Following the publication today of a new Council of Europe report which finds that Finland is failing survivors of rape, Amnesty International’s women’s rights researcher in Europe, Anna Blus said:

To mark the start of the ‘Gymnich’ meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers in Helsinki, where ministers will meet Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) from around the world, Amnesty International has called on delegates to commit to greater protections for these inspirational women.

Reacting to yesterday’s news that almost 150 people have drowned in the Mediterranean and around the same number have been returned to Libya by the Libyan Coastguard, where they risk indefinite detention, Massimo Moratti, Research Director for Europe at Amnesty International, said:

On 17 July 2019,also the World Day for International Justice, the Burundian Court of Appeal of Ntahangwa confirmed the sentence of human rights defender Germain Rukuki. The decision was issued in a public hearing without Germain and his defence being notified. On 22 July, six days after the decision was issued, they were finally informed.

Responding to a decision by the European Commission to refer Hungary’s “Stop Soros” legislation to the Court of Justice of the European Union and to launch a new infringement procedure against Hungary for denying food to people in the border area with Serbia, Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions office said:

The European Parliament has today expressed concern about the human rights situation in Hong Kong, voting amongst other things to call for the EU and member states to work towards export control mechanisms to deny China, and in particular Hong Kong, access to technologies ‘used to violate basic rights’. Reacting to this news Eve Geddie, Director of the Amnesty International, European Institutions Office, said:

European Union foreign ministers gathering in Brussels on 15 July 2019, should issue a clear call to Libyan authorities to close their migrant detention centres, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) said today. The EU ministers should make a commitment on behalf of EU states to facilitate the evacuation of detainees to safe places, including outside of Libya and to EU member states. “Expressions of outrage over dire conditions and dangers to detainees amid fighting in Tripoli ring hollow without urgent life-saving measures to get people out of harm’s way,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “EU governments should offer concrete support to Libyan authorities to close all migrant detention centres and take immediate action to help evacuate those most vulnerable and at risk.”Libyan authorities have shown an openness to release people from official detention centres, in the wake of a deadly attack on the Tajoura detention centre earlier in July. The outgoing EU high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, said on July 10 that, “Libya’s current system of detaining migrants has to end.” Citing “ghastly conditions” in detention centres, on June 7, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights appealed to Libyan authorities and the international community to ensure that all migrants and asylum seekers detained in centres in Tripoli are “immediately released.”However, EU governments have never conditioned their support to Libyan authorities on closing the detention centres and releasing the thousands of people unlawfully detained. They have insisted instead that EU-funded humanitarian assistance would lead to improved living conditions in the detention centres, despite lack of evidence that it does. And they have continued to aid the Libyan Coast Guard to return people intercepted at sea to indefinite detention in Libya. In a new statement on July 11, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), called for all funding to be conditional on closure of the centres, with a range of proposals to allow immediate release of detainees.Already appalling conditions in migrant detention centres under the nominal control of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli, have deteriorated since forces under General Khalifa Hiftar began their assault on Tripoli in early April. An airstrike on the Tajoura detention centre, located inside a military compound southeast of Tripoli, on the night of July 2, killed 53 people and wounded at least 130. Two detainees of the same facility had been injured in a previous attack on May 7, when an airstrike hit just 100 meters from the centre. On July 9,  UNHCR announced that Libyan authorities had allowed survivors at Tajoura to leave the centre, though it appears that they were not granted adequate assistance upon release, nor an opportunity to leave the country to reach safety elsewhere if they so wished. In late April, armed men had attacked detainees in the Qasr Ben Geshir detention centre, about 24 kilometres south of Tripoli. Responsibility for both attacks remains unclear and should be established through credible and independent investigations. In other centres in and around Tripoli, the fighting has interrupted food and water supplies and worsened sanitary conditions, as well as limited access to detainees by humanitarian organizations and UN agencies providing vital care. As of the beginning of July, UNHCR has transferred 1,630 people out of detention centres on the front lines to its Gathering and Departure facility, also in Tripoli, but also to other Libyan detention centres in areas deemed safer. UNHCR estimates that 3,800 people are detained in migrant detention centres near conflict areas, while the total detainee population is estimated at 5,800 as of June 21. Under Libyan law, any undocumented migrant, asylum seeker, or refugee may be detained without an opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of the detention, making the detention arbitrary. All people arbitrarily detained in GNA facilities should be released from detention and those centres closed, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and ECRE said. Given the risks facing foreigners in Libya, the GNA should work with international agencies and the EU to provide immediate humanitarian assistance to released detainees and establish humanitarian corridors to safety.EU member states should ensure that those evacuated from detention centres are offered safe routes and regular pathways out of Libya, including by increasing resettlement pledges and expediting processes to allow UNHCR to ramp up evacuations to its transit centre in Niger or directly to EU member states. Since the beginning of April, UNHCR has been able to evacuate only 289 people to Niger and 295 to Italy – the only EU country that has agreed so far to take asylum seekers directly from Libya. Non-EU countries should also support evacuation efforts and pledge resettlement.“The horrific attack on the Tajoura detention centre last week has once more showed the mortal danger that women, men and children locked up in Libya are exposed to,” said Matteo de Bellis, researcher on migration and asylum at Amnesty International. “Rather than keeping their eyes closed in the face of the inhuman conditions, torture, rape and other abuse refugees and migrants face in Libya’s detention centres, EU governments should urgently set up safe routes out of Libya for them, and ensure that people rescued in the central Mediterranean are not returned to Libya.”

Judges working to protect the independence of the Polish judiciary from government interference are being subjected to serious harassment online and at work, according to a new report published by Amnesty International today.

Dear Prime Minister,

The Cypriot government offers the last hope for a Syrian man to return to his family in Cyprus, said Amnesty International as they launched a new campaign to #BringAhmedHome.

EU top court condemns Poland’s law forcing Supreme Court judges to retire The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled today that Poland’s contested Law on the Supreme Court is in breach of EU law. Under an interim decision from the CJEU from November 2018, Polish authorities had already been ordered to restore the Supreme Court to its composition before April 2018, when the law came into force.

More than a million people in more than 200 countries and territories across the globe have come together to express their outrage at the sentencing of prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to 38 years and six months in prison and 148 lashes after two grossly unfair trials, Amnesty International announced today, as signatures demanding her release were handed in to Iranian embassies around the world.