministry, and staging demonstrations outside its gates in a bid to be included in China’s submission to the U.N. “In recent weeks, police in several Chinese cities have interrogated other activists and lawyers about the same training program and warned them about serious consequences,” CHRD said.
(Reported by Wei Ling for RFA’s Cantonese Service, and by Xin Yu for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie).
via RFA’s China Detains Activists Over UN Campaign.
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 3 Comments »
Tags: Beijing, Cao Shunli, Chen Jianfang, China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, freedom of movement, Geneva, Guangzhou, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, illegal detention, retaliation, United Nations Human Rights Council, UPR, women human rights defenders, Xu Zhiyong
September 13, 2013
I remember from my visit to the Philippines in the early 80s that the nuns were extraordinarily active in the area of human rights (that was under Marcos). I was reminded of this when I saw the Bulalat report of 13 September that a long-time lay worker of a Catholic-run organization was arrested by elements of the Philippine Army on 8 September and the fierce reaction by Sister Somogod.
(Joel Yadao (in gray shirt) in June 2012. Photo courtesy of RMP-NMR) Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: agrarian reform, arbitrary arrest, bulalat, catholic church, Economic rights, human rights, Human rights defender, illegal detention, impunity, indigenous groups, judicial harasment, military, Mindanao, Misamis Oriental, New People's Army, Northern Mindanao, nuns, peasant movement, Philippine Army, Philippines, rural areas, Somogod, United Church of Christ, Villanueva Misamis Oriental, Yadao
September 6, 2013
In a piece in the Huffington Post of 9 September Frank Jannuzi, dep director of Amnesty International USA gives a good overview of the the 6 most damaging laws passed in Russia since President Putin was inaugurated last year, effectively criminalizing criticism: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in human rights | Leave a Comment »
Tags: AI, Amnesty international USA, foreign funding, Frank Jannuzi, Huffington Post, illegal detention, judicial harassment, LGBT rights, NGOs, President, President of Russia, restrictive laws, Russia, Vladimir Putin
September 3, 2013
A recent 100-page report by Human Rights Watch, “Tightening the Screws: Azerbaijan’s Crackdown on Civil Society and Dissent,” documents the dramatic deterioration of the government’s record on freedom of expression, assembly, and association in the past 18 months. The authorities have arrested dozens of political activists on bogus charges, imprisoned critical journalists, broken up peaceful public demonstrations, and adopted legislation imposing new restrictions on fundamental freedoms.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
Tags: activism, Azerbaijan, Civil society, critical journalists, Election, facebook, freedom of expression, Giorgi Gogia, HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights Watch, illegal detention, imprisonment, judicial harasment, protest, twitter
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 