The 93 page document can be accessed at Still Human Still Here and at Asylum Research Company.

This commentary is a guide for legal practitioners and decision-makers in respect of the relevant COI, by reference to the sections of the Operational Guidance Note on Iraq issued in December 2011.

You can access the complete OGN on Iraq at the UKBA website here.

The document should be used as a tool to help to identify relevant COI and the COI referred to can be considered by decision makers in assessing asylum applications and appeals. This document should not be submitted as evidence to the UK Border Agency, the Tribunal or other decision makers in asylum applications or appeals. However, legal representatives are welcome to submit the COI referred to in this document to decision makers (including judges) to help in the accurate determination of an asylum claim or appeal. The COI referred to in this document is not exhaustive and should always be complemented by case-specific COI research.

A major legal reform package to be introduced by the Turkish government leaves key problems with free speech and arbitrary detention unresolved, Human Rights Watch said today. The draft package has been sent to the Parliamentary Justice Commission, and the government has indicated that it could become law in March 2012.

The introduction of the wide-ranging package comes in the wake of strong criticism from the European Union and Council of Europe. It includes measures aimed at limiting the high number of prosecutions of journalists, ending the suspension of publications for 15- to 30-day periods under the Anti-Terror Law, and partially addresses the problem of arbitrary detention and the high level of pretrial detainees in Turkey’s jails.

“When it comes to tackling Turkey’s big human rights challenges, this reform package is little more than window dressing,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If the government is serious about reform, it needs to be far bolder and abolish laws restricting free speech or clearly limit their application to those who directly incite violence.”

The package of 88 articles makes important adjustments to a variety of laws pertaining to the administrative courts, financial regulation, bankruptcy, and corruption, in addition to provisions relating to human rights. But the amendments largely fail to address restrictions on freedom of expression and fair trial issues identified by the Council of Europe and the European Union, Human Rights Watch said. These concerns were addressed most recently in the European Commission’s October 2011 progress report on Turkey and in July 2011 and January 2012 reports by Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg.

The proposed changes fail to reform terrorism laws widely misused against journalists and pro-Kurdish activists, Human Rights Watch said. One provision provides that courts would enjoy the power to suspend prosecutors’ investigations or sentences handed down to journalists, but on condition that the journalists do not repeat their alleged offense, a condition that would amount to censorship.

A positive step and the clearest move to uphold media freedom in the draft law is a provision that would repeal article 6/5 of the Anti-Terror Law allowing prosecutors and courts to suspend for up to 30 days newspapers and magazines that are accused of certain offenses such as “making terrorist propaganda.” In recent years, European Court of Human Rights rulings against Turkey have found the practice amounts to censorship and a violation of the right to freedom of expression.

A second positive measure aimed at protecting the rights of defendants in custody would require judges to justify decisions to prolong a defendant’s pretrial detention or ongoing custody during trial by citing specific evidence as to why they should not be granted bail or released during pretrial detention or while on trial. This step responds directly to a repeated criticism of Turkish practices, which simply grant detention extensions without explanation, in European Court of Human Rights decisions.

Another amendment extends the use of bail or probation rather than detention for defendants facing trial for crimes with a five-year maximum prison sentence. This should cut down the widespread use of pretrial detention in Turkey, particularly for those charged with more minor terrorism offenses, Human Rights Watch said. The measure would not, however address the situation of hundreds of people facing sentences of five to ten years, such as journalists, charged with membership of an armed organization (article 314/2 of the Turkish Penal Code), a charge frequently leveled despite the absence of any evidence of their involvement in violence or in plotting violent activities.

In a move aimed at responding to international criticism about the unwarranted prosecution of journalists and editors, the draft law paves the way for the suspension of criminal investigations, trials or penalties for offenses “committed up to 31 December 2011 by means of the press or broadcasts or by means of other expressions of thought” that carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. But again, this measure would not apply to journalists and editors charged with membership of an armed organization.

While suspending criminal investigations and sentences for violations of free speech is a positive move, the government has avoided taking the necessary step of repealing the large number of laws that are an unjustified restriction on free speech. And those whose cases are suspended must not reoffend for three years or face renewed prosecution or sanction for the original case.

“Telling someone unfairly prosecuted for speech that the charges will be dropped if they stay silent for the next three years sounds a lot like censorship.” said Sinclair-Webb. “The law also fails to make clear that it applies not only to journalists but to all citizens, including demonstrators who frequently face prosecution for shouting slogans that incite no violence.”

The draft law reduces the prison sentences for offenses under two articles of the Penal Code: halving the five- to ten-year sentence for offenses under article 220/6, and reducing by up to two-thirds at the court’s discretion the same penalty for offenses under article 220/7. These two articles are frequently used to charge individuals with terrorism although the individuals are neither members of a terrorist organization nor have committed any act that could or should be regarded as terrorism in terms of international law.

Reducing the penalty in this way means that those accused under those articles could be released from prison pending trial. But the law fails to revise the vaguely worded laws themselves, which as Human Rights Watch has documented, are widely misused against protesters, journalists, and pro-Kurdish and leftist political activists.

“Reducing the sentences helps address a consequence of these misused provisions” said Sinclair-Webb. “But until the government tackles the root causes by tightening the law so that it can only be used against those who directly participate in terrorism, it will continue to fall afoul of the European Court of Human Rights.”

Human Rights Watch has concerns about the limited nature of various other proposed amendments in the reform package. One is a proposed revision to article 10/d of the Anti-Terror Law, which currently allows the courts to restrict access by defendants and their lawyers to their entire case file for the duration of a criminal investigation in situations in which the prosecutor and court decide that the security of the investigation may be endangered. The measure may be applied in cases in which defendants face terrorism charges.

The Council of Europe has recently raised concerns about the prolonged withholding of evidence from defendants at the investigation stage and the possibility that practice effectively deprives defendants of the opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. A proposed amendment to article 10/d would limit to three months any restriction on a defendant and his or her lawyer’s ability to access records of the defendant’s own statement and expert reports.

However, the proposal makes no mention of the right of the defendant to access the main evidence and other documents in the case file, without which it will remain difficult for a defendant to challenge the detention or enjoy the right to an effective defense.

“If the government is sincere about law reform to protect people’s rights, then it needs to revise these proposed half measures and finish the job,” Sinclair-Webb said.

9 February 2012

At the Beitbridge border post between Zimbabwe and South Africa, asylum-seekers from all over the continent used to jostle with Zimbabwean migrants to gain entry into a country widely perceived as a place of freedom and safety.

But since border officials began turning away or arresting so-called “third-country nationals” seeking asylum in April 2011, they have joined the steady stream of undocumented Zimbabweans who brave dense bush, ruthless gangs, razor wire and the aptly named Crocodile River, to enter the country illegally.

“I paid R290 (US$38) for someone to drive me from Beitbridge to the bush,” said Simeon Mulekezi, a 24-year-old refugee from Burundi. “There were people from Zimbabwe who said they’d help us cross the river but they wanted money so I decided to cross by myself even though the water was up to my neck. I was with four Zimbabweans but none of us knew the way. We got lost for 24 hours and saw a lot of animals. I was scared, but luckily I didn’t meet a lion.”

While Mulekezi survived his ordeal unscathed, “some were robbed in that bush, some were raped,” he told IRIN.

Prior to April 2011, third-country nationals like Mulekezi were able to enter the country via Beitbridge where they were issued with a temporary permit, known as a section 23, which gave them 14 days to report to a refugee reception office and formally apply for asylum.

Following this apparent change in attitude towards asylum-seekers, Mohamed Hassan, who heads the International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in Musina, noted that, “we’ve received reports that many people from Somalia and Ethiopia were coming through the bush… They cross the river with the help of guides, but sometimes these very people rob them and many times they find a group of thugs waiting for them.”

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which runs mobile clinics in and around Musina, has been treating migrants who have suffered violent attacks by border gangs known as `guma-guma’ for years, but according to Christine Mwongera, MSF’s project coordinator in Musina, staff have seen an increase in trauma cases since the end of 2011.

“The Zimbabweans have been going through this for more than a year, but now it’s other nationalities as well,” she told IRIN.

Her observation was confirmed by Christopher Sibanda, head of security for Maroi Farm, 25km west of Beitbridge, who regularly picks up migrants who have wandered onto the property after climbing through one of the many holes in the nearby border fence.

“Every day we find border jumpers. It’s worse this year, we see people from other nations [besides Zimbabwe] – Somalis, Congolese, Rwandese,” he said. “Most are in a bad state. A week ago we found four people dead; maybe they got lost in the bush and died from hunger and exhaustion.”

Robbed and abandoned

He added that some drowned trying to cross the river, particularly during the rainy season, and that he found others stripped of their clothing and possessions after having been robbed and abandoned by their guides or the `guma-guma’.

“We feel pity for them. Sometimes we make them food or give them directions to the road.” Other times, Sibanda hands the migrants over to the army which took over border security from the police in 2010.

Indeed, while accompanying Sibanda on one of his patrols, IRIN observed a group of some 10 migrants walking through an open gate in the fence and getting into a waiting vehicle.

Captain George Mills of the Musina police admitted that only a fraction of the vehicles smuggling people from the border were intercepted. “Since the new year… there’s been an increase. We don’t have the manpower, so most are passing us.”

If the purpose of discouraging third-country nationals from approaching the official border post was to improve security, the result may have been the opposite. “When they are coming through the border, you have the opportunity to obtain biometric information,” Hassan of IOM commented. “However, if they come through irregularly, that is when you don’t know who is in the country.”

More border jumpers also means more potential victims for the `guma-guma’. Mills said that police operations targeting their activities rarely resulted in convictions as few illegal migrants were willing to open cases, let alone testify in court. “When we make an arrest and the case comes to court, you can’t find the complainant or witnesses so we can’t proceed and have to release them,” he told IRIN.

Fear of authorities also prevents many of the migrants attacked or injured while crossing the border from seeking health care. “Their aim is to get an asylum permit. Health is not their priority, even if they’ve been sexually abused or had trauma,” said Mwongera of MSF. “If you’re undocumented, you want to stay invisible.”

MSF partners with the local health department to provide medical and counselling services to survivors of sexual assaults at the Thuthuzela Care Centre in Musina Hospital, but knowing that the first port of call for most of the asylum-seekers is the Refugee Reception Office in Musina, the organization has set up a mobile clinic across the street. Staff also make nightly visits to the town’s four shelters where migrants waiting for documents or lacking the funds to continue on to urban centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town are given a place to sleep and one hot meal a day.

Shelter

The shelter for male migrants run by a local church on the outskirts of town consists of little more than a row of tents, and conditions at the women’s shelter are only slightly better with one large room accommodating dozens of women and their children in bunk beds. Two more shelters take in unaccompanied children. All are church run, although UNHCR provides meals at the men’s shelter and other organizations such as MSF and IOM donate blankets and other non-food items.

]]> http://ncadc.org.uk/world/2012/02/south-africa-asylum-seekers-resort-to-border-jumping/feed/ 0 http://ncadc.org.uk/world/2012/02/iraq-65-executions-in-first-40-days-of-2012/ http://ncadc.org.uk/world/2012/02/iraq-65-executions-in-first-40-days-of-2012/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:30:46 +0000 volunteer.ncadc http://ncadc.org.uk/world/?p=2453 Human Rights Watch, February 9, 2012

Iraqi authorities should halt all executions and abolish the death penalty, Human Rights Watch said today. Since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners, 51 of them in January, and 14 more on February 8, for various offenses.

“The Iraqi government seems to have given state executioners the green light to execute at will,”said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions and begin an overhaul of its flawed criminal justice system.”

Human Rights Watch is particularly concerned that Iraqi courts admit as evidence confessions obtained under coercion. The government should disclose the identities, locations, and status of all prisoners on death row, the crimes for which they have been convicted, court records for their being charged, tried, and sentenced, and details of any impending executions, Human Rights Watch said.

A Justice Ministry official confirmed to Human Rights Watch on February 8 that authorities had executed 14 prisoners earlier in the day. “You should expect more executions in the coming days and weeks,” the official added.

According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people are believed to have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004. The number of prisoners executed during that period has not been revealed publicly. Iraqi law authorizes the death penalty for close to 50 crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and murder, but also including such offenses as damage to public property.

Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all circumstances because of its inhumane nature and its finality. International human rights law requires that, where it has not been abolished, the death penalty be imposed only in cases for the most serious crimes in which the judicial system has scrupulously complied with fair trial standards, including the rights of the defendant to competent defense counsel, to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and not to be compelled to confess guilt.

Criminal trials in Iraq often violate these minimum guarantees, Human Rights Watch said. Many defendants are unable to pursue a meaningful defense or to challenge evidence against them, and lengthy pretrial detention without judicial review is common.

8 February 2012

Inside the family hut, only women and close male relatives were allowed to mourn over the body of the baby boy, Khan Mohammad, who had died earlier that morning. After Andrea Bruce, on assignment for The New York Times, bent over double and eased her way through the low door of the hut, she counted 17 women, including the mother, plus the boy’s 10-year-old sister Feroza, and the father, in a one-room house no larger than a normal-size bedroom. It was, she said, even colder inside than outside, where at least there was the weak morning sun.

Ms. Bruce had expected the keening and the ululations of grief, having covered the aftermath of death in many other war zones. Here, she found them surprisingly muted; what struck her most, she would recall later, was how indrawn the mother of the boy seemed, as if she had gone to some other place. What Ms. Bruce did not know at the time was that this woman, Lailuma, was grieving for the last but one of her nine children. “When I heard that,” she said later, “I understood.”

The father, Sayid Mohammad, came outside in the icy yard and exchanged whispers with the camp representative, a respected elder named Mohammad Ibrahim. Mr. Ibrahim had been waxing in angry eloquence at the Afghan government over the neglect of the camp and its residents, and the dead boy’s father brought him fresh rhetorical material. Apparently Ms. Bruce was inside weeping with the other women as she took pictures of what seemed an almost pre-biblical tableau of misery before her.

“You see that lady,” he told the assembled men and anyone else in booming earshot, “she cries for us even though she is not a Muslim. They are here, and it is not even their fault, it is Karzai’s fault, and Karzai’s government, and they are not here.”

Whether or not it was the fault of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government, it was hard to visit these camps without feeling not just pity but also a sense of personal responsibility. These camps have been around a long time, and those of us who have been here a long time should certainly have known about them sooner than now. Ms. Bruce, 38, who shoots for the NOOR Agency and is a regular contributor to The Times, is a Lafayette, Ind., native who is now based in Kabul. She has seen the camps many times over recent years, but was surprised at the misery this winter.

“I guess I didn’t expect to see children walking around barefoot in icy puddles,” she said. “It was an invisible sadness covered up by Kabul.”

After our first visit to one of the camps last week — before we even found those camps where rumors of children’s deaths from cold proved sadly to be true — Ms. Bruce’s impulse had been to go buy warm clothing and come straight back to put it on the children. It is an impulse that has been shared by many New York Times readers as well, and by Afghan businessmen who were as shocked by these revelations as we were. They have emerged in fact as the first responders, moving quickly to bring aid in.

The smart ones have done it through foundations and existing relief groups, because giving aid out is never simple or straightforward. How many blankets or coats can you bring? Thirty-five thousand, one for each refugee in Kabul? And if not, how will you decide who goes cold and who does not? How will you make sure they are not stolen or resold by camp strongmen? What mechanism will you put in place to be sure nonresidents of the camps do not sneak into line and claim aid they do not deserve, diverting it from the neediest?

“In the end, I thought that as individual journalists the best thing we can do is to cover the story in the best way possible,” Ms. Bruce said. And having made that decision, “it was hard not to keep coming back to do that.”

At first, there was only the word of camp residents and officials to go on about the deaths, but the misery that could produce such deaths was apparent in virtually every frame. With the government even denying that children were dying from cold, however, it became important to persuade camp leaders to summon a photographer as soon as the next one died; there is never much time, since children are typically buried within hours of death by Afghan Islamic custom.

On Wednesday morning, the summons came.

Mr. Ibrahim had been reluctant at first, we thought out of modesty or respect for the privacy of the bereaved. Instead, he was concerned about someone kidnapping or robbing his visitors in a place so poor and destitute. “I am worried about your safety,” he said. “I am responsible.”

So are we all.

8 February 2012

Yemeni security forces stormed and shelled hospitals, evicted patients at gunpoint, and beat medics during an assault on Yemen’s protest movement that killed at least 120 people in the flashpoint city of Taizz last year, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is in the United States receiving medical treatment, received amnesty in Yemen for such attacks.

In the 75-page report, “‘No Safe Places’: Yemen’s Crackdown on Protests in Taizz,” Human Rights Watch called on the United States, the European Union, and Persian Gulf states to publicly acknowledge that the domestic immunity granted Saleh and his aides last month has no legal effect outside Yemen.

“President Saleh’s forces killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, evicted hospital patients, and blocked war wounded from reaching care,” said Letta Tayler, Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Saleh is entitled to medical treatment, but he and his aides have no right to immunity from prosecution for international crimes.”

When Yemenis took to the streets in January 2011 to demand an end to Saleh’s 33-year rule, Taizz, 250 kilometers south of the capital, Sanaa, became a center of both peaceful and armed resistance – and the scene of numerous human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war. “No Safe Places”is based on more than 170 interviews with protesters, doctors, human rights defenders, and other witnesses to attacks in Taizz by state security forces and pro-Saleh gangs from February to December 2011.

Yemeni security forces repeatedly used excessive and lethal force against largely peaceful protesters in Taizz. During attacks on opposition fighters that began in mid-2011, they also indiscriminately shelled populated areas of the city. Government troops conducted much of the shelling from al-Thawra Hospital, the city’s biggest medical center, which they occupied from June to December, virtually closing it to medical care.

One of the biggest attacks on protesters took place on the night of May 29-30 at Freedom Square, in Taizz, when state security forces and armed gangs fired on protesters, set fire to their tents, and bulldozed an outdoor area they had occupied since February. Fifteen protesters were killed and more than 260 wounded. Arif Abd al-Salam, 32, a history teacher and protester, described the security forces’ attack:

They had tanks and bulldozers. They were throwing petrol bombs into the tents and firing from many directions. I saw with my own eyes a man with a loudspeaker calling on the security forces to stop attacking and killing their brothers. He was shot dead with a bullet.

Victims of the Taizz crackdown included both protesters and bystanders. Qaid al-Yusifi, a teacher, was killed on July 9, as he was bringing milk to his children in al-Rawdha, an opposition stronghold that was repeatedly struck by government artillery. Al-Yusifi’s wife, Labiba Hamid Muhammad Saif, told Human Rights Watch that she heard at least three shells hit the area around the couple’s house:

We tried to look out the window because we heard screaming. There were a number of wounded and there were people from the neighborhood trying to rescue them. The electricity was cut and I could not recognize the injured. Then I recognized one of them as my husband, Qaid. He was carrying juice, milk, and water, not bombs or bullets.

Of the 120 deaths Human Rights Watch confirmed in Taizz, 57 were protesters and bystanders killed in attacks by security forces and gangs on largely peaceful rallies and 63 were civilians killed in shelling and other attacks during military operations against tribal opposition fighters. At least 22 victims of the attacks in Taizz were children.

On May 30, during the attack on Freedom Square, security forces and armed gangs forcibly entered five medical facilities receiving injured protesters. At one medical facility, a doctor described a security officer smashing the face of a wounded protester with his gun butt, knocking him unconscious. Inside a mosque on Freedom Square serving as a field hospital, security forces thrust gun butts into protesters’ wounds, witnesses told Human Rights Watch.

On November 11, the military shelled al-Rawdha hospital, as civilians wounded that day in other security force attacks rushed there for treatment. Ordnance from the attack on the hospital suggests direct-fire impacts from tanks, indicating that it was deliberate. One patient fell to his death through a hole in the wall created by the blasts.

Many of the unlawful attacks documented in the report were committed by Republican Guards, an elite army unit commanded by Saleh’s son, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, and by Central Security, a paramilitary unit run by the president’s nephew, Gen. Yahya Muhammad Saleh.

The attacks on protesters by Yemeni security forces violated international human rights law, including the right to peaceful assembly and expression, and were contrary to international standards on the use of force and firearms. Denial of medical assistance to injured protesters violated the right to health.

International law governing armed conflict was applicable to the fighting between the security forces and opposition fighters commanded by local sheiks. The security forces violated international law by indiscriminately shelling populated neighborhoods. The security forces’ occupation of hospitals and mistreatment of medical workers violates the principle of medical neutrality and the duty to respect and protect medical facilities and personnel.

Opposition fighters unlawfully placed civilians at risk by deploying in populated areas, Human Rights Watch said. “We asked them not to shoot next to our house,” one al-Rawdha resident said in September, “but they kept on doing so.”

Saleh blamed bloodshed in Taizz and other cities on “terrorists.” In a written response to Human Rights Watch’s findings, the government in December blamed casualties involving protesters and civilians on “sudden attacks … launched by the [opposition] armed militias.” Human Rights Watch’s field research found no evidence of this.

Since April, an accord brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and backed by the US and EU, promised Saleh and his aides blanket immunity if the president ceded power. Saleh signed the deal in November and on January 21, 2012, the Yemeni parliament granted immunity to the president and his aides. As a head of state, Saleh also enjoys diplomatic immunity abroad until he formally leaves office on February 21.

In addition to dismissing the immunity law, the US, EU, and GCC member states should encourage the new Yemeni caretaker government to revoke the measure on grounds it violates Yemen’s international legal obligations, Human Rights Watch said. International law does not recognize amnesty for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of human rights.

“The US, and EU and Gulf states should make loud and clear that the immunity is no good abroad and should be revoked at home,” Tayler said. “No one responsible for grave international crimes should get a free pass.”

7 February 2012

Widespread fear of harassment, discrimination and killings has prompted some Hazara community members living in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province in southwestern Pakistan, to consider leaving the country, even by illegal means.

“Over 600 Hazaras have been killed since 2000,” Abdul Qayuum Changezi, head of the Hazara Jarga, a group representing Hazaras, told IRIN. Media reports speak of dozens recently killed in attacks on the community in Quetta and in other parts of the province.

The Hazaras constitute a distinct ethnic group, with some accounts tracing their history to central Asia. Almost all belong to the Shia Muslim sect, speak a dialect of Farsi, and are concentrated in central Afghanistan and some parts of Pakistan. There are some 6,000 to 7,000 Hazaras in the country, according to a Hazara chief, Sardar Saadat Ali.

In Quetta, many of them live in Alamdar Road. Close by, Ali Hassan, 55, and his two sons, both in their 20s, were engrossed in a fierce argument in their small house – when IRIN visited – about leaving the country, even if illegally.

According to the two, there is too much discrimination against the Hazaras for them to have a future. “It is simply too dangerous to live here. Besides, Hazaras get no opportunities in education or for jobs, because of the bias that exists,” said Ibrar Ali, 21, the younger of Hassan’s sons.

However, their parents were terrified of allowing them to try and leave, mainly because of an incident in December last year in which at least 55 Hazaras from Quetta were killed when a boat carrying some 90 illegal immigrants to Australia capsized off the coast of Indonesia.

“The boat was overloaded with over 250 people, including children and women,” said Nasir Ali, whose brother was on the ill-fated boat, but survived.

“Persecution”

Following the incident, the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded a government inquiry. In a statement, HRCP chairperson Zohra Yusuf said the fact that “Hazara young men chose to leave Pakistan by taking such grave risks is a measure of the persecution the Hazara community has long faced in Balochistan.”

The statement also urged the government to act against those illegally ferrying people out of the country in exchange for large sums of money, and demanded it “take urgent steps to find a way to put an end to the persecution of the long-suffering Hazara community”.

The New York based monitoring body Human Rights Watch (HRW) has also condemned the sectarian killing of Shia Muslims in Pakistan, and has noted: “Research indicates that at least 275 Shias, mostly of Hazara ethnicity, have been killed in sectarian attacks in the southwestern province of Balochistan alone since 2008.” HRW Asia director Brad Adams says a start can be made to ending such killings “by arresting extremist group members responsible for past attacks”.

Anger within the Hazara community runs deep, and has been growing.

“The news of the killings and the desperation of the community is terrible. I weep often when I read of what is happening. I want to return to Quetta, because I love my home town; I want to be close to my parents and live there with my own family. But my fiancé and I ask if it will be sensible to raise our children in a climate of death,” Mina Ali, a medical student from the Hazara community currently based in Karachi, told IRIN.

Her fiancé, also a Hazara, is keen to try and flee the country, whether “legally or illegally”, Mina said.

“Genocide”?

Statements to the media from top government officials, including the chief minister of Balochistan, have also been perceived as insensitive in their failure to strongly condemn killings that some commentators have described as a “genocide”. Others in Pakistan are demanding that the International Court of Justice look into the matter.

Hazara chief Sardar Saadat Ali, a former provincial minister, told IRIN most Hazaras in the country were based in Quetta but there were “also some in Hyderabad [in Sindh Province] and other Baloch districts”.

Ali, who has lost close relatives including his brother in targeted killings of Hazaras, said: “We can expect nothing from the government; so we act for ourselves. I personally went to Indonesia to bring back the bodies of the young Hazara men who had died in the boat tragedy. They were fleeing because of the security situation and in search of a chance to gain an education.”

Hazaras, he added, were being targeted on “both ethnic and sectarian grounds” by extremist groups – mainly the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba, which have origins in the Punjab. He was also concerned about further persecution if the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan.

“I don’t understand much about politics, but I worry constantly for my grown children, and their children,” said Zareen Bibi, 60, a Hazara resident of Quetta. “Too many Hazaras have died, for no reason – and this inhumanity has to end. We all deserve dignity and the right to life.”

3 February 2012

Syrian army and security officers have detained and tortured children with impunity during the past year, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 12 cases of children detained under inhumane conditions and tortured, as well as children shot while in their homes or on the street. Human Rights Watch has also documented government use of schools as detention centers, military bases or barracks, and sniper posts, as well as the arrest of children from schools.

Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations Security Council to demand that the Syrian government end all human rights violations and cooperate with the commission of inquiry dispatched by the UN Human Rights Council and the Arab League observer mission. The government should stop deploying security forces in schools and hospitals, Human Rights Watch said.

“Children have not been spared the horror of Syria’s crackdown,” said Lois Whitman, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Syrian security forces have killed, arrested, and tortured children in their homes, their schools, or on the streets. In many cases, security forces have targeted children just as they have targeted adults.”

Human Rights Watch has documented widespread government violence against peaceful demonstrators, systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care.

Widespread Arbitrary Detention and Torture of Children

Human Rights Watch has interviewed more than 100 individuals detained by Syrian security forces in cities across Syria since protests began in March 2011, including several children and a number of adults who encountered children while in custody. Interviewees described rampant use of torture in detention centersagainst even the youngest detainees, even beyond the 12 cases specifically documented by Human Rights Watch.

Interviews with defecting army officers also corroborate accounts by detainees. An army officer who had been deployed in Douma as part of the 106th Brigade, Presidential Guard,and another deployed in Talbiseh with the 134th Brigade, 18th Division,told Human Rights Watch that they had orders to arrest any male over the age of 14 or 15 in large-scale raids.

Some of the arrests took place in schools. “Nazih” (not her real name), a 17-year-old girl from Tal Kalakh, told Human Rights Watch that in May 2011, security forces entered her school and arrested all the boys in her class, after questioning them about the anti-regime slogans painted on the school walls.

“About four [officers] jumped over the walls, and the rest came through the main gate. They hit [the boys] with their hands and cursed them. I left school three days after that. I don’t know if [the boys] ever came back,” she said.

Her brother “Ri’ad” also said that armed men visited his school and questioned students. Their father told Human Rights Watch that he stopped his children from attending school after these incidents.

“We heard of kids younger than Ri’ad being taken,” he said. “We know there’s no big difference [to the security forces] between a child and an adult.”

Children, some as young as 13, reported to Human Rights Watch that officers kept them in solitary confinement, severely beat and electrocuted them, burned them with cigarettes, and left them to dangle from metal handcuffs for hours at a time, centimeters above the floor. Detention facilities where children reported being tortured include: the military security detention center in Homs, the military security detention center in Tartous, the Balooneh detention center in Homs, the Palestine detention center in Damascus, and the 291 detention center in Damascus. All children interviewed said that they received inadequate food and water in detention, and most received no medical treatment for torture-inflicted injuries.

“Ala’a,” a 16-year-old boy from Tal Kalakh, told Human Rights Watch that Syrian security forces detained him for eight months, starting in May 2011, after he participated in and read political poetry at demonstrations. He was released in late January 2012 after his father bribed a prison guard with 25,000 Syrian pounds (US$436). During his detention he was held in seven different detention centers, as well as the Homs Central Prison. Ala’a told Human Rights Watch that at the Military Security branch in Homs:

When they started interrogating me, they asked me how many protests I had been to, and I said “none.” Then they took me in handcuffs to another cell and cuffed my left hand to the ceiling. They left me hanging there for about seven hours, with about one-and-a-half to two centimeters between me and the floor – I was standing on my toes. While I was hanging there, they beat me for about two hours with cables and shocked me with cattle prods. Then they threw water on the ground and poured water on me from above. They added an electric current, and I felt the shock. I felt like I was going to die. They did this three times. Then I told them, “I will confess everything, anything you want.”

He said that in the Homs Central Prison, he was kept in a large cell with some 150 boys under age 18, as well as around 80 men over the age of 50.

The parents of “Fouad,” a 13-year-old from Latakia, told Human Rights Watch that in December military security officers arrested him and held him for nine days. According to his parents, he was accused of burning photos of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, vandalizing security forces’ cars, and inciting other children to protest. Security officers burned Fouad with cigarettes on his neck and hands, they said, and threw boiling water on his body. He spent three days in solitary confinement, according to his parents.

“Hossam,” age 13, told Human Rights Watch that security forces detained him and a relative, also 13, in May 2011 and tortured him for three days at a military security branch about 45 minutes by car from Tal Kalakh:

Every so often they would open our cell door and yell at us and beat us. They said, “You pigs, you want freedom?” They interrogated me by myself. They asked, “Who is your god?” And I said, “Allah.” Then they electrocuted me on my stomach, with a prod. I fell unconscious. When they interrogated me the second time, they beat me and electrocuted me again. The third time they had some pliers, and they pulled out my toenail. They said, “Remember this saying, always keep it in mind: We take both kids and adults, and we kill them both.” I started to cry, and they returned me to the cell.

Following his release, Hossam and his family escaped to Lebanon.

A number of adult detainees and security force members who had defected and who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch confirmed the presence and torture of child detainees in facilities across Syria. “Samih,” a former adult detainee held in a political security facility in Latakia, told Human Rights Watch that children were subjected to worse treatment than adults, including sexual abuse, because they were children.

We were 70 to 75 people in a group cell that was 3 by 3 meters. We slept with our knees to our chests. Some people had broken hands, legs, their heads were swollen. There were 15- and 16-year-old kids in the cell with us, six or seven of them with their fingernails pulled, their faces beaten. They treat the kids even worse than the adults. There is torture, but there is also rape for the boys. We would see them when the guards brought them back to the cell, it’s indescribable, you can’t talk about it. One boy came into the cell bleeding from behind. He couldn’t walk. It was something they just did to the boys. We would cry for them.

“It’s clear from the brutal methods used against children that Syrian security forces show child detainees no mercy,” said Whitman. “We fear that children will continue to face horrendous punishment in detention until Syrian officials understand they will pay a price for such abuse.”

Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states that: “No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and that “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child … shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.” Syria ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993.

Children in Solitary Confinement and Inhumane Detention Conditions
Four children interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that they were detained in solitary cells, sometimes with no light or windows, sometimes for several days. “Ahmed,” age 16, spent a total of 10 days in solitary confinement in the Tartous military security detention center:

They put me in a solitary cell, about one meter by one meter. I was still blindfolded, and there was no light – I didn’t know night from day. Every night I would hear the cries of men and women being tortured. Every day new buses of people would come.

“Ala’a,” also 16, told Human Rights Watch that:

[A]t the 291 Branch in Damascus, they took us to a place underground, three floors down. They put me in solitary, I spent three days there. If I stood up, my head hit the ceiling. There was a toilet, a pitcher of water, one small light bulb. It was very cold, and I slept on the floor. Then, because I was begging them and crying, I told them I have only one lung and can’t breathe, one officer let me go to a group cell.

In October 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture called for an absolute ban on solitary confinement for juveniles, while the Committee on the Rights of the Child has also noted in General Comment No. 10 that solitary confinement should be “strictly forbidden” for those under the age of 18.

“Confinement in a dark, cramped space with no human contact but for prison guards can break a grown man,” said Whitman. “Children should never face the horrors of solitary confinement.”

Children also told Human Rights Watch that security forces kept them in overcrowded group cells, deprived of food and water. Hossam said he received only one meal a day, consisting of a spoiled potato and a piece of bread. Ala’a said:

There were 75 people in a very small cell, 4 by 6 meters. The cell was not even fit for animals, the smell of blood was unbearable. I spent 10 days there. We had to take turns standing and sitting to sleep. How did they give us water? They’d take a bottle, maybe 1.5 liters, and spray it in the air, everyone would open their mouths and try to catch a few drops. For food, everyone had half a piece of bread.

All children interviewed said their families were given no information about their whereabouts and were denied permission to visit them.

“For three months, my family didn’t know anything about where I was. They heard that I had died and that my throat had been pulled out,” Ala’a, 16, told Human Rights Watch.

His mother learned Ala’a was still alive after he bribed a guard to let him use a mobile phone and called her. He said he spoke to her only twice during eight months in detention. Article 37 of the CRC also provides that any child detainee “shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances.”

Children Shot in Their Homes

Syrian activists have reported dozens of cases in which children have been killed by sniper fire or shelling from government security forces in residential areas. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, army defectors confirmed that they fired arbitrarily in residential areas in some cases.

“Mohammed,” a doctor treating Syrians in Lebanon who were injured in Syria, told Human Rights Watch in January that he had treated 24 Syrian children in the last two months, and that the majority of them were injured by bullets, some in their homes.

Human Rights Watch interviewed two children who said they were shot while inside their homes in Quseir. “Youssef,” age 11, told Human Rights Watch that he was a student until the fall of 2011 when schools closed because of the violence, and that after that he started work in a shop as a car washer. He described being shot in the back at his home in late January:

I came back to my house at 12:30 p.m. – we closed the shop where I work because we knew there would be an attack. Around 2 p.m. they started shelling the hospital near my house, the national hospital, which is about 500 meters from the house. Then they started to hit the baladiye [municipality] building, about 1 km away. I was inside the house, my brother and all my siblings were with me. I heard shooting and felt pain in my back. Then I fell unconscious.

“Fatima,” 17, also said she was shot in the back, in the courtyard of her family home in Quseir in early October. She told Human Rights Watch:

It was about 10:30 at night. I was going to the bathroom when I heard gunfire. There were shots from all directions. We live in a traditional house [where the bathroom is outside], there are no high walls. Suddenly, I found myself on the floor, I just felt that I was on the floor but I couldn’t feel anything.

A doctor currently treating Fatima, interviewed by Human Rights Watch, said that as a result of the gunshot wound, Fatima suffered a spinal injury and was paralyzed from the waist down.

Military Use of Schools, Hospitals
The government has used schools as detention centers, sniper posts, and military bases or barracks. “Marwan,” from the Insha’at neighborhood in Homs, and other Homs residents told Human Rights Watch that the army attacked Bahithet Al-Badiyah school on Brazil Street on November 4, and that military security forces then turned the school into a detention center. Local activists also told Human Rights Watch that military security turned Al-Ba’ath elementary school in Joubar, another Homs neighborhood, into a military base and detention center in late December.

One Hama resident interviewed by Human Rights Watch in late January said that he saw snipers shooting from the roof of the local children’s hospital and that soldiers were using part of the hospital as an army barracks.

“Part of it remains open as a hospital, but it’s hard for us to go there,” he said. “If you go to the hospital, they search you and check your ID. People are afraid [of the security forces] and then there are the snipers – [they] are shooting people in the street.”

Human Rights Watch also viewed a video that showed a sniper posted on a school rooftop in the Qusoor neighborhood of Hama and spoke with the activist who said he filmed the incident in September 2011.

Children also told Human Rights Watch that their schools closed in 2011 due to violence, or that it was no longer safe for them to go to school. “Mohammed,” a 10-year-old boy from Homs, said, “I went to school for only one day [this year]. The teachers just gave us the books and told us not to come back. The road to school was not safe because of snipers.”

“Ahmed,” 17, from Baniyas, said, “I went to school for 15 days before I stopped, because it was dangerous. There was a curfew, so I couldn’t leave the house, not even during the day.” Marwan told Human Rights Watch that he stopped letting his 10-year-old son go to school because of snipers targeting Brazil Street, the main road leading to the school.

“We called it ‘the street of death’,” he said.

“Schools across Syria are closed because it’s too dangerous for students to attend, or because the military thinks schools are better used as detention centers than educational establishments,” said Whitman. “How long will Syrian children pay the price for the violence around them?”

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, February 3 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency said Friday it was alarmed by recent reports that Congolese civilians have been tortured and killed by armed groups entering camps for the internally displaced in the volatile province of North Kivu. The agency called for more security in and around the camps.

Céline Schmitt, UNHCR spokeswoman in Kinshasa, said armed groups had been entering camps for the internally displaced in the eastern province since the last quarter of 2011, “violating their civilian character.” The main affected camps are in Nyanzale, Mweso and Birambizo in the Masisi territory, about 90 kilometres north-west of Goma, the capital of North Kivu.

Displaced Congolese are constantly threatened by various groups and militiamen, who accuse them of collaborating with one armed party or another. On December 13 last year, seven internally displaced people (IDP) were beaten to death because they had refused to take part in forced labour for the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda, a predominantly ethnic Hutu rebel group. UNHCR has also received reports of IDPs being tortured.

The continuing violence is also hindering humanitarian access to the camps and preventing aid workers from protecting and assisting the displaced people. Only eight IDP camps out of 31 are accessible to humanitarian workers without military escort.

“UNHCR calls on all parties to respect the civilian character of IDP sites in North Kivu. We are appealing to provincial authorities to increase security in and around the camps,” Adrian Edwards, head of UNHCR’s public information section, told journalists in Geneva. Currently, there are only 40 police officers deployed to secure six of the camps in North Kivu.

The refugee agency is also liaising with the UN peacekeepers in the eastern Congo to increase the presence of security forces in areas most in need of protection and to ensure the safety of civilians living in the IDP sites.

Nearly 80,000 displaced Congolese are living in the 31 IDP camps in North Kivu. Many of them have no hope of going home in the near future due to continued insecurity and renewed fighting between armed groups and the military in their home areas. Returns could not be organized during the whole of last year.

North Kivu is home to more than 600,000 IDPs, more than a third of the 1.7 million internally displaced civilians countrywide.

- – - – -

UNHCR Briefing Note, 3 February 2012

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 3 February 2012, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

UNHCR is alarmed by recent reports that internally displaced people have been tortured and killed by armed elements in the IDP camps of North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Since the last quarter of 2011, armed groups have been intruding on IDP camps in North Kivu, violating their civilian character. The main affected camps are in Nyanzale, Mweso and Birambizo in the Masisi territory, about 90 km north-west of the provincial capital Goma.

Displaced Congolese are constantly threatened by various groups and militias who accuse them of collaborating with one armed group or another. On 13 December last year, seven IDPs were beaten to death because they had refused to take part in forced labour imposed by the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR). UNHCR has also received reports of IDPs being tortured.

Ongoing violence is also hindering humanitarian access to the camps and preventing aid workers from protecting and assisting the displaced people. Only 8 IDP camps out of 31 are accessible to humanitarian workers without military escort.

UNHCR calls on all parties to respect the civilian character of IDP sites in North Kivu. We are appealing to provincial authorities to increase security in and around the camps. Currently, there are only 40 police officers deployed to secure six of the 31 camps in the province. We are also liaising with MONUSCO to increase the presence of security forces in areas most in need of protection and to ensure the safety of civilians living in the IDP sites.

Nearly 79,000 displaced Congolese are currently living in 31 IDP camps in North Kivu. Many of them have no hope of going home in the near future due to continued insecurity and renewed fighting between armed groups and the military in their villages. Returns could not be organized during the whole of last year.

North Kivu is home to more than 600,000 IDPs, over one-third of the 1.7 million IDPs countrywide.

3 February 2012

It was, by all accounts, a devastating dawn raid on a married couple in their suburban house in northern Kano, Nigeria.

The security force’s bullets tore through the walls, leaving gaping holes an inch wide, and a car was shot to pieces.

Tiles outside the door of the bedroom – which had been turned upside down in what appeared to be a frantic search for evidence – were stained with blood.

It was part of a sweep by security forces in which 150 people were arrested in the northern city of Kano.

It came three days after the 20 January string of bombings by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram killed at least 185 people – mostly civilians.
‘Decent man’

One woman, who said she had raised the man killed in the attack from birth, is inconsolable.

“Alhaji was a decent man all his life. We always praised his attitude. We’re all in shock,” she told the BBC, as she wept heavily.

“I will never forgive those who killed him. I can’t forgive them.”

The disappearance of the Muslim man, a fabric seller in the local market, and his pregnant wife, has caused fury amongst the local community.

“The man is good, I never heard anything bad about him. I am afraid,” local resident Ali Muhammed Kamil told me, as his voice trembled.

“I am begging the military, or the Nigerian government, in the name of Allah, that they should not be killing people anyhow. If they suspect something, they’re supposed to use their intelligence to arrest him, interview him and find out who he is.

“They should not be killing people like this – they can sue him [in] court,” he added.

Identity question

As I left the raided house through the bullet-ridden gate, I saw it was still intact, suggesting there had been no forced entry.

I did spot a few holes made by bullets fired from inside the compound, but it was unclear where they came from and when.

The security services have let it be known privately that those targeted were Boko Haram supporters.

The group wants a strict form of Islamic law adopted in the whole of Nigeria, not just the dozen northern states already using it.

They also want captured members released and for Christians to leave Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.

But it is not clear who they actually are, which makes them difficult to trace.

The national federal authorities are yet to officially account for what happened in the raided house.

Local state officials said they are powerless to ensure justice in such situations, once federal security forces are mobilised.

“No, you see, it’s not [for] me to determine that,” Kano state Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso told me.

“It’s the responsibility of the security agencies, the judges and lawyers, to put their heads together, to look at the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria. Also to look at the laws of the land, be it state, federal or whatever laws, to ensure that those who are detained are detained for a just reason.”

Crackdown

Rights groups worry that the national government’s track record is not good.

Amnesty International told the BBC that suspected members of Boko Haram have been subjected to extra-judicial execution and enforced disappearance.

Worryingly for the authorities, Boko Haram has now successfully extended its area of operations beyond its traditional stronghold in the state of Borno in north-eastern Nigeria.

Borno, and its capital Maiduguri, is still the focus of much of the crackdown. Recently 11 members were killed by the police in disputed circumstances.

The police said it was during a gunfight as they conducted a search operation. Boko Haram claimed their members were picked up as they slept.

While incidents like these are not uncommon in the north-east, they are in Kano – the country’s second biggest city.

“Violence never solves anything,” Abbas Dalhatu, executive director of Kano independent broadcaster Freedom Radio, told me.

“Invariably it has to be sorted out through dialogue and through normal, good old police work.”

Persecution risk

Mr Dalhatu’s radio station has been chasing the military for an explanation of what happened in the raided house for over a week.

He fears the lawlessness of the north-east, like in Maiduguri – a Boko Haram stronghold – is spreading south to Kano.

“There is every indication that Maiduguri is turning into a ghost town. A state of emergency has been declared and the security agencies are able to do a lot of the things without the constitutional checks and balances.

“It would be really unfortunate if it degenerates into that in our own local environment.”

Worse, perhaps, is the feeling of persecution such actions allow to fester within the Muslim community.

After holding funeral prayers for her disappeared son – in the absence of a corpse – the bereft woman revealed something else to me about Alhaji.

“My son was a bearded man and very religious. He was a man of principle, well-versed in the Holy Koran. His only crime was having a long beard,” she said.

“But that didn’t make him Boko Haram.”

There is a growing fear that security forces do not appear to be differentiating between devout Muslims and those who choose to use violent means to further their political goals.

Without addressing those concerns, the government could find its tactics backfire in its quest to rid itself of Boko Haram.

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