Category Archives: Amnesty International

Big pharma fuelling human rights crisis over Covid vaccine inequity – Amnesty

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Six companies warned not to put profit before lives as report shows less than 1% of almost 6bn doses have gone to low-income countries

Amnesty International has accused six pharmaceutical companies that have developed Covid-19 vaccines of fuelling a global human rights crisis, citing their refusal to sufficiently waive intellectual property rights, share vaccine technology and boost global vaccine supply.

After assessing the performance of six Covid-19 vaccine developers – Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax – Amnesty International claims that all are failing to uphold their own human rights commitments and warns they should not be putting profit before the lives of people in the world’s poorest countries.

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Journalist who tracked Viktor Orban’s childhood friend infected with spyware

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Dániel Németh’s phones infected with Pegasus software while reporting on one of Hungary’s richest men

Dániel Németh, a Budapest-based photojournalist, has tried to keep a low profile in his groundbreaking work investigating and documenting the luxury lifestyle of Hungary’s ruling elite.

While his name is not well known, the 46-year-old has managed to use his drone, and public flight and ship tracking data, to find and photograph politicians and pro-government business figures, exposing their hidden luxuries such as yachts in exotic locations.

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Ten women and girls killed every day in Mexico, Amnesty report says

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Families often left to do their investigations into killings amid widespread indifference by authorities, report claims

At least 10 women and girls are murdered every day in Mexico, according to a new report that says victims’ families are often left to carry out their own homicide investigations.

The scathing report, released on Monday by Amnesty International, documents both the scale of the violence and the disturbing lack of interest on the part of Mexican authorities to prevent or solve the murders.

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Qatar has failed to explain up to 70% of migrant worker deaths in past 10 years – Amnesty

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World Cup host has not properly investigated fatalities, rights group says, citing concerns over heat stress and safety

World Cup host Qatar has failed to investigate the deaths of thousands of migrant workers in the past decade, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

The human rights organisation said the majority of migrant worker deaths in Qatar are attributed to “natural causes”, cardiac or respiratory failure; classifications which are “meaningless” without the underlying cause of death explained, according to one expert cited.

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Sierra Leone abolishes death penalty

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MPs vote unanimously for abolition, making it the 23rd African state to end capital punishment

Sierra Leone has become the latest African state to abolish the death penalty after MPs voted unanimously to abandon the punishment.

On Friday the west African state became the 23rd country on the continent to end capital punishment, which is largely a legacy of colonial legal codes. In April, Malawi ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, while Chad abolished it in 2020. In 2019, the African human rights court ruled that mandatory imposition of the death penalty by Tanzania was “patently unfair”.

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Tigray ceasefire: aid workers demand telecoms be restored

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Lack of phone and internet hampering humanitarian efforts in war-torn Ethiopian province, UN warns

Humanitarian organisations in Ethiopia are demanding that phone lines and internet are restored to the troubled northern province of Tigray, warning that the ceasefire declared by Addis Ababa this week will only help alleviate famine if aid workers can operate safely.

Since the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) withdrew from Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, on Monday, all telecommunications have been down, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha). Unicef said ENDF personnel had entered its office and dismantled crucial satellite equipment.

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Fears for Chilean indigenous leader’s safety after police shooting

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Alberto Curamil, an award-winning environmental activist, was seriously injured during a protest against the burning of a Mapuche home

Former recipients of a prestigious environmental award, together with Amnesty International and the lawyer of indigenous land rights defender Alberto Curamil, have launched an appeal for Curamil’s safety after he was seriously injured in a shooting by police.

Curamil, an indigenous Mapuche leader who in 2019 won the Goldman Environmental Prize (GEP), also known as the “green Nobel”, was left with 18 riot shotgun pellets embedded in his body after police chased his truck and opened fire after a protest against an arson attack on a Mapuche home on contested land in southern Chile.

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Amnesty: ‘catalogue of violations’ by Israeli police against Palestinians

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Palestinians face repression from Israel and Palestinian Authority, human rights watchdog says

The latest flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip has been accompanied by a “catalogue of violations” committed by Israeli police against Palestinians in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, according to research from Amnesty International.

Arab citizens of Israel have been subjected to unlawful force from officers during peaceful demonstrations, sweeping mass arrests, torture and other ill-treatment in detention, and police have failed to protect Palestinians from premeditated attacks by rightwing Jewish extremists, the human rights watchdog said on Thursday.

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Death of Romany man knelt on by Czech police must be ‘investigated urgently’

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Council of Europe and human rights groups demand answers after footage shows man being pinned to the ground

Human rights organisations are leading calls for an urgent investigation into the death of a Czech man who died after being restrained by police, after footage of the incident went viral on social media.

The neck restraint technique used during the arrest of a Romany man was “reckless, unnecessary and disproportionate, and therefore unlawful”, according to Amnesty International, who also called on the local authorities for an immediate, impartial investigation and a ban on coercive techniques that severely restrict breathing.

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Recruitment of under-18s to British military should end, ministers told

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Human rights groups call for bar on junior entry, which accounts for quarter of intake to army

Ministers have been urged to stop the practice of recruiting children to Britain’s military by a coalition of 20 human rights organisation as MPs debate the armed forces bill.

The pressure to end the practice also comes as figures showed that girls aged under 18 in the armed forces made at least 16 formal complaints of sexual assault to military police in the last six years – equivalent to one for every 75 girls in the military.

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Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

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China’s Uyghurs living in a ‘dystopian hellscape’, says Amnesty report

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Widespread internment, torture and rights abuses have been claimed by former detainees as Beijing continues a policy of denial

Amnesty International has collected new evidence of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China, which it says has become a “dystopian hellscape” for hundreds of thousands of Muslims subjected to mass internment and torture.

The human rights organisation has collected more than 50 new accounts from Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities who claim to have been subjected to mass internment and torture in police stations and camps in the region.

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Contractors accused of rescuing white workers first after Mozambique attack

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Amnesty International says private military firm in Cabo Delgado abandoned others to their fate

Survivors of a recent attack by Islamist insurgents in Mozambique have told Amnesty International that private military contractors prioritised white workers for evacuation as the extremists closed in during days of confused fighting.

An estimated 220 civilians sought refuge in the Amarula hotel in Palma, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, during the attack in late March.

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Amnesty International restores Alexei Navalny’s prisoner of conscience status

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  • Human rights group apologizes to Russian opposition leader
  • Navalny’s past nationalist statements had been at issue

Amnesty International has apologized to the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny for stripping him of its “prisoner of conscience” status and said it would restore the designation.

Amnesty announced on 24 February that it would stop referring to Russia’s most prominent opposition activist as a prisoner of conscience on the grounds that in the past he had made comments that qualified as advocacy of hatred.

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Biden urged to end US aid ‘abortion ban’

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More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas

Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.

As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.

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Female political prisoners in Iran facing ‘psychological torture’, say campaigners

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Reports of deteriorating treatment of human rights activists, with an increase in moves to ‘dangerous’ jails often far from families

Female human rights activists imprisoned in Iran face increased jail terms and transfers to prisons with “dangerous and alarming” conditions, hundreds of miles away from their families, according to campaigners.

Warnings of the deteriorating treatment of female prisoners in Iran come days after Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian national who has served a five-year prison sentence in Iran, was sentenced to a further year in jail and a year-long travel ban by the Iranian courts.

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Hidden human rights crises threaten post-Covid global security – Amnesty

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‘Crises will multiply’ if escalating repression by governments under pretext of pandemic ignored, says secretary general

Neglected human rights crises around the world have the potential to undermine already precarious global security as governments continue to use Covid as a cover to push authoritarian agendas, Amnesty International has warned.

The organisation said ignoring escalating hotspots for human rights violations and allowing states to perpetrate abuses with impunity could jeopardise efforts to rebuild after the pandemic.

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UK’s ‘headlong rush into abandoning human rights’ rebuked by Amnesty

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Covid failings, crackdown on protest, police discrimination and resumed arms trade with Saudi Arabia all listed in annual report

Amnesty International has published a stark rebuke of the UK government’s stance on human rights, saying that it is “speeding towards the cliff edge” in its policies on housing and immigration, and criticising its seeming determination to end the legal right for the public to challenge government decisions in court.

In its annual report on human rights around the world, Amnesty International says the UK’s increasingly hostile attitude towards upholding and preserving human rights legislation raises “serious concerns”.

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Myanmar: UN calls for ‘utmost restraint’ from military as more deaths reported

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British-drafted UN statement watered down by China, Russia, India and Vietnam, as Amnesty says military using battlefield weapons on protesters

The United Nations has condemned the Myanmar military’s violent crackdown against anti-coup demonstrators as seven more people were reported shot dead in protests on Thursday.

Local media, witnesses and medics said six people were shot dead in the central town of Myaing when security forces opened fire on anti-junta protests and domestic media said one man was killed in the North Dagon district of Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city.

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Hundreds died in Axum massacre during Tigray war, says Amnesty

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Group says soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in northern Ethiopian city

Hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred in less than 48 hours by Eritrean troops during the war in the restive northern Ethiopian province of Tigray last year, Amnesty International has said.

The soldiers systematically killed hundreds of civilians in the northern city of Axum, opening fire in the streets and conducting house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity, it said in a report.

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