Iran is reportedly deporting thousands of Afghans — including many legal residents — claiming it can no longer afford to host millions of migrants. Witnesses describe chaotic expulsions marked by beatings and last-minute extortion at the border.
Tag: torture
In Frankfurt, a recent trial opened the door to holding accountable those who thought themselves safe from the law by sneaking out of Syria. Meanwhile, back in Damascus, justice that is geographically closer to the crimes seems impossible to hope for.
Soumaila Diawara, a refugee living in Italy, addresses Matteo Salvini’s remarks made on live television last week, where Italy’s deputy prime minister compared unregulated migrants to dogs and pigs.
One year after the massacre of October 7, the wars continue (and expand) across the Middle East, and may currently look like Israel is achieving its military and security goals. But it will be a failure without any political solution.
It was the exceptional time that changed the equation, and revived the Palestinian dream. It also awakened the hidden Israeli plans: the extermination of the Palestinian people, the liquidation of their cause, and the evacuation of their land.
Updated August 18, 2024 at 11:50 a.m. Steve Biko, a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, is arrested on this day in 1977 in South Africa. Why was Steve Biko arrested? Steve Biko was arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act, for breaching a banning order. As an anti-apartheid activist and the co-founder […]
The political project in the Arab world, both of tyrants and their opponents, has been focused on visions of glory and repeating slogans. But what is a movement if it doesn’t seek to improve the lives of those for whom it claims to speak?
Brazilian journalist Ludmila Pizarro grew up surrounded by idealists who were targeted and tortured during Brazil’s brutal dictatorship. But it wasn’t until she started researching a story to mark 60 years from the beginning of the dictatorship that she learned the details of her father’s own ordeal. For Agência Pública, she reconstructs the story of her family’s past.
Since Ecuador’s president declared a state of emergency in January, military violence has increased. For Agência Pública, Ecuadorian journalist Thalíe Ponce talks to the families of three of those who were killed by the military.
On Jan. 29, Armenia granted asylum to Salman Mukaev, a Chechen who was tortured in his homeland due to suspicions of being gay. In an interview inVazhnyye istorii, Mukaev recounts his four-year ordeal, and reveals the depth of anti-LGBTQ hatred in the Russian republic.
Following Russia and Ukraine’s prisoner exchange earlier this month, Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories shares the first-hand account of a Ukrainian prisoner of war, who spent nine months in captivity before she was released in February last year. Alla Senchenko, a sniper, recounts her harrowing nine months in captivity in Russian prisons and what helped her get through it.
Since Oct. 7, Israel has launched a crackdown on Palestinians, in both Gaza and the West Bank. Once the new detainees are taken to jail, they allege that authorities regularly take an extra hard line, including a disturbingly high number of prisoners killed.
Israel has launched a massive campaign of retaliatory detentions in the occupied West Bank. The campaign aims not only to humiliate the detainees, but it has also targeted those who have been released and it has revealed widespread violations and Israel’s determination to punish “all” Palestinians.
The Refugees in Libya movement has posted shocking images to awaken our consciences. But here, all is silent, and the hope for humanity is entrusted to a Europe that is reborn from the bottom up.
Illegal punishment through the use of torture is increasingly common in Mongolia’s military, where 44 soldiers have died and 468 violations have been reported in the last decade, according to a 2022 report. Many former soldiers have been physically abused and harassed. After hearing recent reports of torture, the commission has begun training mental health professionals to serve in the military to help.
After the Wagner mutiny, the palatial home of the mercenary group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was searched in St. Petersburg. Among other chilling finds was a framed photograph of the severed heads of slain Africans. It fits in with the profile of a man Proekt media calls “Putin’s Sadist.”
In the Ukrainian city of Izium, Russian troops left behind more than destruction, mass graves and testimony of torture. After their hasty withdrawal in early September, Ukrainians found traces of the regime’s propaganda indoctrinating school children.
As the country gears up for a politically-charged run-off election, a team of archaeologists, historians and forensics experts are set to excavate the grounds and buildings of one of the worst torture centers in São Paulo, trying to recover the country’s painful history of torture during the military regime.
Testimonies have been gathered from victims who had been detained by the Russian military near Kyiv in the early weeks of the war. Some were held in a pit, others had their hands beaten with hammer, others with an axe and rifle butt. Some never made it out alive.
Even while embroiled in the biggest foreign policy standoff of his reign, the Russian leader has been forced to acknowledge accusations of torture after leaked videos of violent abuse in prisons. Yet proposed new legislation to stem torture risks challenging a regime built on corruption and state-sponsored repression.
The Indian police force is built on a macho culture that promotes those who commit violence. Only the victims know the truth, and no one ever dares challenge the system.
TUNIS — Six years ago, the Tunisian Revolution sparked the Arab Spring uprisings and overthrew the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his notoriously violent police state. Now a nascent democracy, Tunisia is once again faced with the issue of police brutality. Tunis-based daily Le Temps reports that several local and international NGOs […]
Women held in Syria’s government prisons report psychological abuse, sexual assault and torture. But for many, the suffering they experience after their release is even worse.
CAMERON RELEASES TAX INFO British Prime Minister David Cameron released information from his 2009-2015 tax returns yesterday in an attempt to defuse controversy about how he profited from his late father’s offshore fund, The Independent reports. The details about the family’s investment company were leaked last week in the so-called Panama Papers. CIA WILL NOT […]
The terrorists attacks in Brussels last week provided instant fodder for the U.S. presidential campaign. Republican front-runner Donald Trump had already boasted last month that he would order the U.S. military to “target the families of terrorists,” also pledging to reinstitute waterboarding and “a whole lot more” as a tactic to extract information from terrorists. […]
The torture killing of an Italian student in Cairo has prompted the European Parliament to cut military lead to Egypt. But the European leaders may not be able to make the break.
-Essay- CAIRO — I did not know Giulio Regeni, but I could have. The earnest, affable face staring out of his photographs is reminiscent of any number of the trickle of European researchers and activists who pass through Cairo and want to meet in downtown dive bars to talk about the condition of the workers […]
In Brazil, law enforcement officers boast on social network sites about committing violence against suspects, and show off the results for all to see.
NEW DELHI — Five months ago, Devanish Meena, a young Indian man from New Delhi, eloped with his longtime girlfriend. Now he is a widower. Adding to Devanish’s anquish is his belief that the young bride, Pratibha Gujar, was murdered — by her own family. In India, approximtely 1,000 young people are murdered each year in name of saving a family’s honor. The “honor killings,” as they’re known, are often committed when a forced or arranged marriage is rejected. Pratibha’s death seems to fit the profile. The young woman’s relationship with Devanish was very much opposed by her family. And […]
“We were exposed to hunger, electrocution, beating and insults. We got sick, we got lice and scabies, and were often strip searched, which was the worst part.”
Though the country’s major scouting associations say the practice of “Pflocken,” in which children are tied down, isn’t acceptable, the timeworn practice continues.
KARACHI — It’s time for the evening prayer at the Edhi Shelter Home in Karachi, Pakistan. For nine-year-old Rehmatullah Khan, it’s a reminder of a painful childhood past. His parents sent him to an Islamic boarding school in the northwestern city of Quetta when he was just three. “At seminary, my teacher would beat me and the other students,” he recalls. “The teacher would beat us for not memorizing the lessons or making a noise. He sometimes hit us with sticks and would punch me when the other students told him it was me making noise in the classroom.” After […]
Evidence is piling up that the Damascus regime has used rape – of daughters in front of fathers, wives in front of husbands – as a targeted weapon.
One tortured by the regime, another by Islamist rebels, both offer evidence of the worst kind of brutality that reigns in Syria today.
The inside story of the Syrian army photographer assigned to log images of the victims of torture. One day, he’d seen enough, and joined the opposition – photos in hand.
China’s notorious re-education-through-labor system, abbreviated as laojiao in Chinese, has come into the spotlight with the recent reform announcement by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. The system was born out of the “Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries” and the “Anti-Rightist Movement” of the Mao era. It was designed to eradicate opposition elements after […]
Wednesday, December 10, 2014 CALLS TO PROSECUTE AFTER CIA TORTURE REPORTThe United Nations Human Rights Council has called for the prosecution of U.S. officials “responsible for the criminal conspiracy” unveiled in the summary of a Senate report into the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation methods, The New York Times reports. Praising the Obama administration for their courage […]
RAMNICU SARAT — The door closes, hinges grating like a desperate man’s lament. Only a single sunbeam manages to make its way through the bars of the prison cell. A few minutes in this long, heavy silence and one can imagine the daily life of a prisoner, locked up inside a two-square-meter cell. In eastern […]
Friday, June 27, 2014 UKRAINE SIGNS EU PACT Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko penned this morning an association agreement that includes free-trade and political cooperation with the European Union, the same that former president Viktor Yanukovych had refused to sign months ago, triggering massive protests in Kiev that eventually brought his presidency to an end. “I […]
MUNICH – It’s all so simple in the 1998 Disney movie Mulan. The heroine disguised as a boy joins the Chinese military to fight the enemy – armies of shadowy, faceless Huns that darken the horizon. Classic good versus evil. Martin Münch says he knows who the bad guys are, and that he’s one of […]