AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

Giving human rights credit: EU countries agree to toughen scrutiny of export loans loans

24/06/2011 – The European Commission is considering a review of the European Roma Platform with the objective to strengthen the Platform. We would very much welcome such a reform. In its current form, the European Roma Platform does not reach its objectives to ensure exchange of expertise, provide support and facilitate cooperation between all concerned parties in a meaningful way.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE

23/06/2011 –  A hundred and fifty bodies were found in the sea off the Tunisian Kerkennah islands a few weeks ago. These bodies were of people who fled the violent conflict in Libya to seek safety in Europe. Their death added to the toll of refugees and migrants who die trying to reach Europe. More than 1,400 so far this year.

23/06/2011 – The right to adequate housing is a human right to which everyone is entitled without discrimination. However, in Romania, the right to housing is not effectively recognised or protected by national law. This often leaves people without access to justice for human rights violations.

21/06/2011 – Many refugees and migrants have suffered horrendous conditions of detention after being pushed back to or prevented from leaving Libya. We urge the European Union and its leaders to make a clean break and to accept their responsibilities.

31/05/2011 – Amnesty International is concerned that the new Constitution of Hungary, adopted by the Hungarian Parliament on Monday 18 April, introduces changes which may restrict internationally protected human rights and calls on the Commission to take a position on the matter and to react to what seems to be an attack against EU core principles and values. 

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

03/05/2011 – An Amnesty International delegation visited the island of Lampedusa and the “Village of Solidarity” near Mineo, in Catania province, between 29 March and 2 April 2011. Prompted by widespread reports of a humanitarian crisis on Lampedusa, the delegation researched the conditions of thousands of foreign nationals who had recently arrived in Italy from North Africa. On 20 April, Amnesty International wrote to the Italian Prime Minister and Minister of Interior to express concern over its findings, and the collective summary removal of Tunisian nationals from Lampedusa to Tunis from 7 April onwards.

28/04/2011 – Amnesty international has expressed its concerns over the draft of Hungary’s new constitution, which may restrict internationally-protected human rights.

18/04/2011 – Thousands of people who disappeared during the bitter civil war that wracked lebanon from 1975-90 and its aftermath are still missing. some were detained by different parties to the conflict, others may have been killed in the fighting or caught up in the massacres that punctuated the war and dumped in mass graves where their bodies lay unidentified. others simply vanished. Their relatives suffer unrelenting pain and anguish as a result; they remain determined to find out what happened.