June, 23 2010, 10:33am EDT
![Amnesty International - USA](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012686/origin.png)
Amnesty International Charges That Human Rights Suffer as Libya Stalls on Reform
Human rights are suffering
in Libya as it continues to stall on reform, Amnesty International has
warned in a new report, despite the country's efforts to play a greater
international role.
The new report, 'Libya of Tomorrow:'
What Hope for Human Rights? documents floggings are used as punishment
for adultery, indefinite detentions and abuses of migrants, refugees and
asylum seekers as well as the legacy of unresolved cases of enforced disappearances
of dissidents. Meanwhile, the security forces remain immune from the consequences
of their actions.
WASHINGTON
Human rights are suffering
in Libya as it continues to stall on reform, Amnesty International has
warned in a new report, despite the country's efforts to play a greater
international role.
The new report, 'Libya of Tomorrow:'
What Hope for Human Rights? documents floggings are used as punishment
for adultery, indefinite detentions and abuses of migrants, refugees and
asylum seekers as well as the legacy of unresolved cases of enforced disappearances
of dissidents. Meanwhile, the security forces remain immune from the consequences
of their actions.
"If Libya is to have any international credibility,
the authorities must ensure that no one is above the law and that everyone,
including the most vulnerable and marginalized, is protected by the law.
The repression of dissent must end," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui,
Deputy Director at Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa
program.
Violations continue to be committed by the
security forces, particularly the Internal Security Agency (ISA), who appear
to have unchecked powers to arrest, detain and interrogate individuals
suspected of dissent or of terrorism-related activities. Individuals can
be held incommunicado for long periods, tortured and denied access to lawyers.
Hundreds continue to languish in Libyan jails
after serving their sentences or having been cleared by the courts despite
hundreds of releases in recent years, including of those detained unlawfully.
Mahmud Hamed Matar has been imprisoned since
1990. He was first held without trial for 12 years and then convicted to
life imprisonment in a grossly unfair trial. Statements reportedly obtained
under torture or other duress were used as evidence. His brother Jaballah
Hamed Matar, a Libyan dissident, forcibly disappeared in Cairo in 1990.
The Libyan authorities have not taken steps to investigate his disappearance.
During its visit to Jdeida Prison in May 2009,
Amnesty International found six women convicted of zina (defined
in Libyan law as sexual relations between a man and a woman outside a lawful
marriage). Four of them were sentenced to between three and four
years of imprisonment and two were sentenced to 100 lashes. Thirty-two
more women were awaiting trial on charges of zina.
Mouna [not her real name] was arrested in
December 2008, shortly after giving birth. The hospital administration
at the Tripoli Medical Center allegedly informed the police that she had
given birth to a child outside of marriage. She was arrested at the hospital,
tried shortly and sentenced to 100 lashes.
The Libyan authorities also use the 'war
on terror' to justify the arbitrary detention of hundreds of individuals
viewed as critics or a security threat, following the September 11th,
2001,
attacks in the United States.
The United States has returned a number of
Libyan nationals from its Guantanamo bay detention center or secret detention,
including Ibn Al Sheikh Al Libi,
who is reported to have committed suicide in 2009 while being held in Abu
Salim Prison. No details of the investigation into his death have been
made public. Libyan nationals suspected of terrorism-related activities
who return to the country remain at risk of being detained incommunicado,
tortured and tried in grossly unfair proceedings.
Amnesty International has observed a modest
increase in the flexibility of the Libyan authorities towards criticism.
Since late June 2008, protests by families of victims of the Abu Salim
Prison killings of 1996, in which up to 1,200 detainees are believed to
have been extra-judicially executed, have been allowed to take place.
But activists continue to face harassment
including arrest; and the authorities have yet to respond to their demands
for truth and justice. Libya has released about 15 prisoners of conscience
in the past two years,
but failed to compensate them for violations suffered or to reform draconian
legislation curtailing the rights to freedom of expression and association.
Migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, many
from across Africa, attempting to seek sanctuary in Italy and the European
Union, instead face arrest, indefinite detention and abuse in Libya, the
report finds.
The country is not a signatory to the 1951
U.N.
Convention on Refugees, so refugees and asylum-seekers risk being sent
home regardless of their need for protection. In early June, the Libyan
authorities told the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees to leave the country, a move likely to have
a severe impact on refugees and asylum seekers.
The death penalty continues to be used widely
in Libya, with foreign nationals particularly affected. It can be
imposed for a wide range of offenses, including activities that amount
to the peaceful exercise of rights to freedom of expression and association.
There were 506 individuals on death row in
May 2009, around 50 percent of them foreign nationals, the Director General
of the Judicial Police told Amnesty International.
"Libya's international partners cannot ignore
Libya's dire human rights record at the expense of their national interests,"
said Hadj Sahraoui. "As a member of the international community, the Libyan
authorities have a responsibility to respect their human rights obligations,
and tackle their human rights record instead of concealing it. The contradiction
of Libya being a member of the UN Human Rights Council, while refusing
for the body's independent human rights experts to visit the country,
is striking."
Background
The report, which covers developments up to
mid-May 2010, is partially based on Amnesty International's findings during
a week-long visit to Libya in May 2009, the organization's first visit
for five years.
The visit followed lengthy negotiations with
the relevant authorities, with Amnesty International seeking to visit cities
in the south-east and east of the country as well as Tripoli. In the end,
the itinerary was limited to Tripoli and a short visit to Misratah.
The visit was facilitated by the Gaddafi International
Charity and Development Foundation, an organization headed by Saif al-Islam
al-Gaddafi,
the son of Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi who was instrumental
in securing Amnesty International's access to a number of detention facilities
and has helped secure the release of detainees.
During the visit, Amnesty International's
delegates discussed the organization's long-standing human rights concerns
with senior government officials, met representatives of civil society
institutions and obtained access to a number of detainees held on security
grounds or as irregular migrants.
Libyan security officials prevented Amnesty
International delegates from travelling to Benghazi as planned, in order
to meet families of victims of enforced disappearance, and denied them
access to several prisoners.
In April 2010, Amnesty International sent
its findings to the Libyan authorities offering to integrate any feedback
provided, but received no response.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular