News releases

Spiked batons, stun belts and leg irons are among the gruesome tools of torture which should be banned outright, Amnesty International said today, ahead of a crucial vote on a torture trade resolution at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on June 28th.

“Every year governments attend and host international trade fairs where they can browse stalls selling horrifying torture devices - this secretive trade has gone unregulated for far too long. Torturers around the world have benefited from loose regulations which allow them to access all the latest technologies in inflicting pain and fear,” said Ara Marcen Naval, Deputy Director for Arms Control and Human Rights at Amnesty International.

Adopting the resolution would be a first step towards creating international laws to ban the trade in equipment which has no other purpose than torture. It would also be a chance to tighten regulations on equipment like batons and tear gas, which are regularly misused to crush peaceful protests. 

Amnesty International has joined a legal case brought by two non-governmental organizations, Equality Now and WAVES, to challenge the Sierra Leonean government’s ban on pregnant girls attending mainstream schools and sitting exams, the organization said today.

The announcement was made ahead of a hearing at the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice on 27 June 2019, where the case was initially filed in May 2018.

“We at Amnesty International believe this ban clearly conflicts with the right to education without discrimination, according to international and regional standards,” said Lucy Claridge, Director of Strategic Litigation at Amnesty International.

“Courts from South Africa, Zimbabwe to Colombia have already found that such bans violate the rights of women and girls to be treated equally and to receive education. This case represents the first time that a regional court in Africa has considered the issue. It therefore has the potential to impact the situation of pregnant girls outside of Sierra Leone and even beyond the ECOWAS community.”

El Salvador’s new government must promote and implement transformative human rights changes that fulfill the nation’s international commitments, said Amnesty International today in a meeting with President Nayib Bukele, who repeatedly vowed to respect human rights.

“We met with President Nayib Bukele to express to him our concerns about the grave human rights situation in El Salvador. We hope that his government will address these great challenges with determination and adopt without delay the changes the country needs to make human rights a reality,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

Responding to the news that Murtaja Qureiris, the young man from Saudi Arabia arrested at the age of 13, will not face execution and has been sentenced to 12 years in prison instead, Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director Lynn Maalouf said:

“The news that Murtaja Qureiris will not face execution is a huge relief for him and his family, but it is utterly outrageous that the Saudi Arabian authorities were seeking the death penalty for someone arrested under the age of 13 in the first place. Use of the death penalty against people under 18 at the time of the crime is a flagrant violation of international law.

“While the Saudi authorities have spared Murtaja Qureiris’ life in this case, the law in Saudi Arabia still allows people arrested for crimes committed when they were children to be sentenced to death where the crimes are punishable by death under Shari’a (Islamic law).

The Mexican Congress is preparing to approve a package of laws on public security that are contrary to international law and that would put at risk the human rights of the population and undermine the security strategy of the new government, Amnesty International said today.

“If Congress passes this legislation, the National Guard will become an all-powerful security force, without independent scrutiny and with dangerous powers, such as the authority to detain migrants and to use force against public demonstrations it does not deem to be legitimate,” said Tania Reneaum, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico.

On Tuesday, 21 May, the Mexican Senate approved four laws on security as part of a legislative arrangement to create a new National Guard supported by the federal government. Although the new laws contain some positive measures on human rights protection, they also include a series of challenges and serious flaws that could lead to an increase in abuses in a country that has been plagued for more than a decade by security crises and human rights violations.

The first known death of a child detained by Mexican migration authorities under the current presidential administration is a sickening tragedy that demands answers from a government that promised to be more humane to migrants and refugees, said Amnesty International today.

“At a time when children are dying in United States migration custody on the other side of the border, President López Obrador’s government is overseeing a crackdown on migrants and refugees that is resulting in the careless treatment of human lives. This suggests an alarming parallel with the current approach of the Trump government,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

On 16 May, Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) announced that a 10-year-old Guatemalan girl died in hospital, where she was transferred after arriving at Mexico City’s migration detention centre in the company of her mother two days earlier, complaining of a sore throat. INM had brought her back from the northern border state of Chihuahua via bus, a trip of nearly 20 hours.

There is an imminent risk of violent clashes in Brazil’s Amazon region unless the government protects Indigenous peoples’ traditional lands from increasing illegal land seizures and logging by armed intruders, Amnesty International warned today.

Amnesty International recently visited three different Indigenous territories in northern Brazil where illegal intruders had begun or expanded efforts to seize land and/or cut down trees. Indigenous leaders told the organization that they had received death threats for defending their traditional lands. They also fear new intrusions in the dry season (May/June to October/November) when easier physical access to forests facilitates clearance and burning.