Media advisories

Amnesty International is reiterating its calls for the release of the Al Jazeera journalists Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy as their retrial began in Cairo today.

“The notion that Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy now have to start this farcical process from scratch beggars belief,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahroui, Amnesty International’s Depuy Middle East and North Africa Director.
"The message today's trial sends is that there is no justice for Egyptians."

The men have been in prison for more than a year. Their earlier convictions were overturned after a deeply flawed trial.

“It is crucial that Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy's continuing ordeal is not forgotten, particularly now that their Australian colleague Peter Greste is a free man. Like him, they are guilty of nothing more than carrying out their jobs as journalists. There is no reason that they should remain behind bars. The authorities should put an immediate end to their torment by dropping the charges and releasing them immediately and unconditionally,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.

Posted at 0001hrs GMT 1 February 2015

Evidence gathered by Amnesty International published today indicates that the Egyptian authorities are attempting to cover up the deaths of more than two dozen people who were killed in protests marking the 2011 uprising last weekend.  

Prosecutors have threatened eyewitnesses with arrest and at least 500 demonstrators, including two disabled people and children, and bystanders are being held in unofficial detention centres across the country. Two journalists were also detained while covering the protests.

“The authorities have not only used unnecessary or excessive force but they also appear to have orchestrated a ‘cover up’ of the disastrous events of last weekend to hide the brutal reality that Egyptian security forces have once again resorted to arbitrary and abusive force to crush protesters,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director.

The announcement by the Mexican Attorney General that all the missing Ayotzinapa students are dead is premature and risks curtailing a full and thorough investigation into this tragedy, said Amnesty International today.

Yesterday Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam announced that he could prove the students were dead, basing his findings mainly on confessions from arrested suspects. He was unable, however, to show strong evidence of it.

“If the Attorney General hopes that this announcement will draw a line under this tragedy then he is wrong. There are still many, many questions left unanswered, including the possible complicity, by action or omission, of the army and other authorities in the attack against these young student teachers,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International.

“I have met with the families and those left behind, I have seen their pain and it is not something that can be swept under the carpet. Mexico’s troubled past when it comes to police investigations is all the more reason for this investigation to continue until there is solid proof of what happened to these young men.”

                                  New video spoofs “wheel of torture”

One year ago this week, the revelation that Philippine police in Laguna had used a “wheel of torture” to decide how to torture detainees shocked the world. But despite the global headlines, one year later no one has been held to account – a sad indictment of the police’s casual attitude towards torture and the almost complete impunity that surrounds it.

To mark the anniversary, Amnesty International has produced Torture: More fun in the Philippines, a short satirical film based on a popular TV game show. One contestant spins the “wheel of torture” to try to get a lawyer, but instead “wins” the prize of being punched for 30 seconds straight. The film’s title is used ironically – “More fun in the Philippines” is also the slogan of the country’s Tourism Board.

US President Barack Obama should call for and support a comprehensive United Nations arms embargo on the parties to South Sudan’s brutal conflict, 29 South Sudanese and international human rights, humanitarian, and other groups said today in a letter to President Obama. Thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict, which began just over a year ago, in many cases targeted for their ethnicity or perceived political allegiances. An estimated 1.9 million people have been displaced, and massive looting and burning by both government and opposition forces has left towns and rural areas destroyed and abandoned.

“More weapons will mean more fuel to the fire, more attacks on civilians, arbitrary killings, rape, burnings and pillage,” said Geoffrey Duke, secretariat team leader at the South Sudan Action Network on Small Arms. “President Obama should do everything he can to ensure that this year is not a repeat of the horrific last year for South Sudanese. Now is the time to take action.”

Today on International Human Rights Day civil society groups have joined together in an open letter calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to put Canada back in the global effort to end torture and ill-treatment around the world.

On the day that marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention against Torture Canada should take the final step and ratify the instrument that establishes national and international systems for inspecting detention centres. In 2006 and 2009 Canada told the UN Human Rights Council that it would consider ratifying this Optional Protocol that was adopted by the UN in 2002.

The organizations that signed the open letter are united in calling for Canada to take this step without delay. Under the systems established by the Optional Protocol, inspections can identify and expose conditions that permit and encourage torture to take place. It seeks to pierce the shroud of secrecy that allows torture to continue in the 141 countries where it has been documented by Amnesty International in the last five years.

The major arms exporting governments should immediately tackle the alarming proliferation of surveillance technologies in repressive countries, Amnesty International, other leading international human rights and digital rights organizations urged today in an open letter.

The letter has been sent to 41 of the largest arms exporters which are meeting behind closed doors as part of the so-called “Wassenaar Arrangement” on 2-3 December. It outlines how human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and others are increasingly being targeted when spyware, malware and other surveillance tools fall into the hands of governments that commit systematic human rights violations.

“Surveillance technologies are not simply harmless tools. In the wrong hands they are often used as a tool of repression. Evidence is continuing to reveal the extent of this secretive trade that puts countless individuals at direct risk from human rights abusing governments,” the letter states.