Law enforcement officials sent to police the region devastated by Türkiye’s 6 February earthquakes have beaten, tortured, and otherwise ill-treated people they suspect of theft and looting, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. One person died in custody after being tortured. In...

The Decision on December 8, 2022, by the Council of the European Union to admit Croatia into the Schengen area despite substantiated reports of frequent breaches of EU and international human rights law by Croatian authorities and its border guards shows disregard for the EU’s commitment to...

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. Policing the pandemic covers 12 European countries and...

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...

People’s rights are being violated by governments in Europe and Central Asia, who are cracking down on protests and seeking to erode the independence of the judiciary to avoid accountability, Amnesty International said today as it published its annual review of human rights in the region. The...

From 2014 onward, Burundian HRDs, journalists and civil society came under ever-greater pressure in a fast-onset crisis that culminated in an almost total absence of HRDs and civil society space at the time of writing in April 2019. Accelerating harassment and arbitrary detention of HRDs and...

The European Union (EU) and its member states are falling short on their commitment to support and protect human rights defenders (HRDs) who are facing mounting deadly threats and attacks, a new Amnesty International report out today shows.  ...

Around the world, people are speaking up and working to defend human rights, frequently at risk to their safety, freedom or life. They are harassed and intimidated, unjustly prosecuted and imprisoned. Some are tortured, killed or forcibly disappeared. Many states have introduced restrictive laws to...

Responding to news that the Polish authorities detained an activist, Elżbieta Podlesna for several hours, on suspicion of offending religious beliefs, Amnesty International’s Regional Europe Researcher, Barbora Cernusakova, said: “We are extremely concerned to hear that Elżbieta Podlesna, a Polish...

Dear High Representative Mogherini, We are writing to express our deep concern about the arrest and sentencing of legal expert and human rights defender Nguyễn Bắc Truyển in Vietnam, and to request that you take all necessary measures to secure his immediate and unconditional release. Nguyễn Bắc...

VIOLENCE AND ABUSE AGAINST REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS ALONG THE BALKANS ROUTE 13 March 2019 The northwestern Bosnian towns of Bihać and Velika Kladuša, nestled at the very border with Croatia, have become a temporary refuge for some 5,500 refugees and migrants fleeing conflict, persecution and poverty....

European governments are complicit in the systematic,unlawful and frequently violent push backs and collective expulsions of thousands of asylum seekers to squalid and unsafe refugee camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said Amnesty International in a report published today. Pushed to the edge:...