The curfew imposed in the cities of southeastern mainly Kurdish Turkey constitute “collective punishment” for their people and army abuses are “dangerously” of force, Amnesty International denounced Thursday.
“The operations being conducted under total curfew put the lives of tens of thousands of people in danger and begin to look like collective punishment,” lamented the director of the NGO
US Ally Saudi Arabia planning to behead 50 people in one day: Amnesty
The Saudi Arabian government plans to execute at least 50 people mostly over terror related charges in one day, warns a human rights group.
“National media outlets close to the Saudi Arabian authorities” reported the convicted persons would soon be put to death, said Amnesty International in a recent report.
Some of those to be put to death are supposedly al-Qaeda affiliates or charged with attempting to overthrow the government.
“Beheading or otherwise executing dozens of people in a single day would mark a dizzying descent to yet another outrageous low for Saudi Arabia, whose authorities have continued to show stone-faced cynicism and even open defiance when authorities and ordinary people around the world question their sordid record on the use of the death penalty,” said Amnesty International’s Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa James Lynch.
Five Shia Muslim activists are among those to be beheaded, three of whom are children. The families of all have requested clemency from Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
Among the juveniles is Ali Mohammed Baqir al-Nimr, the nephew of prominent Shia cleric Ayatollah Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, who was 17 when he was arrested in 2012. The UN and the European Parliament have previously asked Riyadh to halt Nimr’s execution as international law prohibits the execution of people under the 18 years of age.
According to Amnesty, 151 people have been executed by Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the year.
“Saudi Arabia’s macabre spike in executions this year, coupled with the secretive and arbitrary nature of court decisions and executions in the kingdom, leave us no option but to take these latest warning signs very seriously,” said Lynch.
Source: presstv
Saudi Arabia breaks 20-year execution record: Amnesty International
At least 151 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, the highest figure in the last 20 years, Amnesty International says.
In a Monday statement, the rights group said Saudi authorities, on average, have put to death one person every other day in 2015.
The number shows a dramatic 68-percent rise in comparison with 90 executions carried out over the whole of the last year.
The last time Riyadh executed over 150 people in a single year was in 1995, when 192 executions were recorded, according to the statement.
“The Saudi Arabian authorities appear intent on continuing a bloody execution spree which has seen at least 151 people put to death so far this year,” said James Lynch, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa Program.
The statement also noted that nearly half of this year’s executions were for offenses that do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes” for which the death penalty can be given under international human rights law.
“Under international human rights standards, most serious crimes are crimes that involve intentional killing,” it said.
Under the Saudi law, apostasy, armed robbery, drug trafficking, rape and murder carry the death penalty. Most Saudi executions are carried out by beheading with a sword.
According to Amnesty, 71 foreign nationals were among those executed in Saudi Arabia this year.
“Foreign nationals, mostly migrant workers from developing countries, are particularly vulnerable as they typically lack knowledge of Arabic and are denied adequate translation during their trials,” the UK-based human rights group said.
Riyadh has been under fire for having one of the world’s highest execution rates.
Earlier this year, Amnesty said in a report that court proceedings in Saudi Arabia “fall far short” of global norms of fairness.
Amnesty International blocked from entering Azerbaijan
Amnesty International has been blocked from entering Azerbaijan ahead of the inaugural European Games, amid a clampdown on free speech designed to quell critics, the Guardian reports
The human rights organization had been planning to launch a new report highlighting the crackdown on free speech, independent media and government critics ahead of the Baku 2015 European Games.
But just as Amnesty officials prepared to travel, they received a message from the Azerbaijan embassy in London late on Tuesday, June 9, afternoon stating that it was “not in a position to welcome the Amnesty mission to Baku at the present time” and suggesting any visit should be postponed until after the games.
The decision to bar Amnesty came as Emma Hughes, a human rights campaigner with Platform who has previously been critical of BP’s role in co-operating with Azerbaijan, was stopped from entering the country.
After arriving on Tuesday, Hughes, who had been given press accreditation to cover the games, was told she was on a “red list” and held in the terminal before being put on a flight out of Baku.
The European Games, featuring 6,000 athletes including 160 from Team GB, begin on Friday in Baku’s new 68,000-capacity national stadium.
The European Olympic Committee, led by the Irish IOC member Pat Hickey, and the organizing committee, led by former British Olympic Association chief executive Simon Clegg, hope the event will establish the European Games as a fixture in the sporting calendar.
But the build-up has been overshadowed by concerns that Azerbaijan, in using the event to promote itself to the world, is simultaneously cracking down on critics inside the country, the Guardian notes.
The six months preceding the games have seen a string of critics arrested on what are widely agreed to be trumped-up charges.
They include an investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, who won a PEN prize earlier this year for her work exposing corruption, and Intigam Aliyev, a human rights lawyer who has taken more than 300 cases to the European Court of Human Rights.
“It is deeply ironic that the launch of a briefing outlining how critical voices in the country have been systematically silenced ahead of the European Games cannot be held. But rather than bury this message, the actions of the authorities have only highlighted their desperate attempts to create a criticism-free zone around the games,” said Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia.
“Far from advancing the goals of press freedom and human dignity enshrined in the Olympic Charter, the legacy of these games will be to further encourage repressive authorities around the world to view major international sporting events as a ticket to international prestige and respectability.”
Amnesty has said there are at least 20 prisoners of conscience in Azerbaijan, detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Campaigners within the country have drawn up a list of at least 80 political prisoners and many more have faced harassment from the authorities, had their assets seized or had to withstand pressure being placed on their families.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin is among the world leaders who will attend Friday’s opening ceremony. Britain will be represented by a junior minister, Tobias Elwood.
“Azerbaijan’s hosting of these games provided a rare opportunity to secure improvements in the country’s human rights record,” said Krivosheev.
“But the failure of the European Olympic Committee and the international community to speak up for those trying to speak out, has allowed the Azerbaijani authorities to progressively squeeze the life out of independent, critical civil society.”
Amnesty International to hold Armenian Genocide discussion in London
A panel discussion on the Armenian Genocide issue will be convened on April 22 in London.
The event by Amnesty International UK is entitled, “Who Remembers the Armenians? 100 Years of Impunity.”
The panel discussion speakers will be Carla Garapedian, Armenian film Foundation and Project Leader, Armenian Genocides Testimonies Collection (USA); and Dr. James Smith CBE, CEO of the Aegis Trust and co-founder of the UK National Holocaust Centre (UK). The event will be chaired by Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK.
“For the last three years, the Armenian Film Foundation has been working with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and has collected 400 testimonies of Armenian genocide survivors and eyewitnesses, filmed over the last four decades. This rare collection includes Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Assyrians and Yezidis. The Yezidis were eyewitnesses to the Armenian genocide – and now, sadly, are seeing history repeat itself,” the Amnesty International UK official website reads.
After the screening, the panel will look at how impunity and failures to bring to justice the perpetrators of atrocities leads to future atrocities. We’ll focus on the Armenian genocide, and then look wider to subsequent crimes against humanity and genocides committed in the century since – right up to the emergence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
ISIL has kidnapped 3,000 women, girls: Amnesty International
Presstv Takfiri ISIL militants have kidnapped up to 3,000 women and girls from the Izadi community in northern Iraq over the past two weeks, Amnesty 
International says.
Donatella Rovera, the Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, said the kidnappings took place in villages east of Mount Sinjar, where people have taken up arms against the ISIL terrorists.
The ISIL militants launched attacks against Izadi Kurds on August 3, pushing thousands of people out of their villages near the country’s border with Syria. Survivors fled to Mount Sinjar, where they were besieged for several days.
She also stressed that the militants also kidnapped entire families in the region who could not manage to flee, adding the fate of thousands of abductees has remained uncertain.
“The victims are of all ages, from babies to elderly men and women,” she said.
The Amnesty official also pointed out that women and girl are being held separately from the men in Tal Afar area, which is under the control of the Takfiri militants.
She also voiced fear that the men “may have been executed,” and said the kidnapping is a “crime” under international law.
Some 200,000 people fled to safety in semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, while thousands others crossed the Syria border. A large number of others remain on the mountain.
Meanwhile, local Kurdish intelligence sources say they have received information that women captured by Takfiris are being sold to traffickers for between USD 500 and USD 43,000 to work in bordellos across the Middle East.
In addition, several women have reportedly been forced to marry the ISIL militants.
SAB/HJL/HRB
Syrian president declares amnesty for prisoners
By ALBERT AJI and BARBARA SURK 1 hour ago June 9, 2014 – 17:42 AMT
Syrian President Bashar Assad declared a general amnesty Monday for prisoners in the country, state media reported.
It was not clear how many — if any — prisoners would be freed after the presidential decree, issued just five days after Assad had won a third, seven-year term in office amid the 3-year-old civil war in his country.
The official SANA news agency did not say if the amnesty would apply to the tens of thousands of anti-government activists, protesters, opposition supporters and their relatives that international rights groups say are held in the country. However, SANA’s report suggested the decree would reduce prisoners’ sentences without freeing them.
The decree appears to cover at least some of those who have taken up arms against the government, including foreign fighters, according to SANA. They will not be prosecuted if they “surrender to the authorities within a month of the issuing of the decree,” the report said. Those behind taking hostages will also be pardoned, SANA said, if they “release their captives safely and without any ransom or hand (hostages) over to the authorities” within a month.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Syrian lawmaker Issam Khalil called the decree “a gift from the president after he was elected for another term.”
The amnesty includes those who participated in the armed opposition supporters, Khalil said. The government routinely refers to rebels as terrorists.
“All those who committed errors against their homeland will benefit,” Khalil said. “It will allow them to return to their normal lives.”
Syria’s pro-government Al Ikhbariya television station quoted the justice minister as saying that the presidential decree was issued in the “context of social tolerance and national unity.”
“(It comes) against the backdrop of the victories by the Syrian army,” Minister Najem al-Ahmad said.
Assad’s forces have been on the offensive in several parts of Syria over the past year, capturing villages and towns the government previously lost to rebels.
A peaceful uprising that began against Assad’s rule turned into an armed conflict and later morphed into a full-fledged civil war. More than 160,000 people have been killed.
Also Monday, activists said fighting between rival jihadi groups in an oil-rich eastern Syrian province bordering Iraq had killing at least 45 fighters in two days.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the infighting flared up in eastern Deir el-Zour province Sunday and continued into Monday, pitting al-Qaida affiliate the Nusra Front against an al-Qaida breakaway group called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The two jihadi groups were allies but had a falling out earlier this year and have since intermittently clashed in some of the fiercest rebel infighting in the 3-year-old conflict. The Observatory said a month of infighting in Dier el-Zour alone has killed nearly 300 fighters and displaced 100,000 civilians.
Surk reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Diaa Hadid in Beirut contributed to this report.
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