October, 20 2017, 02:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Reprieve's London office can be contacted on: communications [at] reprieve.org.uk / +44 (0) 207 553 8140.,Reprieve US,, based in New York City, can be contacted on Katherine [dot] oshea [at] reprieve.org
Egypt Frees Irish Student After Four-Year Ordeal
WASHINGTON
The Egyptian authorities have released an Irish citizen who was arrested at a protest at the age of 17, and who had been facing a death sentence.
Ibrahim Halawa from Dublin, was 17 when he was arrested with hundreds of other people in 2013, as part of a crackdown on protests in Egypt. He was held in pre-trial detention for over four years, and reported being regularly tortured.
Ibrahim was tried as an adult alongside 493 other people, despite having been a juvenile at the time of his arrest. The mass trial - one of several to have taken place since 2013 - was frequently postponed. Hearings of the trial were criticised for failing to meet basic standards.
Maya Foa, Director of human rights organization Reprieve - which has been assisting Ibrahim - said:
"It is fantastic news, and long overdue, that Ibrahim is finally free. He and his family have been through an unimaginable ordeal, even though Ibrahim's only 'crime' was to attend a protest. He must now be given time and space to recover with his family. Meanwhile, Egypt's allies - including the UK and the US - must strongly urge Sisi to end the brutal repression that continues in the country, including mass trials and hundreds of unlawful death sentences."
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
LATEST NEWS
European Human Rights Court Hears Historic Climate Case Brought by Elderly Swiss Women
"We are suing for our human right to life," said one 78-year-old plaintiff. "With this case, we want to help spur politicians into action a little bit."
Mar 29, 2023
The European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday heard arguments in a case brought by a group of elderly Swiss women who are suing their country's government, alleging that its "current climate targets and measures are not sufficient to limit global warming to a safe level."
Members of Senior Women for Climate Protection (KlimaSeniorinnen) and their attorneys appeared in the Strasbourg, France court for the tribunal's first-ever climate case. Outside the court, activists from the group and from other organizations including Greenpeace held banners and flowers and chanted "bravo" as each woman exited the building, according toSwissInfo.
"We are suing for our human right to life," Lore Zablonier, a 78-year-old from Zurich, toldThe Associated Press outside the court. "With this case, we want to help spur politicians into action a little bit."
\u201cThank you for supporting us \ud83d\ude0d\n\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\ud83d\ude4c\u201d— KlimaSeniorinnen (@KlimaSeniorinnen) 1680071319
As KlimaSeniorinnen's website explains:
Climate change already produces extensive damage. Menacing heatwaves, landslides, and floods will become the norm unless we take immediate action. Scientific insights notwithstanding, Switzerland along with most other countries is not doing as much as is necessary to avert such disasters. Because governments, through their inaction, violate basic rights, more and more people around the globe are taking them to court. What's at stake is a livable future—without climate collapse.
A growing number of climate-related cases are on the docket in courts around the world, from Australia to Sweden to the United States. The European Court of Human Rights will hear at least two more climate cases this year—one filed by a group of Portuguese youth and the other by a Green member of the European Parliament from France.
Switzerland is warming at a rate of more than twice the global mean. According to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology:
The strong warming has an impact on many other climate indices in Switzerland. For instance, the zero-degree line has climbed substantially, which has resulted in Alpine glaciers losing over 60% of their volume since 1850. It is likely that they will no longer be part of the Alpine landscape by the end of this century. The vegetation period now lasts several weeks longer in the lowlands than it did even in the 1960s. Due to warming, precipitation now falls more often as rain than snow.
In 2021, Swiss voters narrowly rejected a government proposal to tax automobile fuel and airline tickets in a bid to help the country meet its targets under the Paris climate agreement. Switzerland is responsible for about 0.1% of global emissions.
(Image: Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology)
A verdict in the suit filed by KlimaSeniorinnen is expected next year.
"Should we win... a better climate policy will help less the lives of senior people than those of our children and grandchildren," explained plaintiff Elisabeth Stern.
"Are we older women victims? Yes, in the sense of being personally affected and at increased health risk from increasing temperatures," Stern added. "But we are also highly competent agents of change. Because our climate complaint for the first time puts the European Court of Human Rights in the situation to comment on the climate protection measures of a member state. And on the question of whether climate action to protect citizens is a fundamental human right."
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Chinese Official Warns McCarthy Meeting With Taiwanese President Would Be 'Provocation'
A potential visit with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen "seriously violates the One China principle, harms China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," said one official.
Mar 29, 2023
China's Taiwan Affairs Office on Wednesday warned the U.S. that the country will take "resolute countermeasures" if an expected meeting between U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen goes forward this month following Tsai's trip to Central America.
The Taiwanese president is expected to meet with the California Republican in Los Angeles, going against repeated calls from China for the U.S. to refrain from meeting with her, which the Chinese government sees as a sign of support for Taiwan's desire to be seen as a separate country, and a failure to commit to the "One China" policy the U.S. agreed to five decades ago.
The meeting would be the highest-level in-person summit between a Taiwanese and American leader on U.S. soil since 1979.
The U.S. should "refrain from arranging Tsai Ing-wen's transit visits and even contact with American officials, and take concrete actions to fulfill its solemn commitment not to support Taiwan independence," said Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office, according toThe Hill.
Tsai has traveled to the U.S. four times since taking office in 2016 and has met with Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. In addition to her expected meeting with McCarthy in the coming days, Tsai is scheduled to speak at an event hosted by the conservative Hudson Institute in New York and at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Calfornia.
The visit "will be another provocation that seriously violates the One China principle, harms China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," said Zhu, adding, "We firmly oppose this and will take resolute countermeasures."
China responded to then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) visit to Taipei last year by conducting military exercises around Taiwan. China had previously warned that Pelosi's visit represented the U.S. "interfering in China's internal affairs." The country also suspended military, climate, and other diplomatic ties with the U.S. after Pelosi's visit, which anti-war critics had warned would undermine long-standing U.S. policy and [increase] the risk of another war."
McCarthy's expected meeting with Tsai comes as progressives in the U.S. are criticizing proposals for a ban on the Chinese social media app TikTok from the Biden administration as well as Republican lawmakers. China warned the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom that they were headed down a "path of error and danger" this month after the three countries announced plans to expand U.S. nuclear submarine technology to Australia, a move that the Chinese said would disrupt peace in the Pacific.
Brian Hioe of the Taiwan-focused New Bloom Magazinetweeted that China will likely "respond with threats of force" if the McCarthy-Tsai meeting goes forward.
A Biden administration official said on a call with reporters Wednesday that "there is absolutely no reason" for Beijing to use Tsai's expected meeting in the U.S. "as an excuse or a pretext to carry out aggressive or coercive activities aimed at Taiwan."
"It is not that China overreacts," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said in a press briefing. "It is that the U.S. kept emboldening Taiwan independence forces, which is egregious in nature."
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Rights Groups Blame Horrific Mexico Fire on 'Inhumane' Migration Policies
"The U.S. and Mexican governments must work together to ensure that migrants receive access to asylum and to fair and efficient processing at the border and are given humanitarian support when forced to wait in Mexico," said one advocate.
Mar 29, 2023
Calling for a full investigation into the fire that killed at least 38 people at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico this week, United Nations officials on Tuesday joined human rights groups in calling for an end to the U.S. and Mexican migration policies which led to the detention of dozens of men at the facility.
A spokesperson for the U.N. said all member states must "live up to the commitments they have made as signatories to the U.N.-led Global Compact for Migration," which "intends to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities migrants face at different stages of migration by respecting, protecting, and fulfilling their human rights and providing them with care and assistance."
"We, again, urge all states to adopt alternatives to immigration detention," said the U.N. human rights office.
\u201c#Mexico: The deadly fire at the migrant centre in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez was a preventable tragedy. We, again, urge all States to adopt alternatives to immigration detention. A prompt, transparent investigation to clarify the circumstances behind this tragedy will be crucial.\u201d— UN Human Rights (@UN Human Rights) 1680037433
The 68 men who were being held at the migration facility were mainly from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, and El Salvador originally, and Reuters reported Wednesday that many migrants had been "rounded up off the streets of Ciudad Juarez on Monday" and taken to the center, which is run by Mexico's National Migration Institute (NMI).
A woman named Viangly Infante told the outlet that her husband was among those detained and that the couple had traveled from their home country of Venezuela last fall with their three children, crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in December into Eagle Pass, Texas.
They were then sent back to Mexico by U.S. immigration authorities and bused to Ciudad Juarez.
"We cannot ignore that many of these migrants continue to wait in border cities like Ciudad Juarez without documentation so they can enter the United States to seek protection—a situation created by successive U.S. administrations' undue restrictions on asylum access," said Rachel Schmidtke, senior advocate for Latin America at Refugees International. "The U.S. and Mexican governments must work together to ensure that migrants receive access to asylum and to fair and efficient processing at the border and are given humanitarian support when forced to wait in Mexico."
The U.N. Refugee Agency in January warned the Biden administration that its expansion of former President Donald Trump's Title 42 policy—under which the White House is expelling up to 30,000 migrants per month unless they arrive in the U.S. via a humanitarian parole program—is "not in line with refugee law standards" by which the U.S. is obligated to abide.
Like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the NMI in Mexico has long been denounced by migrant rights advocates over its treatment of people in its detention facilities, including overcrowding and lack of medical care. Protests broke out last year in detention centers in Tijuana and the southern city of Tapachula, near the border of Guatemala.
The fire that broke out early Tuesday was reportedly started by migrants who were protesting their confinement in a cell intended for a maximum of 50 people in which 68 people were being detained, and the guards' refusal to provide them with drinking water.
Outrage over the fire, in which at least 29 people have been hospitalized in addition to those who were killed, was compounded Wednesday after newly released surveillance footage footage showed guards quickly walking away from the cell where the men were protesting, while smoke filled the room.
The men were trapped behind padlocked doors as they yelled for help, NBC News reported.
"How could they not get them out?" Katiuska Márquez, a Venezuelan woman who was looking for her half-brother, asked the Associated Press.
The deaths of more than three dozen people in the fire "lay bare a truly inhumane system of immigration enforcement," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. "How is it possible that the Mexican authorities left human beings locked up with no way to escape the fire? These facilities are not 'shelters,' but detention centers, and people are not 'housed' there, but deprived of their freedom."
Amnesty called on Mexican officials to adhere to a recent ruling by the country's Supreme Court of Justice (SCJN), which said on March 15 that people should not be held in migrant detention facilities for more than 36 hours.
"Amnesty International urges the Mexican state to comply with the ruling of the SCJN and to establish protocols to act in fires, as well as evacuation routes in such situations," said the group. "It also calls on the state to investigate the human rights violations, especially the allegations that the migrants were left locked up while the fire occurred, as well as to recognize that the migrants were in its custody and, therefore, it was its obligation both to prevent the fire and to act diligently during the fire to avoid fatal consequences."
The court ruling made clear, said Edith Olivares Ferreto, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico, that the country must "put an end to the practices that have caused untold damage, including torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, to thousands of migrants who have passed through these centers."
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