Category Archives: human rights

Police homicides in the United States

Patrick Ball writes: Americans are afraid of many threats to their lives – serial killers, crazed gunmen, gang bangers, and above all terrorists – but these threats are surprisingly unlikely. Approximately three-quarters of all homicide victims in America are killed by someone they know. And the real threat from strangers is quite different from what most fear: one-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.

This is the story of the hidden numbers of police homicides in the United States. The killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Walter Scott have increased the world’s attention to US police violence, yet most Americans underestimate the threat posed by the people charged with keeping them safe.

Let’s turn to the facts.

There is no national registry of civilians killed by police and corrections officers in the United States. Several states, including Texas, Connecticut and California, maintain complete records, but in most parts of the United States, local law enforcement chooses whether to report officer-involved homicides to the federal government. The lack of systematic data poses a challenge both for those who wish to hold police accountable for their actions and for those who want to propose reform measures to reduce police violence. How many killings are committed by police? [Continue reading…]

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UN rights chief says unlocking gunman’s iPhone could open ‘Pandora’s box’

The New York Times reports: The top human rights official at the United Nations warned the United States authorities on Friday that their efforts to force Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to a gunman risked helping authoritarian governments and jeopardizing the security of millions around the world.

The remarks by Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, came as American investigators continued to press Apple to write software to help them gain access to an iPhone used by one of the gunmen in a shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., in December. Though the F.B.I. says it is a one-time request, Apple and others have raised concerns that the case could set a precedent and could force technology firms to install so-called back doors in devices, potentially invading customer privacy.

Mr. al-Hussein said that American law enforcement agencies, in seeking trying to break the encryption protecting one phone, “risk unlocking a Pandora’s box,” and that there were “extremely damaging implications” for the rights of many millions of people, with possible effects on their physical and financial security. [Continue reading…]

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Italian student killed in Egypt was tortured for days

Reuters reports: An Egyptian forensics official has told the public prosecutor’s office the autopsy he conducted on an Italian student showed he was interrogated for up to seven days before he was killed, two prosecution sources said.

The findings are the strongest indication yet that Giulio Regeni was killed by Egyptian security services because they point to interrogation methods such as burning with cigarettes in intervals over several days, which human rights groups say are the hallmark of the security services.

In the past, the Interior Ministry has rejected accusations about human rights abuses. [Continue reading…]

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Iran executed all adult men in one village for drug offences, official reveals

The Guardian reports: The entire adult male population of a village in southern Iran has been executed for drug offences, according to Iran’s vice-president for women and family affairs.

The matter came to light earlier this week after Shahindokht Molaverdi revealed it during an interview with the semi-official Mehr news agency in rare comments from a senior government official highlighting the country’s high rate of executions of drug traffickers.

“We have a village in Sistan and Baluchestan province where every single man has been executed,” she said, without naming the place or clarifying whether the executions took place at the same time or over a longer period. “Their children are potential drug traffickers as they would want to seek revenge and provide money for their families. There is no support for these people.” [Continue reading…]

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France’s state of emergency

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Didier Fassin writes: The state of emergency that François Hollande declared on 14 November, the day after 130 people were killed and more than 300 wounded by the attackers in Paris, is still in force. It’s worth noting how exceptional this situation is. Neither José María Aznar after the 2004 Madrid bombings that killed 191 people and injured 1800 nor Tony Blair after the 2005 London bombings in which 52 people were killed and 700 injured invoked any such measures. In France, it was only the second time under the Fifth Republic that a state of emergency had been applied to the entire country (the first was in April 1961, after the Algiers putsch, the generals’ failed coup against Charles de Gaulle). ‘France is at war,’ Hollande announced on 16 November, having convened a special congress at the Palace of Versailles to argue that the state of emergency should in due course be written into the constitution and, in the meantime, extended for three months; two days after his speech, 551 of 558 National Assembly representatives voted in favour of the extension. A poll indicated that 91 per cent of the public supported it, the approval rate showing little variation across party lines: 93 per cent among Socialists and 98 per cent among Republicans. Since then, support has remained very high. Why are these measures, which other heads of state, confronted with similar events, did not deem necessary, so popular at large?

The state of emergency, in general terms, gives the executive branch of government extraordinary powers over the mobilisation of the army, control of the borders, limitation of movement and setting of curfews. But in practice it has four main concrete consequences. The police can conduct searches in private and public spaces at any time without judicial warrant. The minister of the interior can put anyone considered a threat to public security under house arrest. State authorities can ban demonstrations and gatherings on the same grounds. Law enforcement officers can stop and search anyone without specific justification. Anticipating appeals to the European Court of Human Rights against the measures, the French government pre-emptively informed the Council of Europe on 27 November of ‘its decision to contravene the European Convention on Human Rights’.

You would think that these restrictions on public liberties and fundamental rights would be unpopular, and might even lead to public protest. In fact, the reverse has happened. In poll after poll, a large majority continues to support the emergency measures. There are two reasons: first, they are widely thought to be effective in countering terrorism; second, most of the population never gets to see the negative consequences. [Continue reading…]

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Report details ‘inhuman’ treatment in Israeli jail

Al Jazeera reports: Blows to the head and sleeping in insect-infested beds are among numerous examples of “degrading” and “inhuman” treatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli interrogators, according to a new report from Israeli human rights groups.

The 54-page report from HaMoked and B’Tselem, released on Wednesday, alleges that the treatment of detainees is at times “tantamount to torture”. It documents physical abuse by Israeli interrogators both in the field and at the Shikma detention facility in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

“[One Palestinian] was beaten until he passed out. Another detainee related that police officers photographed themselves next to him as he lay handcuffed on the ground after being beaten for about half an hour,” the report stated, noting that abusive conditions had been “used systematically against Palestinians interrogated at Shikma”.

The findings are based on the testimonies of 116 Palestinians interviewed between August 2013 and March 2014, along with dozens of affidavits and medical records. [Continue reading…]

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Britain lobbied UN to whitewash Bahrain police abuses

The Observer reports: neutering United Nations criticism of Bahrain for its human rights record, including the alleged use of torture by its security forces.

Documents shared with the Observer reveal that the UN’s criticism of the Gulf state was substantially watered down after lobbying by the UK and Saudi Arabia, a major purchaser of British-made weapons and military hardware.

The result was a victory for Bahrain and for Saudi Arabia, which sent its troops to quell dissent in the tiny kingdom during the Arab spring.

But the UK’s role has prompted concern among human rights groups. According to the international human rights organisation, Reprieve, two political prisoners in Bahrain are facing imminent execution and several more are on trial, largely due to confessions obtained through torture. [Continue reading…]

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The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people

Ars Technica reports: In 2014, the former director of both the CIA and NSA proclaimed that “we kill people based on metadata.” Now, a new examination of previously published Snowden documents suggests that many of those people may have been innocent.

Last year, The Intercept published documents detailing the NSA’s SKYNET programme. According to the documents, SKYNET engages in mass surveillance of Pakistan’s mobile phone network, and then uses a machine learning algorithm on the cellular network metadata of 55 million people to try and rate each person’s likelihood of being a terrorist.

Patrick Ball — a data scientist and the director of research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group — who has previously given expert testimony before war crimes tribunals, described the NSA’s methods as “ridiculously optimistic” and “completely bullshit.” A flaw in how the NSA trains SKYNET’s machine learning algorithm to analyse cellular metadata, Ball told Ars, makes the results scientifically unsound. [Continue reading…]

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Italian student murdered in Cairo showed signs of electrocution and other forms of torture

GIULIO-REGENI

Reuters reports: Egypt’s forensics authority handed over to the prosecutor general’s office on Saturday its final autopsy report on the Italian student who was tortured and found dead in Cairo last week.

Giulio Regeni, 28, had been researching independent trade unions in Egypt and had written articles critical of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government – prompting speculation that he was killed at the hands of Egypt’s security forces.

Egypt’s interior and foreign ministers both dismissed the notion of security forces being behind Regeni’s murder.

The prosecutor general’s office said it would not publicly disclose the contents of the report as the investigation was ongoing. Reuters was not able to obtain a copy to verify the contents.

However, a senior source at the forensics authority told Reuters Regeni, a graduate student at Britain’s Cambridge University, had seven broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis, traumatic injuries all over his body, and a brain haemorrhage.

His body also bore signs of cuts from a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor, abrasions, and bruises. He was likely assaulted using a stick as well as being punched and kicked, the source added. [Continue reading…]

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Anger mounts in Italy over torture and murder of student, seen as victim of Egypt’s ‘death squads’

The Local reports: Italy on Monday warned Egypt it would not allow the fate of Giulio Regeni to be brushed under the carpet as anger mounted over the Cambridge University student’s torture and killing in Cairo.

With the media publishing gruesome details of Regeni’s treatment and pointing the finger at Egyptian security services, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was under pressure to authorize a state funeral for the slain 28-year-old.

Regeni disappeared on January 25th and was found dead on February 3rd. An Italian autopsy carried out following his corpse’s repatriation at the weekend concluded that he was killed by a violent blow to the base of his skull having already suffered multiple fractures all over his body.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said that Egypt appeared to be collaborating with a team of Italian detective and forensic investigators dispatched to Cairo.

But he warned: “We will not settle for alleged truths.”

Gentiloni, in an interview with daily La Repubblica, added: “We want those really responsible identified and punished on the basis of law.”

La Repubblica reported that, as well as being systematically beaten, Regeni had his finger and toe nails pulled out in a pattern of torture which the daily said suggested that his “death squad” killers believed him to be a spy. [Continue reading…]

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Outrage grows as Italy investigates research student’s murder in Egypt

The New York Times reports: The furor surrounding the death of an Italian student whose body was discovered Wednesday on an Egyptian roadside grew Friday as Italian investigators flew to Cairo to help find his killers, and it emerged that the young man had secretly written from Egypt for a left-wing Italian newspaper.

The newspaper, Il Manifesto, published an article on Friday that the Italian student, Giulio Regeni, 28, had written under a pseudonym weeks before he was found dead that was sharply critical of the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, while describing faltering attempts by Egyptian unions to organize.

There was no indication that Mr. Regeni’s writing led to his death, but the article contributed to the broader Italian outrage over Mr. Regeni’s injuries as news outlets pointed an accusatory finger at the Egyptian security forces. Egyptian officials said on Thursday that Mr. Regeni had been tortured extensively and probably died from a brain hemorrhage.

“Giulio, Egyptian police under accusation,” read the headline of La Stampa, a Turin-based daily newspaper.

Hoping to defuse a potentially damaging crisis with a relatively close European ally, Egyptian officials promised cooperation and vowed to find Mr. Regeni’s killers. The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, spoke with Mr. Sisi by telephone and both agreed to cooperate to “unravel the mystery,” Mr. Sisi’s office said in a statement. [Continue reading…]

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The West must stop giving Turkey a free pass

Behlul Ozkan writes: Last month, more than 1,200 Turkish and foreign academics signed a petition calling attention to the continuing humanitarian crisis in many Kurdish-majority towns in southeastern Turkey, which are the site of fighting between the Turkish Army and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K. The petition decried the Army’s shelling of urban areas and the imposition of weekslong, 24-hour curfews, which have left many civilians unable to bury their dead or even obtain food. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly denounced the signers as “so-called intellectuals” and “traitors.” Within days, antiterror police had detained and harassed dozens of the signatories.

Mr. Erdogan’s actions shouldn’t have been surprising. The president has a history of jailing journalists and cracking down on media companies critical of his policies. And yet this time the response from his supporters was exceptionally chilling: A pro-Erdogan organized crime boss proclaimed, “We will take a shower in your blood,” while the office doors of some of the academics were ominously marked with red crosses.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who as a former academic might have been expected to come to his colleagues’ defense, announced that he “did not regard the petition as falling under the rubric of free speech.” He then set out on a trip to several European countries in order to encourage foreign investment in Turkey’s foundering economy. In Britain and Germany, Mr. Davutoglu received a warm welcome from Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor Angela Merkel. The European Union’s response to the latest crackdown on dissent in Turkey amounted to little more than a statement calling the persecution of the academics “extremely worrying.”

Many prominent Western academics and non-governmental organizations have been vocal in censuring the persecution suffered by their Turkish counterparts. The European Union’s lack of action on Turkey’s crackdown on academic freedom and human rights would therefore be inexplicable but for one crucial detail: As the European Union faces its largest refugee crisis since World War II, the 2.5 million Syrians currently in Turkey are a huge bargaining chip for Ankara. Europe’s leaders are well aware of this. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi Arabia: Palestinian poet sentenced to eight years in prison and 800 lashes for apostasy

The Guardian reports: A Saudi court has overturned the death sentence on a Palestinian poet accused of renouncing Islam, instead imposing an eight year prison term and 800 lashes.

The decision by a panel of judges came after Ashraf Fayadh’s lawyer argued that his conviction of apostasy was seriously flawed as he was denied a fair trial. In a briefing on the verdict, Fayadh’s lawyer said the new judgement revoked the death sentence but upheld that the poet was guilty of apostasy.

A memo written by the lawyer, posted by Abdulrahman al-Lahem on Twitter, describes the details of Fayadh’s new punishment. He is sentenced to eight years in prison and 800 lashes, with 50 lashes carried out on 16 occasions, and must also publicly renounce his poetry on Saudi state media.

Al-Lahem welcomed the overturning of the death sentence but reaffirmed Fayadh’s innocence and announced they would launch an appeal and ask for bail.

Adam Coogle, Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Instead of beheading Ashraf Fayadh, a Saudi court has ordered a lengthy imprisonment and flogging. No one should face arrest for peacefully expressing opinions, much less corporal punishment and prison. Saudi justice officials must urgently intervene to vacate this unjust sentence.” [Continue reading…]

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How the politics of fear and the crushing of civil society imperil global rights

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Kenneth Roth writes: Fear stood behind many of the big human rights developments of the past year. Fear of being killed or tortured in Syria and other zones of conflict and repression drove millions from their homes. Fear of what an influx of asylum seekers could mean for their societies led many governments in Europe and elsewhere to close the gates. Fear of mounting terrorist attacks moved some political leaders to curtail rights and scapegoat refugees or Muslims. And fear of their people holding them to account led various autocrats to pursue an unprecedented global crackdown on the ability of those people to band together and make their voices heard.

In Europe and the United States, a polarizing us-versus-them rhetoric has moved from the political fringe to the mainstream. Blatant Islamophobia and shameless demonizing of refugees have become the currency of an increasingly assertive politics of intolerance.

These trends threatened human rights in two ways, one well known, the other less visible. The high-profile threat is a rollback of rights by many governments in the face of the refugee flow and the parallel decision by the self-declared Islamic State, or ISIS, to spread its attacks beyond the Middle East. The less visible threat is the effort by a growing number of authoritarian governments to restrict civil society, particularly the civic groups that monitor and speak out about those governments’ conduct. [Continue reading…]

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‘Politics of fear’ threatens human rights around the globe

Human Rights Watch: The politics of fear led governments around the globe to roll back human rights during 2015.

In the 659-page World Report 2016, its 26th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that the spread of terrorist attacks beyond the Middle East and the huge flows of refugees spawned by repression and conflict led many governments to curtail rights in misguided efforts to protect their security. At the same time, authoritarian governments throughout the world, fearful of peaceful dissent that is often magnified by social media, embarked on the most intense crackdown on independent groups in recent times.

“Fear of terrorist attacks and mass refugee flows are driving many Western governments to roll back human rights protections,” Roth said. “These backward steps threaten the rights of all without any demonstrated effectiveness in protecting ordinary people.”

Significant refugee flows to Europe, spurred largely by the Syrian conflict, coupled with broadening attacks on civilians in the name of the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), have led to growing fear-mongering and Islamophobia, Human Rights Watch said. But as European governments close borders, they are reviving old patterns of shirking responsibility for refugees by passing the problem to countries on Europe’s periphery that are less equipped to house or protect refugees. The emphasis on the potential threat posed by refugees is also distracting European governments from addressing their homegrown terrorist threats and the steps needed to avoid social marginalization of disaffected populations.

Policymakers in the United States have used the terrorism threat to try to reverse recent modest restrictions on intelligence agencies’ ability to engage in mass surveillance, while the United Kingdom and France have sought to expand monitoring powers. That would significantly undermine privacy rights without any demonstrated increase in the ability to curb terrorism. Indeed, in a number of recent attacks in Europe, the perpetrators were known to law enforcement authorities, but the police were too overwhelmed to follow up, suggesting that what’s needed is not more mass data but more capacity to pursue targeted leads, Human Rights Watch said.

“The tarring of entire immigrant or minority communities, wrong in itself, is also dangerous,” Roth said. “Vilifying whole communities for the actions of a few generates precisely the kind of division and animosity that terrorist recruiters love to exploit.” [Continue reading...]

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King Salman’s first year in power in Saudi Arabia has been a dark year for human rights

Amnesty International: Despite limited improvements in the field of women’s rights, the Saudi Arabian authorities have pursued a persistent and ruthless crackdown on all forms of dissent by, among other measures, detaining critics after grossly unfair trials before the Specialized Criminal Court, often on spurious terrorism charges, increased their use of the death penalty and maintained practices that discriminate against the country’s Shi’a Muslim minority. The Kingdom’s military has also repeatedly violated the laws of war in its military campaign in Yemen.

Dozens of human rights defenders, peaceful activists and dissidents remained behind bars after being imprisoned in previous years. Among them were blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair, the first human rights defender to be sentenced after an unfair trial under Saudi Arabia’s counter-terror law, in force since February 2014. Dozens more were jailed under the law in 2015, including human rights defenders Dr Abdulkareem al-Khoder and Dr Abdulrahman al-Hamid, both founding members of the now disbanded independent Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), also after unfair trials. Most of the organization’s other founding members remained in prison.

Prominent writer Dr Zuhair Kutbi was sentenced in December 2015 to four years in prison by the Specialized Criminal Court, followed by a five-year ban on overseas travel, a fine of 100,000 Saudi Arabian riyals (about US$26,600) and a 15-year ban on writing and giving interviews to the media. The court also ordered him to erase his social media accounts. It suspended two years of his four-year sentence because of his poor health, but indicated they would be re-imposed if he “offended” again. [Continue reading…]

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Amnesty: Iran still a leading executioner of children

The New York Times reports: Iran is one of the leading executioners of juvenile offenders, despite its improved legal protections for children and a pledge more than two decades ago to end the death penalty for convicts younger than 18, Amnesty International said Monday.

In a new report, Amnesty International said that it had documented the execution of at least 73 juveniles in Iran from 2005 to 2015 and that 160 juvenile offenders are languishing on the country’s death row.

The report casts doubt on laws meant to improve children’s rights in Iran in the past few years, including new discretion by judges to impose alternative punishments on juveniles convicted of capital crimes. In reality, the report said, these changes are attempts by the authorities to “whitewash their continuing violations of children’s rights and deflect criticism of their appalling record as one of the world’s last executioners of juvenile offenders.”

Amnesty International, a leading global advocate for abolition of the death penalty, had also recorded the execution of juveniles in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and there are juveniles on death row in the Maldives and Nigeria.

There is little doubt among rights groups that Iran has executed more people convicted of capital crimes committed as minors than any other country. [Continue reading…]

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Failures in handling unaccompanied migrant minors have led to trafficking

The Washington Post reports: On the phone, the boy was frantic. After traveling hundreds of miles from a village in Guatemala, he had made it across the U.S. border and into a government-funded shelter for unaccompanied minors.

But then something went terribly wrong.

Instead of sending him to his uncle, Carlos Enrique Pascual, a landscape worker in Florida, authorities said the shelter released the teenager to traffickers who took him to central Ohio, held him captive in a roach-infested trailer and threatened to kill him if he tried to leave.

“Please, how can I get out of this?” Pascual’s nephew begged him during a stolen moment with a telephone. “I’m hungry, and my heart is bursting with fear.”

Pascual called police and, in December 2014, authorities found his nephew, then 17, and seven other boys living in cramped, dirty trailers about an hour outside of Columbus. Authorities said they were working at Trillium Farms, one of the country’s largest egg producers, debeaking hens and cleaning cages nearly 12 hours a day, six days a week, for as little as $2 a day.

The boys were part of a surge of children flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border over the past four years, overwhelming federal officials responsible for their safekeeping, child advocates say. Since 2011, more than 125,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America have been stopped at the border, many placed in shelters funded by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. [Continue reading…]

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