Tag Archives: political repression
| Puidgemont Blasts Repression After Catalan Leaders Detained for ‘Sedition’
Catalans are readying to take to the streets to protest a Spain High Court order declaring two independence organizations’ leaders be remanded while they remain under investigation for suspicion of sedition.
Egypt: Torture Epidemic May Be Crime Against Humanity
Beatings, Electric Shocks, Stress Positions Routinely Used Against Dissidents
(Beirut) – Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s regular police and National Security officers routinely torture political detainees with techniques including beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, and sometimes rape, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
Egypt: Lawyer Ibrahim Metwally Hegazy kidnapped at Cairo Airport
Lawyer Ibrahim Abdel Moneim Metwally Hegazy, one of the founders of the Association of the Families of the Disappeared, disappeared from Cairo International Airport on Sunday as he was preparing to depart on a flight to Geneva to attend a session of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), according to a statement that cites Hegazy’s family that the association published on Facebook. He was brought before State Security Prosecution in Cairo’s Fifth Settlement on Tuesday.
| Joint report estimates that 880 Palestinians arrested in July 2017
Palestinian prisoners’ affairs institutions – the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs and Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights – issued the following report on 8 August 2017, which indicates that, during the month of July 2017, Israeli authorities arrested (880) individuals from the occupied Palestinian territories, including (144) children, and (18) women.
Kyrgyzstan: Prosecutions Thin Ranks of Presidential Contenders
Two major names in Kyrgyzstani politics have been sentenced to long terms in jail so far in August. Local analysts contend the cases are politically motivated.
With presidential election coming up in mid-October, analysts argue the timing of the convictions is not coincidental. They suggest that the cases likely were intended to help members of the ruling elite retain their grip on power.
