News releases

Despite an escalating crackdown on peaceful protest, people in Poland continue to take to the streets and courageously demonstrate against abuse of their rights and threats to the rule of law, Amnesty International said in a new report.

The Power of ‘the street’: Protecting the right to peaceful protest in Poland, documents how people are taking to the street in an environment where restrictive legislation combined with heavy-handed policing, surveillance, harassment and prosecution threaten to strangle the right to peaceful protest.

“Protestors’ refusal to stay silent is a testament to their resilience. Polish authorities are threatening peaceful protestors with detention and prosecution, while in some cases police officers have even beaten and mistreated them. Many protestors are also put under surveillance as peaceful protest is increasingly criminalized,” said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International’s Europe Director.

Responding to the news that the Jordanian government has said it will not accept any more refugees fleeing a new offensive in southern Syria, Mouna Elkekhia, Amnesty International’s Advisor on Refugee and Migrant Rights, said:

“People fleeing war in Syria are in a desperate life-or-death situation, and the Jordanian government cannot simply abandon them.

“Jordan has a duty to protect refugees from Syria fleeing conflict and persecution, and to allow them to enter the country. Closing the border to people in need of protection violates Jordan’s international obligations.

“In 2016, Jordan officially closed its border to people leaving Syria with dire consequences. Tens of thousands of people are still stranded at the border in deplorable conditions and left to suffer because the Jordanian authorities have effectively blocked access for aid, medical treatment and a meaningful humanitarian response.

The sickening images of children cruelly separated from their parents and held in cages as a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ policy of ‘zero-tolerance’ will leave an indelible stain on the reputation of the USA, said Amnesty International today.

“This is a spectacularly cruel policy, where frightened children are being ripped from their parent’s arms and taken to overflowing detention centres, which are effectively cages. This is nothing short of torture. The severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes, means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both US and international law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas Director.

A Rohingya armed group brandishing guns and swords is responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu women, men, and children as well as additional unlawful killings and abductions of Hindu villagers in August 2017, Amnesty International revealed today after carrying out a detailed investigation inside Myanmar’s Rakhine State.

Based on dozens of interviews conducted there and across the border in Bangladesh, as well as photographic evidence analyzed by forensic pathologists, the organization revealed how Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks.

Over 60 heavily armed police officers ambushed residents of the City Carton informal settlement near Wilson Airport this morning, and oversaw the demolition of the homes of more than 250 families. Bulldozers flattened all houses and left over 1,000 people homeless. 

The residents of the City Carton informal settlement were on 11 April served with a 14-day notice to vacate from their homes. They have since been living in great anxiety with no information whether they would be resettled.

Dear Minister,

We are writing, on behalf of the 400,000 supporters of Amnesty International across Canada – in every province and territory – to urge the federal government, and your Ministry in particular, to take steps to ensure funding is made available on an urgent basis to develop and implement a robust redress system for the “No Fly List Kids” and other individuals affected by false positives under Canada’s Passenger Protect Program (PPP).

Minister, we know that you are aware of the tremendous injustice, inconvenience and indignity experienced by children, and their families, who regularly experience being erroneously flagged under the PPP, because they have the same name as someone else who is listed.  This is not an aberration, it effects hundreds of families on a regular basis; and beyond the impact on children and their families undoubtedly impacts thousands of adults who similarly are wrongly singled out for screening and delays when they are flying.  The embarrassing and frustrating impact has become so trying for some of the children, families and adults who go through this, that they quite simply no longer travel by air.