Dear Chairman López Aguilar,

Your Excellencies,

Following a majority court ruling to convict Taner Kılıç for ‘membership of the Fethullah Gülen terrorist organization’ and to convict Özlem Dalkıran, İdil Eser and Günal Kurşun for ‘assisting the Fethullah Gülenterrorist organization’, Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s Turkey researcher who observed the hearing said:

As the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) starts today, Amnesty International calls on the Presidency to ensure that human rights are at the forefront of their mandate. The German Presidency comes at a key moment amidst the COVID-19 crisis and as the EU faces a host of challenges in its internal and external policy. As European states are gradually remerging from lockdowns, the EU and its member states must put human rights at the centre of the post-COVID-19 recovery, ensuring that individuals and groups most at risk and vulnerable are not left behind.

Police enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns across Europe have disproportionately targeted ethnic minority and marginalized groups with violence, discriminatory identity checks, forced quarantines and fines, Amnesty International said in a new report.

This paper outlines Amnesty International’s key recommendations to the EU and EU member states participating in the Brussels IV Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region.

The Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe, in its Thursday’s opinion called on the Russian Federation to remove or review amendments to its constitution which would allow the Russian authorities to reject binding rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Director, said:

Responding to a decision by the European Union’s highest court that Hungary’s 2017 “foreign funding” law violates EU law, Amnesty Hungary’s Director Dávid Vig said:

In a horrifying escalation of police human rights violations at the Croatian border with Bosnia, a group of migrants and asylum seekers was recently bound, brutally beaten and tortured by officers who mocked their injuries and smeared food on their bleeding heads to humiliate them, Amnesty International has revealed today.

Responding to today’s ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, that the convictions of 11 activists in France for campaign actions calling for a boycott of Israeli products violated their right to freedom of expression, Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s France Researcher said:

Responding to the decision by French authorities to prosecute the three police officers, one of whom assaulted a British human rights defender, Tom Ciotkowski, while he was documenting police abuse against refugees in Calais in 2018, Nicolas Krameyer, Amnesty International France’s Programme Manager, said:

To Ms Ylva Johansson, Commissioner for Home Affairs, European Commission