On 15 May 2018, a number of prominent Saudi women’s human rights activists were arrested. They had been peacefully advocating for years for the right of women in the kingdom to drive, as well as broader reforms related to the repressive male guardianship system
A woman who has three children and whose family was displaced twice in the past eight months told Amnesty International: “My daughter, who’s in first grade, is always afraid… She asked me [after we were displaced]: Why doesn’t God kill us?… Nowhere is safe for us.’”
According to a communique released by the Amnesty International, all individuals detained solely for peacefully expressing their views are prisoners of conscience and must be immediately and unconditionally released. Such actions by the authorities during a pandemic puts these individuals at an increased risk. The Palestinian authorities must fulfil Palestine’s obligations under intentional law and ensure that international human rights law and standards are at the centre of all responses to COVID-19
Amnesty’s figures do not include China, where the number of executions, believed to be in the thousands, remains classified. Other major executing countries, including Iran, North Korea and Viet Nam, continued to hide the full extent of their use of the death penalty by restricting access to death penalty information
Relatives of the whistleblower are concerned that she may have been arrested following the publication of this article and the American media Radio Free Asia claims to have been unable to contact her. On the Weibo social network, the doctor’s account remains active and some reassuring messages have been posted, but doubts remain as to the authenticity of their author because it is common in China for the police to extort passwords from detainees. In the past two months, three journalists and three political commentators have also been arrested in connection with the coronavirus epidemic
According to a communique released by Amnesty International, Anastasia Vasilyeva, her colleagues from the Alliance of Doctors union, and accompanying journalists were detained at the entrance to Okulovka, a village in Novgorod region (western Russia) on 2 April. The volunteers had brought masks and other protective equipment for medics at the local hospital
According to a communique released by Amnesty International on 27 March, thousands of refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers trying to make their way into Europe are currently stranded in Una-Sana Canton in the north-west of Bosnia and Herzegovina. While about 4,100 are accommodated in the temporary reception facilities managed by International Organization for Migration (IOM), an estimated 3,000 are sleeping in squats in abandoned buildings or sleeping rough and are now at risk of being relocated to the Lipa camp
The body of Şimoni Diril, the mother of Remzi Diril, a Catholic Chaldean priest in İstanbul, was discovered in a stream close to the village of Kovankaya, seventy days after the kidnapping perpetrated by strangers against the elderly woman and her husband Hormuz, who has still not been found
Several civil society organisations have today expressed concern over the arrest of at least 15 of their members and the detention and prosecution of seven of them. These events are taking place in the context of an increasingly deteriorating climate for civil society in Niger where several serious violations of fundamental freedoms have been recorded in recent weeks
The report, “‘No One Cared He Was A Child’: Egyptian Security Forces’ Abuse of Children in Detention,” documents abuses against 20 children between the ages of 12 and 17 when they were arrested