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North Korea: Sealing China Border Worsens Crisis

Human Rights Watch - Thursday, March 7, 2024
Click to expand Image North Korean soldiers patrolling on a riverside along fortified fences in the border county of Uiju, North Pyongan province, December 22, 2022. © 2022 Kyodo News/Getty Images Since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, North Korea’s government has largely sealed its border with China and imposed overbroad, excessive, and unnecessary quarantines and restrictions on freedom of movement and trade, which have worsened the country’s already grave humanitarian and human rights situation. The new restrictions exacerbated existing UN Security Council sanctions, which restricted most exports and some imports, unintentionally harming ordinary North Koreans’ livelihoods and food security. UN member states should urgently address North Korea’s isolation and humanitarian crisis, encouraging authorities to end abusive measures and allow humanitarian aid with adequate oversight and monitoring.

(New York) – North Korea’s government under Kim Jong Un has effectively sealed its northern border with China, worsening an already grave humanitarian and human rights situation in the country, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 148-page report, “‘A Sense of Terror Stronger than a Bullet’: The Closing of North Korea 2018-2023,” documents the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK or North Korea) overbroad, excessive, and unnecessary measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, including quarantines and new restrictions on economic activity and freedom of movement. The government’s new measures have severely affected food security and the availability of products needed by North Koreans to survive that previously entered the country via formal or informal trade routes from China. United Nations Security Council sanctions from 2016 and 2017 limited most exports and some imports, harming the country’s economy as well as people’s ability to make a living and access food and essential goods.

“A Sense of Terror Stronger than a Bullet”

The Closing of North Korea 2018–2023

Read The Report

“North Korea’s sealing of its border since 2020 and the unintended effects of UN Security Council sanctions since 2017 have increased hardships on the long-suffering North Korean people,” said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch. “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should end the policies that have essentially made North Korea a giant prison, reopen its borders for trade, relax internal travel restrictions, and allow monitored international emergency assistance.”

Concerned governments should urgently address the impact of North Korea’s increased isolation on the basic rights of North Koreans. Even before new restrictions were put in place, North Korea was among the most isolated and repressive countries in the world.

From 2015 through 2023, Human Rights Watch interviewed almost 150 North Koreans outside the country, including 32 North Korean escapees with knowledge or experience of relevant conditions in recent years. Human Rights Watch also made extensive use of satellite imagery, analysis of open-source videos and photographs, interviews with journalists and activists with contacts inside the country and in China, international trade data, media reports, and academic studies.

Cross-border activities decreased in late 2017 after UN Security Council sanctions in 2016 and 2017 led China to impose strict new trade and travel controls on its side of the border. Cross-border travel and trade decreased further during the Covid-19 pandemic.

After the start of the pandemic in 2020, the North Korean government sealed the country’s borders by constructing new and expanded fences and guard posts and strictly enforcing rules, including a standing order for border guards to “shoot on sight” any person or animal approaching the border without permission. The border crackdown compounded the negative effects of earlier UN Security Council sanctions.

North Korean authorities also clamped down on bribery and various forms of low-level unsanctioned economic activity, which since the 1990s had enabled people to maneuver around overbroad governmental controls. Many families need to engage in these vital activities to obtain money or food to survive. The government also further tightened restrictions on communication with the outside world and access to information, while intensifying other ideological controls to prevent unrest.

The new restrictions enabled the government to strengthen its grip on power and reimpose control where its dominance had weakened over the past 30 years: in particular, over the border, market activity, unsanctioned travel, and access to information.

Satellite images starkly reveal the increased security enforcement on the North Korean side of its northern border after early 2020. An in-depth analysis of six selected border areas, totaling 321 kilometers, shows that North Korean authorities fenced off almost all the analyzed areas by 2022 or 2023, with almost 500 kilometers of new fences.

Most of the areas that Human Rights Watch analyzed now have two, and in one small part three, layers of fences. Images also show upgraded primary fences in several areas, new or improved guard patrol paths, as well as new garrisons, watchtowers, and guard posts. In the areas analyzed, Human Rights Watch found a 20-fold increase in security facilities since 2019. A total of 6,820 facilities have been placed near new or improved fences, an average of one every 110 meters. The government’s expanded internal security at its northern border has made almost all unsanctioned domestic and international travel impossible, whether to conduct informal commercial activities or to escape the country.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, North Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. The government has long struggled to ensure food security, adequate childhood nutrition, and access to medicine. For decades, the government has prioritized the development of nuclear weapons and missile programs over basic social services, diverting billions of dollars of revenues that could have been spent on social and public services and infrastructure to spur economic growth and promote economic and social rights.

The UN Security Council should urgently review current sanctions on North Korea, and the measures states take to enforce them, to evaluate their impacts on human rights and delivery of humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said. They should also seek more information from UN officials about the connections between North Korea’s weapons programs and its human rights situation.

“North Koreans have lived in deprivation and isolation for decades,” Yoon said. “The UN Security Council and concerned governments should press Kim Jong Un to end the country’s systematic human rights abuses and begin a dialogue to reopen the country to the outside world.”

Selected Quotes, Accounts:

Personal details are anonymized to protect the interviewees’ identities and their families in North Korea.

A former secret police officer who left North Korea several years ago said in March 2023 that he spoke with relatives there in 2017, and then twice a year until January 2020. However, between then and December 2022, he had only been able to speak with a relative once, in January 2022, because domestic travel restrictions prevented the relative from traveling to the border area to find a broker with a Chinese phone. He said:

Life has become harder and harder every day because of Covid-19. … The transportation situation was already bad, but with the Covid-19 pandemic, people are not allowed to move around, and it has become harder to talk on [unsanctioned] phones. … There, there is constant surveillance of calls … Things there don’t change every day like [outside of North Korea]. Life was hard when I left and remains difficult, if anything life is getting tougher and tougher, much more dreadful with the Covid-19 pandemic.

A former herbal medicine trader in her 30s from Ryanggang province living oversea said in January 2023 that she could speak with her relatives once a week or two or three times a month until 2019. After 2020, she was only able to communicate with them once every two months until June 2022, and somewhat more often since then until January 2023, but still irregularly. She said:

I asked [my relative] how she is doing. … She said life wasn’t life. She repeated that twice. We were seeing each other’s faces and we all cried … it was dangerous, and we turned off the video. … My [relative] said there were no words to describe how hard life was. There was no [informal] trade with China, not even to get some rice or a bag of wheat. If [authorities] heard of a soldier allowing that, that person would just disappear ... Soldiers are very scared. … My [relative] said people in [her area] said there is not even an ant crossing the border.

A former factory worker in her 30s from a remote area near the northern border in Ryanggang province, who left North Korea in the late 2010s, said in March 2023:

We already lived in constant fear…. The authorities created a sense of terror that made us feel scared. More than the fences, the pressure [the authorities put] all around us [pressing everyone to constantly monitor each other] created a sense of terror that prevented us from escaping, because of the thought that if anyone tried to leave, we would always be caught. ... I was so scared whenever I saw the fences.

A former trader from North Hamgyong province, who had been in contact with relatives in North Korea, said in January 2023:

My [relative] catches squid and crabs in the winter. He can eat and live off that, but in North Korea all squid used to be informally sold to China. But that’s all blocked [because of the sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic], so … they had to sell all the squid for domestic consumption … Because the value was lower, even if he caught a lot of squid, it became hard to survive. … With the border blockade, many jobs disappeared, so it was harder for people to survive.

A former trader in her 50s from Ryanggang province who left North Korea in the late 2010s said in May 2021:

After informal trade was blocked [with the UN sanctions since 2018], there was no more rice coming [from China]. …. There we say that one smuggler feeds 11 people ... If smuggling stops, all stops for people who made money [connected to smuggling] ... If smuggling stops, the authorities who got our money also cannot. … They all made money from the smuggled goods … If smuggling stops, all market activity stops.

A former trader in his 40s, who left North Korea in the late 2010s, recalled earlier crackdowns on informal trade and said in May 2021 he did not want to imagine how life was now in North Korea. He said:

Smuggling became very hard under Kim Jong Un’s rule. Informal trade became vibrant during Kim Jong Il’s time. Since 2013 and 2014, [smuggling] became difficult. To get products from China [through informal trade], we needed the support of soldiers covering the border [by paying them bribes to look the other way], but [many] border guards could not [accept bribes] anymore [because of the crackdown on corruption] … the authorities started ideological education for the soldiers… and even if we tried, the soldiers rejected the attempts… at the time, people who tried to do smuggling got caught and were executed. Then prices of products went up… when prices increased, those who used to eat white rice, ate rice mixed with corn… those who used to eat rice mixed with corn, ate just corn. Prices of corn went up. Then people made noodles with corn powder, then potato prices increased. Prices of all products rose. People went hungry. Aside from being hungry, many people didn’t have money to spend, so they could not buy clothes or necessities. You could easily see that on the streets. More people who stopped doing laundry, with raggedy clothes and dirty hair … I saw that in 2013 and 2014. The situation must be unimaginably worse by now.

A former informal trader from Ryanggang province who left North Korea in the late 2010s, said in June 2021:

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say people in Hyesan city would die if smuggling were blocked. Chinese products are essential for the survival of North Korean people. Domestic products are not enough to cover the country’s needs. ... Almost everybody in Hyesan city lives off connection with smuggling or official trade. ... I cannot think about it.

Bulgaria: Don’t Deport Saudi Activist

Human Rights Watch - Thursday, March 7, 2024
Click to expand Image Abdulrahman al-Khalidi. © Private

(Beirut) – Bulgarian authorities should immediately suspend any plans to deport a Saudi human rights activist to Saudi Arabia, Human Rights Watch said today. He would be at serious risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and an unfair trial if he is sent back there.

Abdulrahman al-Khalidi has been a human rights activist for more than a decade, advocating for the rights of prisoners in Saudi Arabia and countering the government’s digital propaganda, including their online troll armies. Al-Khalidi initially fled Saudi Arabia in 2013, fearing for his safety due to his activism. In October 2021, he crossed by foot into Bulgaria to claim asylum after living in exile for nearly a decade. On February 7, 2024, the Bulgarian National Security Agency issued al-Khalidi a deportation order, placing him at imminent risk of deportation.

“Abdulrahman al-Khalidi has spent more than a decade defending human rights at great personal risk, but he now faces a serious threat of detention and torture if Bulgarian authorities deport him to Saudi Arabia,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Despite the massive whitewashing efforts by Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record remains abysmal, and al-Khalidi is in grave danger of arbitrary detention and torture if forcibly returned.”

From 2011 to 2013, al-Khalidi was living in Saudi Arabia and advocating for the rights of prisoners in the country as part of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Assocation, also known as “HASM.” He participated in multiple demonstrations in support of Saudi detainees in Riyadh. In March 2013, al-Khalidi fled Saudi Arabia out of concern for his safety, first to Egypt, then Qatar, and finally Turkey.

In exile, he continued his activism and worked as an opposition journalist for seven years, writing articles critical of the Saudi government. He was also active in an online Saudi movement established by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi called the Bees Army, which sought to counter pro-Saudi government propaganda campaigns and online troll armies.

In the aftermath of Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, al-Khalidi feared for his safety and did not renew his identity documents, which may have required him to appear in the same consulate where Khashoggi was murdered. On October 23, 2021, he fled yet again and crossed into Bulgaria to claim asylum, where he now faces imminent deportation.

Given the rampant torture and due process violations in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, Bulgaria would violate the principle of nonrefoulement by deporting a highly visible critic of the Saudi government at risk of being persecuted for his political opinions or being tortured.

Social media posts reviewed by Human Rights Watch show that al-Khalidi has been subject to a torrent of abuse from Saudi government-linked influencers. One such post called al-Khalidi a “traitor” and accused him of “treachery” as well as conspiring to “seek to destroy the homeland and sell it to the enemies.” Another threatened that “the coming months will be catastrophic.”

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, including long periods of detention without charge or trial, denial of legal assistance, and the courts’ reliance on torture-tainted confessions as the sole basis of conviction. These violations of defendants’ rights are so fundamental and systemic that it is hard to reconcile Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system with a system based on the basic principles of the rule of law and international human rights standards. Saudi Arabia applies its uncodified interpretation of Islamic law as its national law. In the absence of a written penal code or narrowly worded regulations, judges and prosecutors can convict people on a wide range of offenses under broad charges such as “breaking allegiance with the ruler” or “trying to distort the reputation of the kingdom.”

Deporting al-Khalidi may violate Bulgaria’s international obligations, including article 3 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which states that “no State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture,” and article 33 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which prohibits the “return of a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers or territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Bulgaria is a signatory to both conventions.

“Bulgaria should not forcibly return Abdulrahman al-Khalidi to Saudi Arabia, given the systematic torture, ill-treatment and due process violations in the Saudi criminal justice system,” Shea said.

Human Rights Watch Canada Film Festival Begins This Month

Human Rights Watch - Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Click to expand Image Still image from the film Mediha.

(Toronto, March 6, 2024) – The annual Human Rights Watch Canada Film Festival, celebrating its 21st year, in partnership with Hot Docs Cinema, will present a program of four films covering a range of human rights topics from March 21-28, 2024. The films will be presented from March 21-23 in person at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, and March 24-28 on the HRWFF digital platform.

The films address the plight of the Yazidis – a small religious and ethnic minority in northern Iraq persecuted by Islamic State (ISIS) – Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth in Canada, Indigenous forest guardians in the Amazon, and refugees attempting to reach Europe. Following the tradition of past festivals, all tickets for both in-person and digital screenings are free and accessible to everyone in Canada with internet. 

“Suffering and injustice are on the rise globally, and one essential step in reversing these terrible truths is to witness and to document wherever and whenever people’s rights are in jeopardy,” said Jennifer Baichwal, filmmaker and festival programming committee member. “This is the work of both Human Rights Watch and the brave filmmakers who have brought us the compelling narratives that make up this year’s festival.”

“The festival strives to prioritize space for identities, viewpoints, forms of expertise, and experiences either silenced or marginalized in the film industry, news, and media,” said Nicholas de Pencier, filmmaker and festival programming committee member. “We should learn from these stories and be inspired to take up their causes.”

The energy and power of young people in the fight for human rights take center stage in two films this year, beginning with the opening night film, Mediha, a heartfelt and intimate account of a teenage Yazidi girl recently returned from ISIS captivity, who turns the camera on herself as she initiates investigations into the crimes committed against her, standing up for her family and the Yazidi people in the process. With a very different energy, Summer Qamp is an uplifting, funny, and moving look at Camp fYrefly in the forests of Alberta, Canada, where LGBTQ+ teens explore their authentic selves, make friends, and build community, far away from the fierce political battle being waged against them.

We Are Guardians presents the powerful and dangerous work of Indigenous forest guardians battling governmental indifference, politically connected agribusinesses, cattle ranchers, and illegal loggers as they fight to protect their traditional land in the increasingly vulnerable Amazon rain forest.

In this year’s drama, the cinematic Green Border from acclaimed filmmaker Agnieszka Holland unfolds a complex set of struggles being faced by a small group of refugees caught in the middle of larger political machinations between Belarus and Poland as they attempt to reach Europe.

The festival is committed to expanding opportunities for audience members to enjoy the events together, and works to create features that increase accessibility, including for people who are blind or have low vision, and for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Three of the four films this year will feature descriptive video and play with open captions, with live transcription for the conversations to follow two of the films. Please refer below or visit the festival website for accessibility specifications and information on panel discussions for each film in the lineup.

Learn more about the full festival lineup here.

Sri Lankan Laws Threaten Democracy, Warns UN Rights Chief

Human Rights Watch - Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Click to expand Image United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk speaks at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, November 16, 2023. © 2023 Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP Photo

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has delivered a grim assessment of Sri Lanka’s multifaceted human rights crisis.

On Friday, he reminded the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that in 2022, “tens of thousands of Sri Lankans took to the streets demanding deep democratic reforms and accountability for economic mismanagement and corruption.” Instead of fulfilling hopes for “a long overdue transformation,” he said the government has adopted or proposed “laws with potentially far-reaching impact on fundamental rights and freedoms, the rule of law and democratic governance.”

While millions have been reduced to poverty by economic mismanagement, the government has cracked down on dissent and blocked accountability for serious abuses. To stifle further protests, the government has enacted or pursued a raft of laws that will severely curtail civil liberties, including the Online Safety Act, the Anti-Terrorism Bill, the Electronic Media Broadcasting Authority Bill, and the Non-Governmental Organization Supervision and Registration Bill. Türk warned that these policies “grant broad powers to the security forces, and severely restrict rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression, impacting not only on civic space but the business environment.”

Fifteen years since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the government has blocked accountability for grave rights violations, while families of those who “disappeared” during the conflict face security force surveillance, intimidation, arrests and violence. Although the government claims to be pursuing a “truth and reconciliation” process, Türk said “the environment for a credible truth-seeking process remains absent.”

While Türk credited the government with taking “important steps to stabilize the economy,” the poverty rate has increased to 27.9 percent and nearly two-thirds of households are now worse off than before the crisis.

UN engagement on Sri Lanka, through a series of Human Rights Council resolutions, has been crucial for maintaining international scrutiny and keeping hopes for justice alive. The “core group” of countries that have led these resolutions this week expressed concern about the “legislative developments regarding human rights, reconciliation and civic space.”

Türk said that international financial institutions and creditors should give Sri Lanka fiscal space to protect social and economic rights. But with little hope that Sri Lanka will ever provide justice for serious past abuses, UN member states should use evidence gathered by the UN to bring cases in their own courts.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court Finally Rules on Martial Law-Era Trial

Human Rights Watch - Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Click to expand Image The Supreme Court of Pakistan in Islamabad, Pakistan,  June 20, 2022.  © 2022 Anjum Naveed/AP Photo

 This week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that the judicial proceedings leading to the death sentence and execution of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979 violated principles of due process and the right to a fair trial.

Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had overthrown Bhutto’s elected government in a military coup in July 1977. Bhutto was subsequently tried for the 1974 murder of a political associate in a trial widely believed to be unfair. His trial remains the only case in Pakistan’s judicial history to be conducted in the high court and not a trial court, hence denying him the right to appeal.

After the coup, General Zia removed judges who refused to take a new oath accepting the military takeover as legitimate. In recent years, former judges, including a former Supreme Court chief justice, admitted to imposing the death sentence under pressure from Zia.

The 1977 military coup began an 11-year period of state terror, widespread rights violations and impunity in Pakistan. Zia imposed martial law in 1977 and suspended all fundamental rights guaranteed in the 1973 constitution. Political parties and trade unions were banned, dissidents were publicly flogged and many executed, and laws were enacted providing for harsh Islamic law penalties for certain crimes. Elections held in 1985 under the military dictatorship reversed universal voting rights and introduced systems that required non-Muslims to register as a separate category and vote only for non-Muslim candidates.

In his opinion on the 1979 case, Supreme Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa wrote:

“We must … be willing to confront our past missteps and fallibilities with humility, in the spirit of self-accountability, and as a testament to our commitment to ensure that justice must be served with unwavering integrity and fidelity to the law. We cannot correct ourselves and progress in the right direction until we acknowledge our past mistakes.”

This ruling is an important acknowledgment by Pakistan’s Supreme Court and can serve as an important first step toward reforming the system to provide justice for those to whom it has long been denied, reverse the abusive laws of the Zia era still in effect, and hold those responsible for grave crimes to account.

DR Congo: Second Term Should Focus on Rights

Human Rights Watch - Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Click to expand Image Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi during his swearing in ceremony for a second term in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, January 20, 2024. © 2024 AP Photo/Guylain Kipoke

(Kinshasa) – Democratic Republic of Congo President Félix Tshisekedi should ensure that human rights are central to his policies during his second term in office, Human Rights Watch said today in a “Human Rights Agenda” for his administration.

Human Rights Watch urged the Tshisekedi administration to prioritize improvements in five key areas: the rights to free expression, media freedom, and peaceful assembly; protecting civilians in conflict areas; reforming the justice system and addressing corruption; providing accountability for serious crimes; and strengthening democratic institutions.

“President Tshisekedi’s first term ended with deep uncertainty about the Congo’s worsening violence and humanitarian crises, recurrent violations of civil and political rights, and growing mistrust in democratic institutions,” said Thomas Fessy, senior Congo researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The second term is a chance to start afresh and reverse course on significant human rights backsliding.”

Tshisekedi, the declared winner of the December 2023 presidential elections, was sworn in on January 20, 2024, for a second and final five-year term. The elections were marred by logistical issues, irregularities, and violence.

Tshisekedi faces significant challenges, most immediately an uptick in violence in the eastern province of North Kivu, where an offensive by the abusive Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has dramatically affected civilians. Violence is also rife in Ituri province as militia fighters have increased attacks on and killings of civilians. Insecurity continues in and around the western province of Mai-Ndombe and among communities in the southern Katanga region.

The government has also significantly repressed the rights to free expression, media freedom, and peaceful assembly. The authorities have over the past four years increasingly cracked down—including online—on journalists, human rights and democracy activists, critics of the government, and opposition party members and officials. Security forces have repeatedly used unnecessary or excessive force, including lethal force, to block or disperse peaceful demonstrations.

Tshisekedi recently described the country’s justice system as “ill.” His administration should act to reform the justice system and address corruption, which significantly reduces the government’s capacity to deliver on its obligations to provide quality education, health care, and social security.

Widespread impunity for serious abuses remains the norm. The president should commit to take concrete measures to address recurring cycles of violence fueled by a lack of criminal accountability for grave crimes. Concrete steps are also needed to restore the Congolese people’s trust in democratic institutions.

“President Tshisekedi promised to address recurring violence, to end repression, and to improve the daily lives of all Congolese,” Fessy said. “The president should devote his second term to fulfilling these goals by working for, rather than against, human rights, the rule of law, and democratic principles.”

Mexico: Trans People Denied Rights in Tabasco State

Human Rights Watch - Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Click to expand Image “Family Is Like a Circle,” a portrait of Sandra R., a transgender woman interviewed for the report, with her mother and grandmother in Villahermosa. © 2019 Pablo Zarate and Saraí Gavilán for Community Center for Inclusion

(Villahermosa) –The lack of a legal gender recognition procedure in Mexico’s Tabasco state creates barriers for transgender people in employment, health, education, and access to banking, Human Rights Watch and Community Center for Inclusion said in a report released today. Tabasco should create a simple administrative procedure to allow trans people to accurately reflect their self-declared gender identity on official documents.

The 60-page report, “‘I Just Want to Contribute to Society’: The Need for Legal Gender Recognition in Tabasco, Mexico,” documents the pervasive socioeconomic disadvantages that trans people experience due to a mismatch between their gender and their identity documents. A lack of accurate documents, often in combination with anti-trans bias, has led to discrimination, harassment, and violence for trans people.

March 6, 2024 “I Just Want to Contribute to Society”

“Mexican law unequivocally recognizes trans people’s right to gender recognition and any delay by Tabasco’s authorities to reform its relevant laws and policies unnecessarily prolongs the hardships that trans people face in daily life,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Tabasco authorities should send a strong signal that they respect the rule of law for all by upholding trans people’s right to self-identification and nondiscrimination, as many other Mexican states have already done.”

In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling with clear guidelines on legal gender recognition. The court said that, in order to comply with the constitution, authorities should ensure trans people can update their legal documents through an administrative process that “meets the standards of privacy, simplicity, expeditiousness, and adequate protection of gender identity.”

Twenty-one Mexican states have already reformed their laws and policies to comply with the court ruling. Tabasco has not.

In 2023, Human Rights Watch and Community Center for Inclusion interviewed 23 transgender people in Centla, Jalpa de Méndez, Tenosique, and Villahermosa, Tabasco. Most reported discrimination by potential employers or in the workplace. In some cases, discriminatory treatment only began after potential employers realized that the person’s identity documents did not match their physical appearance.

One trans woman from Jalpa de Méndez, who graduated with a degree in psychology in 2018, expressed her frustration: “I can’t practice my career. I graduated, but I continued working at [a retail company]. Even when I brought photos and papers [as proof of identity], it was always very complicated for employers.”

Most of those interviewed said that they also faced discrimination at health care facilities. Hospital staff, including doctors, regularly exposed them as transgender by calling out their legal (or “dead”) names in waiting rooms, subjected them to onerous questioning about their identities, humiliated them and, in some cases, openly mocked them.

Some interviewees had attended a university in recent years or were currently enrolled. All described discriminatory treatment from professors and fellow students, including harassment, bullying, and other targeting due to a mismatch between their legal name and gender. Most withstood the discrimination, albeit with mental health repercussions. Many said that harassment and bullying had also been part of their primary and secondary school experience.

A trans man from Centla said he stopped attending university classes altogether because it was “unbearable” due to discrimination.

Those interviewed also faced obstacles carrying out financial transactions, hampering their economic rights and activities. In many cases, bank employees refused to process transactions because they did not believe the identity documents trans people presented actually belonged to them.

Such discrimination occurs in a broader context of violence. According to Mexican authorities, at least three trans people were killed in Mexico in the first two weeks of 2024. In August 2023, the body of Karina Gómez, a trans woman from Villahermosa, was found in the Carrizal River with a concrete block tied to her feet. In February 2024, the body of Elisa Cortez, a trans woman originally from Tenosique, was found on the side of a road between Villahermosa and Cárdenas with bullet wounds. Authorities say that they are investigating the cases.

International human rights law protects both the right to be free from violence and the right to legal gender recognition. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is charged with interpreting the American Convention on Human Rights, ruled in an advisory opinion that states must establish simple and efficient legal gender recognition procedures based on self-identification, without invasive and stigmatizing requirements. International bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Committee have called on governments to guarantee the rights of transgender people, including the right to legal recognition of their gender.

“For a long time, Tabasco did not recognize many rights for LGBT people, and that only began to change after the Tabasco congress passed marriage equality in 2022,” said Armando Cornelio, director of the Community Center for Inclusion. “Tabasco’s authorities should recognize trans people’s rights and contributions to the community and pass legal gender recognition.”

Indonesia Officially Adopts Indonesian Term for ‘Jesus Christ’

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image A Christian congregation, which has been trying to secure a building permit since 2018, holds a service in their temporary building in Bogor, near Jakarta. The church uses the term “Yesus Kristus” like most Christian denominations. © 2022 Andreas Harsono/Human Rights Watch

This year, for the first time since 1953, Christians in Indonesia will finally be able to officially use Indonesian terminology for Jesus Christ, Yesus Kristus, when they celebrate the major Christian holidays of Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Christmas. In a victory for freedom of religion and belief, the government is no longer insisting on the use of the Arabic term Isa al Masih for Jesus Christ during major Christian holidays, which the Indonesian state had imposed for the past six decades.

The recognition came in January, when a joint decree on the change was signed by three government ministers: Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah, Minister of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform Abdullah Azwar Anas, and Minister of Religious Affairs Yaqut Cholil Quomas.  President Joko Widodo signaled his support for the change when he announced this year’s annual holidays, using Yesus Kristus in his announcement rather than Isa al Masih.

Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs Saiful Rahmat Dasuki said that Indonesian Christians had requested the change in nomenclature: “They want a change, using 'Yesus Kristus' in the commemoration of his birth, death, and ascension.”

Left unanswered is why successive Indonesian governments took so long to lift this unnecessary and oppressive requirement on Indonesian Christians’ terminology. In daily practice, including in Sunday services, Indonesian Christians rarely used the Arabic term, choosing the Indonesian version instead, highlighting the unreasonableness of the government’s insistence on the use of the Arabic term during festivities.

Indonesia has two major Bible publishing houses: the Indonesia Bible Society (Lembaga Alkitab Indonesia), which is jointly owned by various Protestant denominations, and the Indonesian Biblical Institute (Lembaga Biblika Indonesia), controlled by the Roman Catholic church. Alongside the Indonesian language, they also translate the Christian Bible into hundreds of Indonesia’s ethnic languages. Both publishers have traditionally used the term Yesus Kristus, despite the government not officially recognizing it.

Gomar Gultom, the chairman of the Communion of Churches in Indonesia, thanked the government for finally “ending the confusion” around the two different names for Jesus Christ. By this step, the Indonesian government could be indicating greater recognition of the rights to freedom of religion and belief, and this small but important step might serve as a precursor for more far-reaching reforms that can protect religious rights for everybody.

Malaysia: Abusive Detention of Migrants, Refugees

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image Undocumented migrants walk in line while being detained during an immigration raid in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, July 1, 2022. © 2022 Hasnoor Hussain/Reuters The Malaysian government is detaining about 12,000 migrants and refugees, including 1,400 children, in conditions that put them at serious risk of physical abuse and psychological harm. Malaysia’s degrading and abusive immigration detention system, which treats migrants and refugees as criminals, denies them their rights to liberty, health, and due process. Malaysia should develop community-based alternatives to detention that would make the immigration system more cost-effective, efficient, and humane.

(Kuala Lumpur) – The Malaysian government is detaining about 12,000 migrants and refugees, including 1,400 children, in conditions that put them at serious risk of physical abuse and psychological harm, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 60-page report, “‘We Can’t See the Sun’: Malaysia’s Arbitrary Detention of Migrants and Refugees,” documents Malaysian authorities’ punitive and abusive treatment of migrants and refugees in 20 immigration detention centers across the country. Immigration detainees can spend months or years in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions, subject to harassment and violence by guards, without domestic or international monitoring.

March 5, 2024 “We Can’t See the Sun”

“Malaysian authorities are treating migrants as criminals, arbitrarily holding them for prolonged periods in immigration centers with almost no access to the outside world,” said Shayna Bauchner Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Malaysia’s degrading and abusive immigration detention system denies migrants and refugees rights to liberty, health, and due process.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 40 people, including former immigration detainees, family members, lawyers, humanitarian aid staff, and former immigration officials.

Malaysian law makes all irregular entry and stay in the country a criminal offense, with no distinction among refugees, asylum seekers, trafficking victims, and undocumented migrants. There is also no legal limit on the length of immigration detention, leaving migrants at risk of being detained indefinitely. Authorities have detained more than 45,000 irregular migrants since May 2020.

Former detainees described a bare and brutal existence inside the immigration detention centers, also called depots, with limited food and hygiene supplies, frequent water shortages, strict and unpredictable rules, and the ever-present threat of punishment. “We would get beaten when we asked for more food, took an extra mug of water to shower, or asked for a blanket for the cold,” said a Rohingya refugee previously detained at the Belantik immigration depot.

Detainees are required to present themselves for “muster calls,” or roll calls, several times a day. Some last hours, with detainees ordered to stay silent, heads down and not moving, even to use the bathroom. “If we made any noise, we would be punished, like hanging from the wall, pushups, squats, walking like ducks, or standing under the hot sun for hours,” said an Indonesian woman held in the Tawau immigration depot.

Migrants are held without recourse to judicial review or mechanisms to appeal their detention. The Malaysian government’s use of prolonged, judicially unsupervised immigration detention violates international human rights law prohibitions against arbitrary detention.

Both ill-treatment and inadequate medical care have led to hundreds of deaths in immigration detention facilities in recent years, according to government data and witness testimony. One migrant worker said that officers tortured him and thirteen others for days after they tried to escape, beating them with bricks and batons and standing on their chests. Two of the detainees ultimately died.

Anti-migrant policies and practices, as well as xenophobic rhetoric have risen in Malaysia in recent years.

The Malaysian government has denied the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, access to immigration detention centers since August 2019, leaving the organization unable to review asylum claims or protect detainees registered as refugees. Malaysia has not ratified the Refugee Convention and lacks any legal framework or procedure for determining refugee status and providing recognition and protection to asylum seekers.

Detained refugees and asylum seekers said that immigration officials used threats, degrading treatment, and violence to block requests to meet with the UN refugee agency or to coerce them to return to their countries of origin. When a UNHCR-registered ethnic Chin refugee and dozens of other refugees at the Ajil depot protested the lack of access to the UNHCR and threats of deportation, the guards beat them. “We were brought outside and beaten on our hands and feet five times with two rubber pipes that were taped together,” he said. “The pipes were filled with metal wires. I fainted after the third hit.”

Children detained in the immigration centers face the same abuses as adult detainees, including denial of medical care, inadequate food, and ill-treatment. Malnutrition is widespread.

The Malaysian government’s immigration detention of children contravenes international law. Although the government has for years discussed alternatives to detention for children – including in its pledges to the UN Human Rights Council – there has been little progress.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has called for immigration detention to be gradually abolished, stating that “migrants must not be qualified or treated as criminals,” and that immigration detention should only be used “as an exceptional measure of last resort, for the shortest period and only if justified by a legitimate purpose, such as documenting entry and recording claims or initial verification of identity if in doubt.”

The Malaysian government should reduce its reliance on immigration detention and move toward abolishing it entirely, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities should immediately stop detaining refugees, children, trafficking victims, and other vulnerable migrants for immigration-related reasons.

The government should instead pursue community-based alternatives to detention that would not only counteract abusive and unnecessary immigration detention, but also make the immigration system more cost-effective, efficient, and humane.

“Malaysia should seriously consider adopting measures used by other countries that better manage immigration objectives,” Bauchner said. “Instead of maintaining abusive detention centers, the government should develop alternatives that protect the rights of children, refugees, and other vulnerable migrants.”

Nepal: Seize Chance to Ensure Justice for Conflict Atrocities

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image NepalI war victim Pabitra Sunakhari shows a photograph of her lost son, Surkhet District, February 2, 2017. © 2017 PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP via Getty Images The Nepali government’s proposed bill on transitional justice contains important provisions, including for reparations, relating to the country’s civil war but still needs significant amendments. It is widely recognized that a lack of accountability for conflict-era violations has led to a crisis of impunity in Nepal, with police and politicians rarely held accountable for rights violations and corruption. This is a moment of opportunity, if the bill is properly amended, to deliver the truth, justice, and reparations long sought by victims and help protect the rights of all Nepalis in the future.

(Kathmandu) – The Nepali government’s proposed bill on transitional justice contains important provisions, including for reparations, relating to the country’s civil war but still needs significant amendments, Human Rights Watch and Advocacy Forum-Nepal said in a report published today. Public debate and human rights activism have helped improve the bill, but the current version risks shielding those responsible for some serious crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, and denying some victims access to reparations.

The 50-page report, “Breaking Barriers to Justice: Nepal’s Long Struggle for Accountability, Truth and Reparations,” describes the decades-long struggle for justice by survivors and victims. Human Rights Watch and Advocacy Forum analyzed the proposed law and reviewed some emblematic cases that faced obstruction by the authorities. They also described obstacles to justice faced by survivors of sexual violence and relatives of victims who filed complaints in 62 cases of conflict-era extrajudicial killings with the assistance of Advocacy Forum. The bill requires amendments to meet victims’ needs as well as legal standards set by the Supreme Court and clearly established in international law.

March 5, 2024 Breaking Barriers to Justice

“To deliver a durable and rights-respecting process without further delay, Nepal’s leaders should agree to amendments called for by victims and recommended by legal experts, then ask parliament to pass the bill into law,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This is a moment of opportunity to deliver the truth, justice, and reparations long sought by victims and help protect the rights of all Nepalis in the future.”

It has been almost 18 years since the decade-long civil war in Nepal between Maoist insurgents and government forces ended with the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Conducting a transitional justice process remains the major outstanding commitment of the peace agreement. The war killed up to 17,000 people and left up to 3,288 others “disappeared.”

On his visit to Nepal in October 2023, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted that Nepal is closer than ever before to beginning a meaningful transitional justice process. In November, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who was the leader of the Maoist insurgency, said: “The victims want the speedy advancement of this process. The government too shares the same aspiration.” However, there is a risk that the process will unravel again if the proposals to amend the transitional justice law currently before parliament fall short or if momentum is lost, the groups said.

Accountability for serious crimes under international law is essential to uphold victims’ rights and ensure sustainable peace. The UN special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence has identified five pillars of transitional justice: truth, justice, reparations, memorialization, and guarantees of non-recurrence. The current bill provides for reparations and interim relief for some victims, including victims of torture and rape, who were left out of earlier relief packages. It guarantees the right of the families of victims of enforced disappearance to their relatives’ property. It also mandates the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to study the root causes and impact of the conflict and recommends institutional reforms.

Under the proposal, the TRC and Commission for Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) would be the sole bodies investigating alleged crimes committed during the conflict. Cases classified as “serious violations of human rights” could be referred to and prosecuted in a special court. The bill’s definition of “serious violations” includes rape, enforced disappearance, “cruel or inhuman torture,” and a definition of unlawful killing that remains to be finalized. However, the bill excludes numerous serious crimes under international law, including some acts of torture and other unlawful killings, creating a significant accountability gap, the groups said.

In a separate category, the bill defines “violations of human rights” other than those considered “serious” as “any acts against the domestic law, international human rights law or humanitarian law,” which cannot be referred to the special court. Because this category of crimes is excluded from prosecution, this language risks providing de facto amnesty to those responsible for some serious human rights violations and grave crimes under international law. Amnesty for serious crimes is contrary to Nepali and international law and standards and violates victims’ rights.

Importantly, the bill requires that both categories of violations (serious and not) are committed “in a targeted or planned manner against an unarmed individual or community.” This means that alleged perpetrators of crimes committed against combatants, or in a non-targeted or unplanned manner, are excluded from any possibility of criminal accountability. It also implies that the victims of these crimes are not eligible for consideration for other measures outlined in the bill, such as reparations.

The bill does not ensure the independent appointment of judges to the special court, nor does it provide for the financial independence of the transitional justice bodies.

Many survivors of sexual violence, who have faced trauma and severe social stigma, were unable to register their cases when conflict-era human rights violations were being recorded by the government between 2016 and 2018. The currently proposed window of three months to register sexual violence cases is inadequate, the groups said.

Nepal previously adopted a transitional justice law in 2014, but it was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015 because it provided amnesty for perpetrators of serious crimes. The TRC and CIEPD were established by the 2014 law and have registered over 60,000 cases, but have failed to resolve a single one. There has been little or no progress in the 62 complaints of conflict-era extrajudicial killings that have been registered with the police with the support of Advocacy Forum, which are tracked in this report and a series of five previous reports since 2008. Victims of rights violations committed during the conflict have gone to the transitional justice commissions, to Nepali courts, to the United Nations, and to foreign jurisdictions seeking justice to no avail.

In numerous statements made during and after Secretary-General Guterres’s recent visit to Nepal, victims’ groups called for a process that includes all the different elements of transitional justice, including criminal accountability and reparations.

It is widely recognized that a lack of accountability for conflict-era violations has led to a crisis of impunity in Nepal, the groups said. The police and security forces are rarely, if ever, investigated for deaths in custody allegedly resulting from torture or for killing protesters by using excessive force. Nor are politicians and officials held accountable for widespread corruption that undermines public services and violates economic and social rights.

Nepal’s international partners should follow the UN’s lead by only offering support for a process that meets Nepali and international legal standards, Human Rights Watch and Advocacy Forum said. They should also ensure that any donor support is delivered in a way that ensures best practices, including transparency and independence from the government, such as a funding structure under UN auspices.

“If the transitional justice bill is passed without appropriate amendments, it risks hindering the search for justice,” said Bikash Basnet, director of Advocacy Forum. “If it is appropriately amended, it can be the basis for a meaningful, nationally-owned process that upholds the rights of victims and benefits all Nepalis by strengthening institutions and the rule of law.”

Vietnam: New Wave of Arrests of Critics

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image Hoang Viet Khanh (left), Nguyen Chi Tuyen (middle) carries a No-U banner (No to China’s Nine Dash Line) at Ky Quan San Peak, Vietnam, and Nguyen Vu Binh (right).  © Private

(Bangkok) – The Vietnamese authorities arrested three prominent critics just days after Vietnam announced its candidacy for another term on the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch said today. The police arrested Nguyen Chi Tuyen and Nguyen Vu Binh on February 29, 2024, and Hoang Viet Khanh on March 1, and charged them with conducting propaganda against the state.

The Vietnamese government should end its crackdown against bloggers, rights campaigners, and activists, and immediately release those held for exercising their basic civil and political rights. In 2022, the UN General Assembly elected Vietnam to a three-year term on the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which ends in 2025. It announced on February 26 that it will seek a new term when its term ends.

“The Vietnamese government likes to boast about its respect for human rights when seeking a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, but its brutal crushing of dissent sends the opposite message,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Despite Vietnam’s egregious treatment of rights advocates, the country’s donors and trade partners have done almost nothing to press the government about its rights abuses.”

Vietnam currently holds at least 163 political prisoners, Human Rights Watch said. During the first two months of 2024 alone, three activists – Danh Minh Quang, Nay Y Blang, and Phan Van Loc – were convicted and sentenced to between three years and six months, and seven years in prison. At least 24 other persons are in police custody on politically motivated charges awaiting trials.

The police arrested Nguyen Chi Tuyen (also known as Anh Chi), 49, on February 29 in Hanoi. He is a rights campaigner who uses social media, including YouTube and Facebook, to comment on social and political issues. His primary YouTube channel, Anh Chi Rau Den, has produced over 1,600 videos and is followed by 98,000 subscribers. His second YouTube channel, AC Media, has produced more than 1,000 videos and has almost 60,000 subscribers.

Nguyen Chi Tuyen was a founding member of the now closed No-U FC (No U-line Football Club), a soccer team whose members were outspoken against China’s territorial claims on maritime areas claimed by Vietnam. He helped organize and participated in many anti-China protests in the early 2010s, and pro-environmental protests in the mid-2010s. He joined fellow activists to provide humanitarian assistance to impoverished people in rural areas and victims of natural disasters.

He also openly supported imprisoned rights activists including Pham Doan Trang, Can Thi Theu, Nguyen Tuong Thuy, Nguyen Huu Vinh (Ba Sam), and Nguyen Lan Thang. Prior to Nguyen Lan Thang’s trial, Nguyen Chi Tuyen published an open letter in support of his friend. He wrote, “The only thing we did was to act in accordance with our conscience, speak up our thoughts, our desire, our longing.”

Nguyen Chi Tuyen has repeatedly faced police intimidation, harassment, house arrest, bans on international travel, arbitrary detention, and interrogations. In May 2015, five unidentified men attacked and beat him near his house in Hanoi. The attack left him with injuries that required stitches in his face. In February 2017, Nguyen Chi Tuyen and five fellow activists met a European Union human rights delegation in Hanoi to discuss the human rights situation in Vietnam. Of the six Vietnamese activists present that day, Pham Doan Trang and Nguyen Tuong Thuy are now serving long prison sentences. Two others, Vu Quoc Ngu and Nguyen Anh Tuan, fled the country to escape likely arrest.

Despite the risk of prosecution on politically motivated charges, Nguyen Chi Tuyen continued his campaign for human rights and democracy. In a 2017 interview on Mekong Review, he said, “[The Communist Party] have all the power in their hands. They have prisons, they have guns, policemen, army force, the court: they have everything. They have media. We have nothing except our hearts, and our minds. And we think it’s the right thing to do…that’s all.”

On February 29, the police also arrested Nguyen Vu Binh, 55, a former political prisoner, in Hanoi. After working as a journalist at the official Communist Party of Vietnam’s journal, Communist Review (Tap Chi Cong San), for almost 10 years, in December 2000 he resigned and attempted to form an independent political party. He was also one of several dissidents who attempted to form an anti-corruption association in 2001. Police arrested him in September 2002, alleging that he slandered the Vietnamese state in written testimony he provided to the US Congress in July 2002 regarding human rights abuses in Vietnam. The government also targeted him for his criticism of a controversial border treaty with China in an article distributed online in August 2002.

In his testimony, Nguyen Vu Binh wrote, “I always believe that when we can successfully stop and prevent human rights violations across the country we have also succeeded in democratizing this nation. Any measures to fight for human rights, therefore, should also aim for the ultimate goals aspired for so long by the Vietnamese people: individual liberty and a democratic society.”

In December 2003, a court sentenced Nguyen Vu Binh to seven years in prison, followed by three years of house arrest, for espionage under article 80 of Vietnam’s Criminal Law. In June 2007, the authorities pardoned and released him two years and three months early. He immediately resumed his advocacy for freedom, democracy, and human rights. He frequently commented on various social and political issues of Vietnam.

Between 2015 and 2024, Nguyen Vu Binh has published more than 300 entries on the Radio Free Asia Blog. In his latest entry, “Positive Aspects of the Democratic Movement During a Difficult and Gloomy Period,” published a week before his arrest, he said that human rights and democracy advocates in Vietnam support one another, and the families of fellow activists, amid the ongoing government crackdown.

Nguyen Vu Binh twice received the prestigious Hellmann/Hammett writers’ award for writers who have been victims of political persecution, in 2002, and 2007.

On March 1, police arrested Hoang Viet Khanh, 41, in Lam Dong province, in the Central Highlands region. He started using Facebook to express his opinions on various socio-political issues in Vietnam in 2018. He denounced police brutality and raised concerns about confessions extracted under torture in police custody. He publicly voiced support for political prisoners including Pham Chi Dung, Nguyen Tuong Thuy, Le Huu Minh Tuan, Le Chi Thanh, Le Trong Hung, and Le Van Dung.

Commenting on the trial of a citizen journalist, Le Van Dung, Hoang Viet Khanh said that by arresting people who use Facebook to express their opinions, the government aims to intimidate citizens so they would be “afraid to expose the truth unfavorable to the one-party regime.” He added that the ultimate goal of arrests of dissidents is “to intimidate and prevent citizens from exercising freedom of speech.”

When Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh first took office in 2021, Hoang Viet Khanh published his 10-point opinion, urging the prime minister to consider abolishing article 4 of Vietnam’s Constitution, which confirms the Communist Party’s leadership over the country.

The police accused him of using his Facebook page to “post, share and disseminate [information with] contents that bend the truth, distort and twist the actual situation, attack the guidelines and policies of the party and the state, distort history, defame and insult President Ho Chi Minh, [and] smear high-ranking leaders of the party and the state.”

“These three activists are not guilty of anything except exercising their basic rights to freedom of speech,” Robertson said. “Unfortunately, the Vietnamese government treats all online expression of peaceful political views as a dire threat to the ruling party and government, and crushes such dissent with politically motivated arrests, trials, and prison sentences.”

Senegal: Amnesty Bill Opens Door to Impunity

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image Detained demonstrators on a police pick up during a protest against the postponement of the February 25, 2024 presidential election, in Dakar, Senegal, on  February 9, 2024. © REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

(Nairobi) – A draft amnesty law submitted by Senegal’s President Macky Sall to members of the National Assembly on March 4, 2024, opens the door to impunity for serious crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.

On February 26, amid a political crisis caused by the postponement of presidential elections, and as a way of reconciling the country, President Sall announced a general amnesty law for acts relating to the political protests held between 2021 and 2024. On February 28, Senegal’s cabinet approved the draft law. The law is to be submitted to a vote by deputies in a plenary session in the coming days.

“The bill, if passed, could effectively grant impunity to officials responsible for serious human rights abuses,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Any amnesty that entrenches impunity by absolving government and security force officials’ responsibility for serious human rights violations is incompatible with Senegal’s national and international obligations.”

The draft text states that the amnesty pertains to “all acts that may be classified as a criminal or correctional offense committed between February 1, 2021, and February 25, 2024, both in Senegal and abroad, relating to demonstrations or having political motivations, including those made by any communication media, whether or not the perpetrators have been tried.”

Human Rights Watch has previously documented Senegalese security forces’ excessive use of force, including live ammunition and improper use of tear gas, to disperse protesters in March 2021, June 2023, and February 2024. At least 40 people have been killed during violent clashes since March 2021, with no accountability. According to the opposition and civil society groups, up to 1,000 opposition members, including party leaders and presidential candidates, journalists, and activists were arrested across the country between March 2021 and January 2023. Since the announcement of the postponement of elections, at least 344 of them have been released, according to Aïssata Tall Sall, Senegal’s justice minister.

Human Rights Watch has also documented the lack of respect for due process rights of people arrested in connection with opposition-led demonstrations since 2021, including trumped up charges, lack of evidence to substantiate charges, prolonged pretrial detention, and ill-treatment and torture in detention or upon arrest.

“There is strong evidence indicating that the overwhelming majority of those arrested in connection with opposition-led demonstrations were arrested arbitrarily, and that the charges against them were politically motivated, so ending legal proceedings against those people is a positive step,” a Senegalese human rights lawyer, Moussa Sarr, told Human Rights Watch. “However, granting a blanket amnesty including to some members of the defense and security forces who have been credibly accused of deadly violence during protests is a betrayal of the victims and undermines their access to justice.”

The draft amnesty law has been met with criticism from both the opposition and civil society groups. Several victims of the violence since 2021 also expressed serious concerns to Human Rights Watch that the law might hinder their chances to establish responsibility for the violence they suffered. “I am deeply disappointed at this draft law,” said a 28-year-old opposition party member who was arrested on June 1, 2023, in Mbour, Thiès region. “It is an attempt to whitewash the crimes committed by security forces, including torture, of which I have sadly been a victim.”

The draft amnesty law comes as Senegal faces a major political crisis following the announcement by President Sall of the postponement of presidential elections scheduled for February 25. The move, which was denounced as a “constitutional coup d'etat” by the opposition and civil society groups, sparked deadly violence across the country.

On February 6, Senegal’s parliament voted to delay presidential elections to December 15 after a chaotic National Assembly session during which security forces removed opposition lawmakers. On February 15, Senegal’s Constitutional Council overturned the delay and called for the vote to be organized “as soon as possible.” Sall then announced a “national dialogue,” which the opposition rejected, and demanded that the election be held before June 2. Senegalese have been waiting since then for a new election date. Sall’s mandate officially ends on April 2.

Major international treaties to which Senegal is a party – including the Convention against Torture and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – provide that those allegedly responsible for serious crimes must be fairly prosecuted. An amnesty for serious crimes would also be contrary to the founding principles of the African Union and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

“President Sall said that the amnesty will be granted in the spirit of national reconciliation,” Allegrozzi said. “But attempts at a general reconciliation should not be a means to evade accountability.”

France Protects Abortion as a “Guaranteed Freedom” in Constitution

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image A message reading "My body my choice" is projected onto the Eiffel Tower on March 4, 2024.  © DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images

Yesterday at a special congress in Versailles, France’s parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to add the freedom to have an abortion to the country’s constitution. Though abortion has been legal in France since 1975, the historic move aims to establish a safeguard in the face of global attacks on abortion access and sexual and reproductive health rights: President Emmanuel Macron initiated it after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had constitutionalized the freedom to have an abortion as part of the right to privacy.

The vote, a global first in introducing explicit abortion protections in a national constitution, is a win for civil society organizations that have pushed for reproductive justice. This is an important move to uphold the right to autonomy, ensuring people can make informed decisions about their own lives, bodies, health, and wellbeing. That includes choices about sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion.

Now Macron’s government should ensure the constitutional amendment is more than a political statement. Despite positive steps in recent years, people in France face ongoing barriers to abortion care and widely varying access.

And while the newfound protection of abortion is a victory, it should not eclipse other areas of women’s rights in which France’s government does not set a shining example. Persistent violence against women – including 31 reported femicides in 2024 so far – has spurred criticism of insufficient measures to prevent violence, protect victims, and hold perpetrators accountable. France played a key role in blocking inclusion of rape as a crime based on lack of consent in the first-ever European Union directive on violence against women, agreed upon in February.

France has also actively restricted women’s and girls’ dress, banning full face veils in public places, head scarves (hijab) and long robes (abayas) in schools, and head coverings for athletes, including in national and international competition. All disproportionately impact Muslim women and girls.

Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights has agreed to hear a case brought by sex workers related to France’s 2016 law criminalizing the purchase of sex, after which there was a spike in murders of sex workers as well as other dangers.

To realize the constitutional amendment’s promise, and to be a true beacon on women’s rights, the French government should address obstacles to abortion care and take concrete steps to uphold women’s and girls’ rights across the board. Other governments should do the same.

Ghana: President Should Veto Anti-LGBT Bill

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo delivers his annual state of the nation address to the parliament in Accra, Ghana, March 30, 2022. © 2022 REUTERS/Francis Kokorok

(Nairobi) – Ghana’s parliament on February 28, 2024 passed a draconian bill that increases criminal penalties for consensual same-sex conduct and criminalizes individuals and organizations who advocate for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, Human Rights Watch said today. President Nana Akufo Addo should unequivocally reject the bill and refuse to sign it.

Members of parliament introduced the bill, the “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill,” in 2021. In addition to expanding criminalization of advocacy for the rights of LGBT people, the bill criminalizes failure to report an LGBT person to the authorities and to report anyone who uses their social media platform to produce, publish, or disseminate content promoting activities prohibited by the bill.

“The anti-LGBT rights bill is inconsistent with Ghana’s long-standing tradition of peace, tolerance, and hospitality and flies in the face of the country’s international human rights obligations,” said Larissa Kojoué, researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Such a law would not only further erode the rule of law in Ghana, but could also lead to further gratuitous violence against LGBT people and their allies.”

The current law punishes same-sex conduct between men with a maximum penalty of three years in prison. Under the new bill, anyone who identifies as LGBT or any sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary of male and female commits a misdemeanor and is liable on conviction to a fine of between 750 and 5,000 penalty units (from US$750 to 4,700), or a prison term between two months and three years, or both.

After the introduction of the bill in 2021, twenty-one LGBT activists were unlawfully arrested and detained for holding a human rights education meeting, on the ground that they were promoting homosexuality and that the gathering was an unlawful assembly. Police also raided a center for the LGBT community and the center was subsequently shut down.

The bill had its first parliamentary reading in 2022, after which point the Constitution Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee reviewed the bill and reported to parliament about it. The committee recommended passing the bill, in part because the bill allegedly had substantial popular support from Ghanaians.

The committee failed to acknowledge documented submissions by various experts, such as the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, saying that dignity, equality, and nondiscrimination should apply to everyone, including LGBT people and their allies. A coalition of 18 civil society groups, known as the “Big 18,” [BP1] and Human Rights Coalition, opposed the bill from the beginning, saying that it violates key fundamental human rights provisions in Ghana’s Constitution such as the rights to dignity, freedom of speech, freedom of association, an d academic freedom, equality and nondiscrimination.

The debates about the bill attacks against LGBT people. have been associated with heightened attacks against perceived LGBT people. Similar trends occurred in other contexts in Africa in which the authorities have expanded criminal charges against LGBT people and their allies. In Uganda, for example, where parliament passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act in March 2023, local organizations have documented an increase in verbal and physical attacks on perceived LGBT people. The groups have also documented mob violence; arrests and detention of activists; loss of employment; closure of organizations; clampdowns on services provided to LGBT people, including HIV/AIDS services; families and friends disowning LGBT people and forcing them out of their homes; and assaults on LGBT students.

After the passage of the bill, one prominent human rights activist in Accra said to Human Rights Watch: “We call on the president to uphold the values of democracy of the Constitution of Ghana…We cannot all leave the country. How can we be illegal in our own country just by existing? How can we be criminals?”

Under international human rights law, countries are required to safeguard the rights of people regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, all of which Ghana has ratified, protect the rights to integrity and security of the person, as well as freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly, including for LGBT people. Laws criminalizing same-sex conduct violate the rights to privacy and freedom from discrimination.

“Ghana’s assaults on LGBT rights contradict its self-image as one of the friendliest nations in the world, and a safe, peaceful and hospitable country,” Kojoué said. “The president should do the right thing by preserving civic space and protecting freedoms of speech and assembly, and veto the bill.”

 

Egypt: New Laws Entrench Military Power Over Civilians

Human Rights Watch - Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Click to expand Image Egyptian army soldiers guard the entrance of tunnels and the Suez Canal area, in Ismailia, Egypt, November 17, 2019. © 2019 REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

(Beirut) – In early February 2024, the Egyptian authorities issued new legislation that will entrench and widen the already broad powers of the military over civilian life in a manner that undermines rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The new laws grant sweeping new authority for the military to fully or partially replace certain functions of the police, civilian judiciary, and other civilian authorities and further expand the jurisdiction of military courts to prosecute civilians.

On January 22, a new law and amendments to an existing law were presented by the government to the parliament, which swiftly approved them with little to no discussion or edits in one plenary session on January 28. The legislation includes Law No. 3 of 2024 on Guarding and Protecting the State’s Public and Vital Facilities and Buildings, which was published in the Official Gazette on February 4. Parliament also approved numerous amendments to Law No. 25 of 1966 on the Military Code of Justice that are expected to be published in the Official Gazette soon.

“Entrenching the military’s domination over civilian life is a strategy to contain increasing discontent over the Egyptian government’s dismal failures to uphold and ensure basic economic and political rights,” said Amr Magdi, senior Egypt researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt’s financial crisis will not be solved by railroading increasing numbers of Egyptians through patently unfair military trials and locking them away.”

Law No. 3 tasks the armed forces with “assisting, and fully coordinating with the police, in guarding and protecting public and vital facilities and buildings including power stations, electricity lines and towers, oil fields, railway tracks, roads, bridges,” and “other comparable facilities.” The law provides military personnel involved in such operations with the same judicial powers of arrest and seizure as the police. It also stipulates that all offenses against or in relation to broadly worded “vital” public facilities and buildings are to be prosecuted in military courts.

This law contains broader, more abusive provisions than its predecessor, Law No. 136 of 2014, which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued by decree in October 2014. His government used the 2014 law to prosecute thousands of civilians, including dozens of children, in military courts, often in mass trials ending in harsh prison or death sentences. Reflecting the chaotic, abusive nature of mass trials in which basic documents are not checked and individual criminal responsibility is frequently not established, a notable case in 2016 resulted in a life sentence against a 3-year-old defendant that, following an outcry, a military spokesperson later said was issued by mistake.

The 2014 law said that it would apply for only two years. The government justified it saying the military trials were necessary to address waves of violent attacks on government facilities during that period. However, in 2016, the law was extended for five additional years, and then in October 2021 the law’s provisions were made permanent.

A significant new element in the new law grants military personnel the authority to inspect and search places, arrest people, or confiscate materials for the purpose of confronting “offenses that harm the basic needs of the society including food commodities and essential products.”

The new authority is to “preserve the fundamental pillars of the state, the people’s gains and rights, or national security as determined according to decrees by the president or his delegated deputy after consulting the National Defense Council.” This unprecedented broad language invites further military intervention into civilian governance and everyday life, giving the president and his generals a free hand to define threats to national security, Human Rights Watch said.

The new law also grants the defense minister the power to determine numbers, locations, tasks, and distribution of military personnel “as required by the nature of their work inside those vital and public facilities and buildings.” This provision could be utilized to permanently deploy military personnel at civilian government facilities, which can undermine their independence, or lead to abusive crackdowns by military forces on peaceful assemblies near such facilities.

The “food commodities and essential products” mentioned in the law to be protected by the military include food, non-alimentary, and fuel products that are government subsidized for low-income citizens. They usually include food such as bread, rice, lentils, sugar, flour, beans, and cooking oil; home essentials such as soaps and laundry detergents; and fuel such as home-used butane gas cylinders. The Ministry of Supply and Internal (Domestic) Trade oversees the supply and purchase of these products and their subsidized prices, while investigating and detaining those responsible for market violations normally lies within the Supply and Trade Administration, part of the Interior Ministry’s police.

Parliament members, government officials, and pro-government media reports have all said that the law’s new language around food and commodities aims to give the military the power to intervene to control markets against “manipulation,” indicating that the law could be used to target people involved in what the authorities perceive as economic-related offenses, such as monopolies, or trading hard currency on the black market.

Egypt is facing a soaring fiscal crisis and skyrocketing food prices on top of multi-year economic downturn. President al-Sisi’s government has consistently responded to dissent and criticism by harassing and jailing critics of its political and economic choices that have led to rising poverty and unprecedented foreign debt as well as those who have criticized the rapid expansion of opaque, giant military-owned businesses. In recent weeks, numerous videos emerged on social media showing citizens complaining about their inability to meet their basic needs for food and commodities as prices increased almost daily as well as the foreign currency crisis that has dramatically devalued the Egyptian pound.

Amendments to the Military Code of Justice include adding to the military courts’ jurisdiction crimes committed against “public and vital facilities and public properties, and other comparable things, that are protected by the armed forces.” Other amendments introduced new military appeals courts for major offenses, following the template of a similar change in January made to the civilian court structure. Previously, appeals in cases of major offenses in military courts went directly to the Military Cassation Court, the military counterpart of the Cassation Court in the civilian justice system.

While increasing opportunities for legal appeals could be a positive change, it does not alter the well documented abusive record of military courts, their lack of independence, and their inability to uphold the right to a fair trial. The motivation appears to be increasing the military judiciary’s capacity to replace the function of the civilian court system rather than limiting its mandate to military staff, Human Rights Watch said. The amendments introduced a new entity within the Defense Ministry to oversee military courts, but they did not change the nature of military judges as serving military officers who are subject to the Defense Ministry’s laws regulating issues related to hierarchy, promotion, discipline, and general work.

The Parliament speaker, Hanafy El Gebaly, and other officials have said that the Defense Ministry introduced the amendments to meet its “constitutional duties,” highlighting the fact that various constitutional amendments and laws in recent years have expanded the military’s ability to intervene in political life. These include, for example, an amendment to constitutional article 200, in 2019, that gave the military the duty to “protect the constitution and democracy, and safeguard the basic components of the State and its civilian nature, and the people’s gains, and individual rights and freedoms.” In analyzing those amendments, Human Rights Watch said then that they would significantly expand the military’s authority.

Since President al-Sisi, as then-defense minister, led the July 2013 military coup against late President Mohamed Morsy, exploiting public dissatisfaction with Morsy’s administration to justify his forcible removal, the military has increasingly emerged as the dominant state institution. It has also dramatically expanded its economic role, operating mega projects across vast commercial sectors.

Human Rights Watch strongly opposes trials of civilians before military courts in all circumstances, as their proceedings frequently severely undermine due process rights and because of how authoritarian governments have used them to punish peaceful dissent. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has expressed concerns about military trials of civilians in Egypt as early as in 2002, even though back then they were a much smaller scale.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, in interpreting the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, has said that military courts “should not, in any circumstances whatsoever, have jurisdiction over civilians.” It said that even when military courts follow guidelines for fair trial guarantees – as they always should – their “only purpose” should be in “offenses of a purely military nature committed by military personnel.”

“Instead of revisiting political and economic policies that have undermined the political and economic human rights of millions of Egyptians, President al-Sisi’s government has enhanced the military’s political and economic power,” Magdi said. “The armed forces should not be pitted against their own peoples’ hopes for dignity, bread, and freedom.”

US States Should Ensure Indigenous Voting Rights

Human Rights Watch - Monday, March 4, 2024
Click to expand Image Moapa-Paiute Community Center at the Moapa River Indian Reservation in Moapa, Nevada, June 14, 2022.  © 2022 Wade Vandervort/Las Vegas Sun via AP Photo

Nearly 100 years ago in June 1924, the US Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to the Indigenous peoples who had long lived on the land that became the United States. Nonetheless, some US states regularly denied Native citizens the right to vote through the 1960s, with Maine, Utah, and New Mexico being the last states to grant all Native citizens the right to vote. Even today some states continue to pass discriminatory legislation that violates the fundamental human right to vote.

Additionally, the US Supreme Court has eviscerated checks on discrimination, disempowering Native and other voters of color.

Despite this, Native people in Nevada offer an inspiring example of resistance and progress. In February, Tribal advocates in Nevada celebrated their first presidential primary with expanded voting rights, including the ability to register and vote with a Tribal ID and the creation of automatic on-reservation polling places – products of Indigenous-led organizing, legislation, and litigation.

A Tribal leader told Human Rights Watch that, for the first time during a presidential election, the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of Duck Valley have an on-reservation polling place. Previously, Tribal members drove nearly two-hours roundtrip to vote. Native advocates have long expressed the view, confirmed by our own research, that voting in-person, at polling places on or near reservation land, is particularly important for Native voters who distrust US government systems.

Despite this win, according to Tribal leaders, the Tribe faces implementation issues as the majority white Elko County, where the reservation is located, neglects to fully ensure in-person voting rights by failing to offer equal training for Tribal poll workers, pay a Tribal poll worker promptly, and assist in ballot box removal.

For centuries, Indigenous communities in the US have endured human rights abuses. States like Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota have a long history of discriminating against Native voters and, since 2020, have adopted measures and legislation that disenfranchise Native voters. Beyond these technical legislative barriers, Native voters face systemic racism and marginalization.

At the centennial of the Indian Citizenship Act, marked by a US presidential election year, US states and the federal government should enact legislation to protect and expand voting rights for Native people. Federal protections should include passing the Native American Voting Rights Act. State and local level officials should ensure on or near reservation in-person polling locations, allow for the full use of Tribal IDs, and ensure Tribes have equitable and accessible access to electoral procedures.

Ethiopia’s Deepening Crackdown on Dissent

Human Rights Watch - Monday, March 4, 2024
Click to expand Image Men in downtown Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, November 3, 2021. © 2021 Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images

In February, plainclothes security officers detained Batte Urgessa, a spokesperson for the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an opposition political party, and French journalist Antoine Galindo, as they met for an interview in a hotel in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

More than twenty-four hours later, they were brought before the Addis Ababa City Administration Court. The court granted the police’s request to detain them until March 1 to pursue their investigation.

An international outcry led to Galindo’s release from a police station in Bole sub-city, Addis Ababa, where the two were apparently being held. He left Ethiopia on February 29.

Batte appeared in court on March 1, where the prosecutor said he was under investigation for links to the banned Oromo Liberation Army. He was returned to detention until March 6.

This is not Batte’s first stint in jail. He was wrongfully detained in March 2021 and held for a year. The authorities repeatedly moved him between detention facilities, denied him access to relatives and legal counsel, and was only released after developing serious health issues that reportedly persist to this day. Seven other OLF political leaders detained in the months preceding Batte’s 2021 detention remain behind bars, despite multiple court orders for their release.

The authorities have also recently arrested five other politicians, including Christian Tadele,  a member of parliament and critic of the government’s actions in the Amhara region, and Dessalegn Chanie, another outspoken Amhara opposition lawmaker.

Galindo’s detention, the first lengthy detention of a foreign correspondent in four years, is happening in a context of an uptick in intimidation of journalists, which has received scant international attention.

In February, Ethiopia’s federal parliament extended the state of emergency in Amhara region, which had been in place since August and affords the government sweeping powers.  The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that four of the eight journalists in detention as of early 2024 were detained under these emergency powers.

These latest arrests demonstrate that in Ethiopia today, no one is safe from arbitrary arrest and detention. Ethiopia’s long-time partners should condemn the spate of wrongful detentions and challenge the government’s growing intolerance of peaceful dissent. 

Mali: Security Force Whistleblower Arrested

Human Rights Watch - Monday, March 4, 2024
Click to expand Image Soldiers of the Malian armed forces at the ceremony of the 60th anniversary of Mali's independence in Bamako, September 22, 2020. © 2020 MICHELE CATTANI/AFP via Getty Images

(Nairobi) – Mali’s military authorities have arrested a colonel from the gendarmerie who recently published a book about abuses by the Malian armed forces, raising fears of an enforced disappearance, Human Rights Watch said today.

Various sources, including one who spoke to Human Rights Watch, said that on March 2, 2024, unidentified men abducted gendarmerie Col. Alpha Yaya Sangaré from his home in Bamako, Mali’s capital, and drove off with him in a vehicle without a license plate. The military has since confirmed Sangaré’s arrest but has yet to divulge where he is being detained.

“Mali’s military has responded to allegations of serious abuses by going after the whistleblower instead of addressing the abuses themselves,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately announce where Colonel Sangaré is being held and safely release him.”

On February 24, Sangaré published his book, Mali: The Challenge of Terrorism in Africa, which denounced human rights abuses by the Malian armed forces in their fight against Islamist armed groups. The book’s reporting includes extracts from a 2017 Human Rights Watch report on extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrests of men accused of supporting Islamist armed groups.

After the book’s publication, Mali’s defense minister said that Sangaré made “false accusations against the Malian armed forces” and that the officer would face the law. The minister of territorial administration also denounced the book.

Mali’s military junta has increasingly cracked down on peaceful dissent, political opposition, and the media, shrinking the country’s civic space. On February 28, 2024, the authorities dissolved the political organization Kaoural Renouveau (Karoual Renew in English), citing “defamatory and subversive remarks,” against the junta. On December 20, 2023, the authorities dissolved the Observatory for Elections and Good Governance (Observatoire pour les élections et la bonne gouvernance), a civil society group tasked with observing the fairness and transparency of elections, accusing its chairman of “statements likely to disturb public order, including his forecasts on the participation rate in the June 2023 referendum” to amend the constitution.

Sangaré’s arrest comes as Mali’s relationships with the United Nations and neighboring countries have sharply deteriorated, raising concerns about human rights violations monitoring and reporting as well as accountability for abuses. On January 28, 2024, the Malian government announced that it would leave the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a move that would deprive victims of gross human rights violations from seeking justice through the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice.  

In December 2023, the UN peacekeeping mission, known as the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), officially pulled out from the country at the request of Malian authorities. MINUSMA included a strong human rights mandate. On August 30, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended the work of a panel of experts tracking abuses by armed groups and Malian security forces and fighters from the Russia-linked Wagner Group, harming efforts toward accountability for conflict-related abuses.

The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression said that “whistleblowers are essential for the public’s right to know, for the public’s participation in political affairs, democratic governance and accountability,” and “deserve the strongest protection in law and practice.”

Human Rights Watch and others have previously reported on serious abuses during counterinsurgency operations by the Malian security forces and allied fighters believed to be from the Wagner Group since 2022, including mass killings, torture and other ill-treatment, often in unauthorized detention facilities, and enforced disappearances. International law defines enforced disappearance as the detention of a person by state officials or their agents followed by the refusal to acknowledge the detention or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts.

Mali’s government should enact a law protecting government whistleblowers from arrest and other retributions, Human Rights Watch said.

“Colonel Sangaré took a bold step by choosing not to remain silent in the face of human rights abuses,” Allegrozzi said. “This case highlights the need for the government to protect those who publicly disclose wrongdoings.”

Proposed EU Forced Labor Regulation Should Focus on Workers

Human Rights Watch - Monday, March 4, 2024
Click to expand Image Migrant workers prepare to unload their catch at a port in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand on January 22, 2018.        © 2018 Reuters / Athit Perawongmetha

European Union governments meeting today in Brussels to discuss a proposed ban on products linked to forced labor, should allow forced labor victims in companies’ supply chains to receive remediation. Companies and business associations have called for remediation to be included in the draft regulation.

For victims of forced labor, remediation—finding a remedy for harms done—could vary depending on the circumstances. Typically, remediation requires a combination of measures including paying unpaid wages; reimbursing foreign worker recruitment fees; returning withheld passports; enabling workers to access worker rights organizations and to form and join unions; and ensuring access to physical and mental health care. Companies should consult with workers and their representatives on appropriate forms of remediation, and on rolling out and monitoring them.

The proposed regulation should encourage companies to better remediate forced labor in their supply chains. For example, after the nongovernmental organization Transparentem alerted PVH, Second Clothing, and Barbour to the high risk of forced labor in Mauritius, the three apparel brands—which were sourcing from the same factory—contributed towards reimbursing workers the recruitment fees they had paid. Recruitment fees typically put low-paid workers in debt, compelling them to endure poor working conditions and increasing the risk of forced labor.

The nongovernmental Remedy Project examined how US Customs and Border Protection had dealt with nine complaints of forced labor and found that the agency’s powers and procedures to impose, modify, or revoke import bans could be used as steps to provide remediation for harmed workers. Such approaches should be more consistently applied by US authorities and adopted by the EU.

Human Rights Watch and other civil society organizations have suggested how the proposed EU forced labor regulation could incentivize and facilitate robust prevention, mitigation, and remediation of forced labor in supply chains. This includes providing opportunities for companies to produce evidence of corrective actions they have taken in response to allegations of forced labor before the EU imposes an import or export ban. The regulation should also require companies to provide evidence of corrective actions, including remediation for victims, before deciding whether to reverse a ban.

The EU should not miss this important opportunity to introduce a powerful legal tool to assist workers.

Türkiye: Big Tech Should Protect Online Expression, Resist Censorship

Human Rights Watch - Monday, March 4, 2024

(Istanbul) – Social media companies should resist intensifying efforts by Turkish authorities to control their platforms through demands that they block content critical of the government ahead of important municipal elections on March 31, 2024, Human Rights Watch, ARTICLE 19, and 20 other human rights and journalists’ groups said in a statement released today.

Social media companies have restricted access to critical content in response to a January 2024 court order, demonstrating a greater willingness to bend to government pressure, rather than challenge censorship requests where they violate international human rights law. This approach undermines the platforms’ responsibility to respect human rights under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which include resisting pressure to restrict freedom of expression.

Social media platforms should take a firm, united stance against formal and informal pressure targeting expression protected under international human rights law, and adopt heightened transparency in the face of increasing online censorship.

The following is the groups’ statement:

Ahead of Türkiye’s municipal elections on March 31, 2024, ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch, and 20 other rights groups and journalists’ organisations jointly call on social media platforms to uphold the free expression rights of their users and resist state censorship. They should also fully disclose all government requests to restrict accounts or content and be transparent about informal government pressure to restrict content on their platforms.

The rights groups and journalists’ organisations also call on the Turkish government to cease pressuring online platforms to block content.

As important country-wide local elections loom, the Turkish authorities are once again intensifying efforts to control social media platforms through use of the restrictive internet law, demanding the blocking of content critical of the government. Social media platforms should take a firm, united stance against formal and informal pressure targeting expression protected under international human rights law, and adopt heightened transparency in the face of increasing online censorship.

Escalating Pressure and Inadequate Platform Response

A recent striking instance of the Turkish authorities’ readiness to escalate censorship – along with an inadequate response from platforms – concerned a January decision of the Ankara 9th Criminal Peace Court.

On January 10, the X (formerly Twitter) Government Affairs account published a January 6 order from the Ankara court with a list of social media content to be blocked on several platforms. The court order targeted 210 items including profiles and content on X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok that relate to Muhammet Yakut, a businessman from Türkiye accused of criminal activities, who has made allegations on social media of government corruption and organised criminal activity in Türkiye. While the court deemed the content a threat to “national security and protection of public order” under Article 8(a) of the Internet Law, the decision violated international freedom of expression standards and the platforms should not have blocked the content.

X also stated that the Turkish government had told the company that it was the only platform not fully complying with the court order. X had subsequently “taken action” on 12 accounts and 15 tweets among those identified in the court order. It did so despite acknowledging that the content should be protected under freedom of expression and that the company would challenge the order in court, indicating in its statement that these steps were necessary to prevent its entire platform from being blocked in Türkiye. While none of the accounts or tweets listed in the order is accessible from within Türkiye, many remain accessible from other countries.

A week after X’s announcement, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, published a case study andsubmitted a report to the Lumens database (a database run by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University) referring to the same court order in Meta’s Transparency Center. Noting that the restricted content did not violate its policies, Meta announced the blocking of 65 posts and 14 accounts for users in Türkiye based on the Turkish court order and indicated that its refusal to comply might have triggered sanctions including administrative fines, advertising bans for up to 6 months, and throttling of Meta’s entire services in Türkiye.

Although YouTube and TikTok have not commented publicly on the court order, research indicates that both platforms seem to have restricted access to the content specified in the court order. This includes several URLs on both the YouTube and TikTok platforms. On TikTok, the listed items are either completely inaccessible from multiple countries or only restricted in Türkiye. On YouTube, all listed URLs are inaccessible inside Türkiye and from multiple countries.

While some content restrictions were clearly labelled, in many instances platforms failed to indicate that the content was unavailable due to a court order. When attempting to access within Türkiye, the content was often labelled unavailable “because of a technical error” or showed messages of “video currently unavailable,” yet the same content remained accessible elsewhere. Similarly, entire accounts appeared as having posted “no content” when viewed from Türkiye, but displayed several posted videos when viewed from outside the country. This lack of transparency means that people navigating platforms from within Türkiye may never know that the content is purposefully restricted at the request of Turkish authorities and that the content may be accessible with the use of circumvention technologies.

In February 2024, ARTICLE 19 wrote to Google, YouTube’s parent company, and TikTok inquiring, among other topics, how they responded to the court order. TikTok shared their general commitment to human rights and their routine practice of handling government requests for content removal in Turkey, without addressing the specific questions raised about the January content removals. Google, on the other hand, did not respond.

Misguided Compliance Driven by Fear

It appears that the October 2022 legal amendments to Türkiye’s internet law have resulted in social media companies’ greater willingness to bend to government pressure, rather than use legal means to challenge censorship requests where they violate international human rights law. X and Meta’s admission that they have blocked content demonstrates this fear-driven response to the Turkish authorities’ escalating censorship demands. X cited explicit concerns about potential sanctions, such as service throttling. Meta made general reference to possible sanctions in their case study.

This approach undermines the platforms’ responsibility to respect human rights under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which include resisting pressure to restrict freedom of expression.

While the legislation allows for bandwidth throttling of up to 90 percent for noncompliance with even one takedown order, experience shows that, independent of the platforms’ actions and the provisions for throttling stipulated in the law, the Turkish authorities have on occasion precipitously blocked all access to certain platforms with little justification. An example of this came after the February 6, 2023, earthquakes, when the authorities resorted to a short period of throttling to block content.

However, evidence suggests extensive throttling over long periods before the elections is unlikely given the government and its supporters’ reliance on the platforms. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) spent considerable amounts of money on political advertisements in the run-up to the May 2023 national elections, according to Meta’s Ad Library. In the same period, Meta also reported removing an extensive network of inauthentic accounts spreading commentary supportive of the AKP, including through manipulated content, which had about 1.3 million followers and spent close to $700,000 on advertisements to circulate its content.

Navigating Legal Pressures with Coordinated Response and Heightened Transparency

As four major platforms decided to appoint local representatives in compliance with the 2020 amendments, civil society organisations warned YouTube, Meta, X, and TikTok against complying with laws that violate human rights standards. While all four companies reaffirmed their commitment to freedom of expression, they provided very little explanation as to how they intended to navigate the new legal environment. At the time Meta stated that there was a potential to withdraw the local representative if faced with increasing political pressure.

While the government’s censorship has undoubtedly been increasing in recent years, and particularly intensified since the legal amendments to the country’s internet regulations in 2020 and 2022, the Turkish government has to date relied on a lack of transparency and coordination among platforms to isolate and pressure them individually into compliance. Shortly before Türkiye’s 2023 national elections, the Turkish authorities subjected platforms to threats of throttling for failure to comply with content removal demands. On two separate occasions, X has publicly indicated that Turkish authorities claimed it was the only platform failing to comply with a removal request and that this informed its decision to action the content.

This pressure is likely to continue as local elections draw closer. It is essential that platforms resist being subjected to individualized pressure by adopting a coordinated response and heightened transparency measures and challenging removal demands in court. Continued compliance with these orders may encourage the Turkish authorities to make further similarly arbitrary or excessive requests to remove content that falls within the boundaries of protected expression, ultimately implicating these companies in state censorship, said the rights group.

It is also crucial that platforms create contingency plans providing some means of access to their platforms in case shutdowns do occur at key moments during the upcoming elections, and to maintain access to content throughcircumvention technologies.

Recommendations for Social Media Platforms and the Turkish Government

As social media platforms operating in Türkiye are faced with increasing government pressure, ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch, and the 20 other rights groups and journalists’ organisations urge them to take the following steps, in consultation with civil society organisations and impacted communities:

Resist complying with blocking orders that restrict access to protected expression, including by challenging them in court and limiting the scope and duration of implementation. Assess blocking orders against international freedom of expression standards, considering in particular that political speech enjoys the highest level of protection. Conduct additional human rights due diligence ahead of Türkiye’s March 2024 municipal elections to evaluate and mitigate the risk of becoming complicit in censorship and the freedom of expression implications of the potential sanctions by the government both on election day and the period leading up the election. This should include establishing a contingency plan to maintain platform access throughout the election period in the event of shutdowns or throttling. Be transparent about government requests for censorship. This includes notifying users that content is not available at the URL where the content was hosted, the reason for its blocking (e.g., a government order) and publishing the order (including through the Lumens database) and case studies, when relevant. Publicising these actions expeditiously is key to holding governments accountable and mitigating isolated, informal pressure. Engage with other companies to share information about formal and informal government pressure and commit to taking a united stance against particularly excessive censorship demands, particularly during election periods. Engage with Turkish civil society for a better understanding of the implications of company policy and practices, the relevance of content or accounts that are subject to blocking orders, as well as the actual threat and implications of sanctions.


The Turkish government is the primary duty bearer to ensure the right to freedom of expression and free and fair elections. To comply with these obligations, it should:

 

Adhere to international freedom of expression and human rights standards and repeal provisions of Türkiye’s internet legislation that do not comply with international human rights law. Refrain from using legal and extra-legal means to exert pressure on social media platforms to censor online content in violation of the human rights obligations, particularly content involving political discourse. Increase transparency in dealings with social media platforms, including public disclosure of all content removal requests. Ensure that any actions taken against online platforms strictly comply with the principles of legality, legitimacy, necessity, and proportionality. Refrain from throttling or shutting down the platforms at any time, whether before, during or after the elections.
 

Signatories:

ARTICLE 19 Human Rights Watch Access Now Committee to Protect Journalists Danish PEN Digital Action English PEN European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) Freedom House International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) International Press Institute (IPI) Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA) OBC Transeuropa PEN America PEN Canada PEN International PEN Norway P24 Platform for Independent Journalism SMEX South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) Swedish PEN

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