Media censorship a ‘global phenomenon’ obstructing efforts to tackle pandemic

On Sunday, we celebrated World Press Freedom Day, yet when it comes to reporting Covid-19, journalists across the world are far from free.  

They have been risking their lives to provide reliable and trustworthy information during the pandemic, but all over the world, governments’ crackdown and media censorship are hampering efforts to tackle the virus. Censorship of vital information related to the pandemic has become a ‘global phenomenon’, according to Amnesty International.

“There is no hope of containing this virus if people can’t access accurate information. It is truly alarming to see how many governments are more interested in protecting their own reputations than in saving lives,” says Amnesty International’s Director of Law and Policy, Ashfaq Khalfan.

A core feature of the right to health is the right to access timely and accurate information. In the case of COVID-19, this means everybody has a right to access all available information about the nature and spread of the virus, as well as the measures they can take to protect themselves. But governments around the world have arrested and detained journalists and other media workers for sharing exactly this kind of essential information.

Here are just a few examples of dangerous censorship and serious attacks on free speech across the globe collected by Amnesty International:

• Russia: On 12 April, the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an article by journalist Elena Milashina, in which she criticised the Chechen authorities' response to the pandemic. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted and Instagram video in which he threatened Milashina, appealing to the Russian government and Federal Security Service (FSB) to "stop those non-humans who are writing and provoking our people."

Urge the Russian authorities to ensure her safety. 

• Niger: Journalist Mamane Kaka Touda was arrested on 5 March after posting on social media about a suspected case of COVID-19 infection in Niamey Reference Hospital. He was charged with "disseminating data tending to disturb public order". 

• Egypt: Editor-in-chief of AlkararPress newspaper, Atef Hasballah, was arrested by security forces on 18 March, and forcibly disappeared for nearly a month, following a post on his Facebook page in which he challenged the official statistics on COVID-19 cases. 

• India: Journalists reporting on the COVID-19 situation have been summoned to police stations and forced to explain their stories, including Peerzada Ashiq, a senior journalist with The Hindu in Kashmir, and Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of The Wire in Uttar Pradesh. Many others have been arrested. Internet restrictions in the Jammu & Kashmir region continue despite the rising number of COVID-19 cases. 

Journalists have been prosecuted for reporting on COVID-19 in many other countries including Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia, Venezuela, Tunisia and Palestine.

Meanwhile journalists who report on human rights abuses related to the pandemic, such as police abuses or poor prison conditions, have also been harassed, intimidated, attacked and prosecuted.

Many countries, including Azerbaijan, Hungary, Russia, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tanzania and several Gulf states, have used the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to introduce new laws against disseminating “fake news”. In most cases, it is at the authorities’ discretion to define what constitutes false news or misinformation, and these laws act as a stark warning against free discussion of the situation. For example: 

• Hungary: Viktor Orban’s government has amended the country’s Criminal Code, introducing new provisions that threaten journalists with prison sentences for “spreading false information” or communicating facts in a way that impede ‘successful protection’ against the virus. Journalists have reported being harassed, threatened and smeared for scrutinising the government’s response to the outbreak. 

• Myanmar: Authorities have warned that anyone who spreads “fake news” about COVID-19 could be prosecuted, while a Ministry of Health official said they would file criminal charges against anyone who speaks out about the lack of Personal Protective Equipment at hospitals.

• Tanzania: On 20 April, Tanzanian authorities suspended the licence of the Mwananchi online newspaper after it posted a photo of President John Pombe Magufuli out shopping surrounded by a crowd of people, eliciting debate about the need for implementing physical distancing.

 

Generation Z fears climate change more than anything else; lives in failed system

Credit: Rosa Castaneda

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid, Greta Thunberg today called upon world leaders to stop using "clever accounting and creative PR" to avoid real action on climate change.  Thunberg’s chiding of world leaders seems to chime with young people’s beliefs, according to a major new study by Amnesty International.

The Amnesty poll, released yesterday on Human Rights Day asked more than 10,000 people aged 18-25 - also known as Generation Z - in 22 countries across six continents, to pick up to five major issues from a list of 23.

Of those, four out of 10 young people (41%) selected climate change, making it the most commonly cited issue globally, ahead of pollution (36%) and terrorism (31%).

“For young people the climate crisis is one of the defining challenges of their age,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International.  “This is a wake-up call to world leaders that they must take far more decisive action to tackle the climate emergency or risk betraying younger generations further.”

Global warming was also most commonly cited as one of the most important environmental issues facing the world (57%), out of 10 environmental issues such as ocean pollution, air pollution and deforestation.

In their own countries, Generation Z’s concerns extend beyond the climate crisis, reflecting the everyday struggles and concerns young people are facing and the feeling that they are  “living inside a failed system”.

At a national level corruption was most commonly cited as one of the most important issues (36%), followed by economic instability (26%), pollution (26%), income inequality (25%), climate change (22%) and violence against women (21%).

“This generation lives in a world of widening inequality, economic instability and austerity where vast numbers of people have been left behind,” said Kumi Naidoo.

“The message from young people is clear. The climate crisis, pollution, corruption and poor living standards are all windows on an alarming truth about how the powerful have exploited their power for selfish and often short-term gain.”

The survey’s findings come at a time of widespread mass protests around the world, from Algeria to Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Lebanon, and Sudan. Many of these movements have been largely led by young people and students, who have angrily called out corruption, inequality, and abuse of power and faced violent repression for doing so.

Iran - human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh sentenced to 33 years in prison.

Prominent Iranian human rights lawyer and women’s rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to a shocking 33 years in prison and 148 lashes.

The sentence, reported on her husband Reza Khandan’s Facebook page, brings her total sentence after two grossly unfair trials, to 38 years in prison. In September 2016, she was sentenced in her absence to five years in prison in a separate case. 

The latest sentence is the harshest sentence Amnesty has documented against a human rights defender in Iran in recent years, suggesting that the authorities are stepping up their repression.

Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director, said: “It is absolutely shocking that Nasrin Sotoudeh is facing nearly four decades in jail and 148 lashes for her peaceful human rights work, including her defence of women protesting against Iran’s degrading forced hijab (veiling) laws.” 

Sotoudeh was recently informed by the office for the implementation of sentences in Tehran’s Evin prison where she is jailed, that she had been convicted on seven charges and sentenced to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes. The charges, which are in response to her peaceful human rights work, include “inciting corruption and prostitution”, “openly committing a sinful act by ... appearing in public without a hijab” and “disrupting public order”. 

Meanwhile, in a confusing development, earlier today the Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Mohammad Moghiseh told journalists that Sotoudeh has been sentenced to seven years in prison: five years for “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security” and two years for “insulting the Supreme Leader”. 

This report did not provide further details or clarify whether the judge was referring to a separate case.

 “Nasrin Sotoudeh must be released immediately and unconditionally and this obscene sentence quashed without delay,” Luther said. 

 “Governments with influence over Iran should use their power to push for Nasrin Sotoudeh’s release. The international community, notably the European Union, which has an ongoing dialogue with Iran, must take a strong public stand against this disgraceful conviction and urgently intervene to ensure that she is released immediately and unconditionally.” 

Nasrin Sotoudeh’s sentence made me think of an interview I recently did for Lacuna Magazine with another Nasrin, also a human rights and women’s rights defender. 

Writer, artist and human rights campaigner Nasrin Parvaz was arrested at the age of 23 by the regime’s secret police after having been betrayed by a comrade. She was tortured and sentenced to death, but her death sentence was commuted to 10 years in prison.

She spent eight years in the same Iranian prison where Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is now being held, and has used the experience as inspiration for a novel and a book of memoirs. Speaking in London, Parvaz told me there are echos of Nazanin’s story in prisons across Iran, where rights defenders have been subjected to rape, routine humiliation, torture and execution. 

“The Islamic regime is a master of concealing and deception. When the UN human rights inspectors came to visit Evin prison in 1990, they built a new wall across our corridor to conceal us. We never met the inspectors. While president [Hassan] Rouhani [elected in 2013] publicly promised reforms, behind closed doors, there are still too many prisoners dying in detention.

“Prisons are still full of men and women fighting for civil rights. Questioning how and why the regime operates is still dangerous.”

How terribly true…

You can read her story of activism and time in Iran’s prisons in Lacuna Magazine here.

Women refugees face assault, exploitation and sexual harassment journeying through Europe

These women and girls have fled war in Syria and Iraq, walked for days across  hostile terrains, put their lives in the hands of ruthless traffickers, crossed seas on flimsy dinghies and finally made it to Europe.  Safe at last? No, these women and girls who have fled some of the world’s most dangerous areas, faced assault, exploitation and sexual harassment at every stage of their entire journey, including on European soil, according to a new report by Amnesty International released this week.

Amnesty interviewed 40 refugee women and girls in Germany and Norway last month. They had travelled from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans. All the women, who had endured the horror of war in their countries, said they felt threatened and unsafe during the journey. Many reported that in almost all of the countries they passed through, they experienced physical abuse and financial exploitation, being groped or pressured to have sex by smugglers, security staff or other refugees. 

“Nobody should have to take these dangerous routes in the first place. The best way to avoid abuses and exploitation by smugglers is for European governments to allow safe and legal routes from the outset. For those who have no other choice, it is completely unacceptable that their passage across Europe exposes them to further humiliation, uncertainty and insecurity, says Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan said:

Women and girls travelling alone and those accompanied only by their children felt particularly under threat in transit areas and camps in Hungary, Croatia and Greece, where they were forced to sleep alongside hundreds of refugee men, according to the report. In some instances women left the designated areas to sleep in the open on the beach because they felt safer there. 

Women also reported having to use the same bathroom and shower facilities as men. One woman told Amnesty that in a reception center in Germany, some refugee men would watch women as they went to the bathroom. Some women took extreme measures such as not eating or drinking to avoid having to go to the toilet where they felt unsafe. 

It is shameful that governments and aid agencies cannot give basic protection to these women and girls who have risked everything to find safety in Europe. It seems extraordinary that they cannot provide at the very least single-sex toilets and safe sleeping areas.  

Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill is Back - Stop It!

Credit: Amnesty International

‘Our neighbours said to me, “Why are you still alive?”’ – Frank, Kampala

Uganda’s notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill is back. Passed by Parliament at the end of last year, it is now with the President for approval or dismissal by the end of January. The Bill proposes to sentence anyone identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual or intersex - LGBTI - in Uganda to life in prison. It will have terrible wide-ranging repercussions and punish activists, health workers and lawyers for 'promoting' homosexuality. Amnesty International is asking people to urge the President to stop it.

It’s already illegal to be gay in Uganda, with a lengthy prison sentence for anyone found to have had same-sex relations. But this new Bill goes even further, and anyone identified as LGBTI will be imprisoned for life.

This month marks three years since prominent gay rights activist David Kato - who campaigned against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill when it first appeared before Parliament in 2009 - was murdered in his home. His murder followed a hate campaign in the national press which called for Kato and others on a ‘gay list’ to be hanged.

Sadly, in the years since Kato’s murder, attacks have increased and rights for LGBTI individuals rolled back even further – led by hateful tirades in the media, and vicious campaigns by law-makers keen to legitimise discrimination.

It is impossible to assist gay rights activists with court cases without receiving abuse and assaults – from neighbours and passers-by, to government officials and the police.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill not only legitimises but actively encourages such activity.

What’s more, the Bill will extend punishments to anyone found to be 'promoting homosexuality'. If it becomes law, access to basic legal and health rights will be denied to a whole section of Uganda’s society.

Health workers will be barred from conducting HIV tests or advising LGBTI patients; lawyers prevented from advising LGBTI clients; activists prevented from defending LGBTI rights.

In fact, if you know of someone working with LGBTI individuals and you fail to report that activity within 24 hours, you too will be prosecuted.

Please tell the President that love is a human right and urge him to veto the bill: take part of  Amnesty International action here.

Human rights abuses in top holiday destinations

For the holidays, Amnesty International has put together an unusual travel guide. This guide outlines some of the key human rights issues affecting the most popular holiday destinations for UK holidaymakers.

 “Holidays are a time to relax and forget about life’s headaches, and we’re not expecting people to anxiously research the human rights situation of their holiday destinations,” says Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen.

 “But behind the sparkling seas, the luxurious hotels and picturesque landscapes, there’s a darker reality of tragedy and human rights abuse."

The top ten countries visited by British tourists are in descending order: Spain, France, USA, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Netherlands, Greece and Belgium. The guide also feaures the world’s other two favourite destinations: the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

For each destination, AI lists the number of British (or international) visitors, the main tourists attractions, then the human rights concerns and a case study illustrating them.

And to be fair, the guide mentions the UK as well, which ranks the world’s 8^th most popular location. There too, AI lists the leading attractions, then the human rights issues and a case study.

Here are a few examples (I’ve removed the case studies for space reason):

TOP TEN COUNTRIES VISITED BY UK TOURISTS

1: SPAIN

Number of British visitors in 2012: 11,110,000

Leading attractions: Antoni Gaudí’s distinctive architecture at Barcelona’s Park Güell, the Sagrada Familia cathedral and the Casa Batlló; the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia contemporary art museum in Madrid; Granada’s Moorish Alhambra palace complex; the lively, and less lively, beach resorts along much of Spain’s coast.

Human rights concerns:

·     *Excessive use of force by police during austerity protests.

·     *Lack of justice for victims - and their relatives - of the Franco dictatorship.

·    *Roma people forcibly evicted from their homes without adequate alternative accommodation.

2: FRANCE

Number of British visitors in 2012: 8,781,000

Leading attractions: the iconic Eiffel Tower, the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur and the Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris, all in Paris; the French Riviera.

Human rights concerns:

·     *Investigations into allegations of deaths in custody, torture and other ill-treatment by police are ineffective and inadequate.

      *Since 2011 France has enforced a ban on the wearing of veils and burqas in public places, which Amnesty believes is an infringement of the rights of women in France to express their values, beliefs and identity.

·     *Thousands of Roma people have been left homeless after being forcibly evicted from informal settlements.

·     *The fast-track procedure for the assessment of asylum applications falls short of international standards.

Case: Mohamed Boukrourou, a 41-year-old Moroccan man, died soon after being arrested in Valentigney (Doubs) on 12 November 2009 after he’d become agitated in a chemist’s shop. Reportedly, four police officers restrained Boukrourou on the ground outside the chemist’s before carrying him into a police van. A witness said she saw the police stamping on Boukrourou inside the van, as well as kicking and beating him. Soon after a doctor declared Boukrourou dead and the same evening police told family members that he’d died of a heart attack following an accident. Despite prolonged efforts from the family there has been no proper accountability in the case.

3: UNITED STATES

Number of British visitors in 2012: 3,011,000

Leading attractions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan’s vast Central Park, and the High Line Public Park, all in New York City; the Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles’ Venice Boardwalk.

Human rights concerns:

·    *The USA is a major user of capital punishment and last year 43 people were executed, the fifth highest number anywhere in the world.

·    *The US authorities are still holding 166 detainees at the notorious detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The vast majority have not been charged with an offence and most have been there for over ten years.

·    *At least 42 people across 20 US states died after being struck by police Tasers last year, bringing the total number of such deaths to 540 since 2001.

·    *Thousands of prisoners in the USA are held in solitary confinement in “super-maximum security” prisons, confined to small cells for 22-24 hours a day.

Cases: former UK resident Shaker Aamer, 44, has been held at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial for 11-and-a-half years. Via his lawyers, Aamer has alleged he was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including severe beatings, while held in secret US detention in Afghanistan in early 2002, and claims he has been further mistreated at Guantánamo. Along with over 100 other Guantánamo detainees, he has reportedly been on hunger strike for several months to protest at his continued detention.

SOME OF THE WORLD’S OTHER FAVOURITE DESTINATIONS

MALDIVES

Number of International tourist arrivals in 2012: 958,000

Almost three times more people visited the Maldives last year than actually live there (the country has a population of 330,000), and tourism is the country’s largest economic industry. It is particularly popular with honeymooners.

Leading attractions: apart from the beaches … Maldives’ oldest mosque Hukuru Miskiiy, the National Art Gallery, the National Stadium, and the Sultan’s Park which surrounds the National Museum, all in the capital city of Malé.

Human rights concerns:

·   *In a report issued last year called “The other side of paradise”, Amnesty documented attacks carried out by the police using truncheons and pepper-spray to crack down on largely peaceful demonstrations.

·     *There are reports that detainees have been tortured.

·     *In May this year two juvenile offenders were sentenced to death despite this being contrary to international law.

Meanwhile, the UNITED KINGDOM is ranked as the world’s eighth-most popular destination, with 29.3 million visitors in 2012.

Leading attractions: the National and Tate galleries, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the 2012 Olympic Park, all in London; an abundance of castles including Cardiff, Edinburgh, Windsor; the historic university cities of Oxford and Cambridge; the Lake District, Peak District and the Cotswolds.

Human rights concerns:

·    *The highly controversial Justice and Security Act (allowing “secret courts”) recently passed into law despite opposition from hundreds of lawyers and numerous human rights organisations. Amnesty said the measures are an affront to the principles of open justice and are “Kafkaesque”.

·     *The recently-enacted Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act has raised fears that changes to legal aid will seriously restrict access to justice, particularly for overseas victims of abuses by UK multinational companies.

·     *Toxic language about human rights in the UK is common. While often lauding human rights in a foreign context, some politicians treat them with contempt at home, as do sections of the media. In some quarters there has been an almost continuous drumbeat of threats to “scrap the Human Rights Act” and to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.

All UK tourist figures are from the Office of National Statistics.The international tourism figures are from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.The tourist attractions listed includes information from the Lonely Planet guide.

Syria’s war creates biggest rise in global refugees since 1994

Syrian boys walk shoulder to shoulder in the rain at the Boynuyogun refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border in Hatay province February 8, 2012. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

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Syria's war has contributed to the biggest rise in global refugee numbers since 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide and the height of conflict in the Balkans, according to the U.N.refugee agency (UNHCR)’s annual report. 

By the end of 2012, more than 45.2 million people worldwide were refugees, seeking asylum or displaced in their own country -- and the number increased on average by one every 4.1 seconds.

There are as many refugees who fled Syria since January 1 as the total number of refugees who fled all over the world during 2012, said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.   This year, the total number of refugees stands at 1.65 million, but UNHCR predicts the number will more than double by the end of this year, reaching 3.45 million. 

Syria also has about 4.25 million internally displaced people (IDPs) - people forced from their homes by the spiralling violence who are displaced within Syria itself - a number the United Nations expects to remain constant for the rest of the year.

“IDPs have often been the invisible and forgotten victims of this brutal conflict that has raged since 2011, out of the media spotlight and largely sidelined by the political wrangling between all parties to the conflict and their international backers,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser.

Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq are shouldering most of the refugee burden, with help from foreign aid donors such as the European Union, Kuwait, the United States and Japan.

There was no alternative strategy to hoping for an end to the fighting or accepting the risk of an explosion in the Middle East, Guterres said.  "Either this conflict stops, sooner rather than later, or the humanitarian consequences become out of proportion with anything we have known in the recent past."

Aside from Syria, recent refugee black spots include Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, but Guterres said there were signs of hope in Somalia, which is emerging from two decades of war.

Saudi Arabia - rise in executions and crucifixions

Saudi Arabia must halt a “disturbing” rise in its use of the death penalty, Amnesty International said this after six people were executed in the country yesterday.

Five Yemeni men were beheaded and “crucified” yesterday in the city of Jizan, while a Saudi Arabian man was executed in the south-western city of Abha.

The beheadings and “crucifixions” took place in front of the University of Jizan where students are taking exams. Pictures emerged on social media appearing to show five decapitated bodies hanging from a horizontal pole with their heads wrapped in bags. In Saudi Arabia, the practice of “crucifixion” refers to the court-ordered public display of the body after execution, along with the separated head if beheaded. It takes place in a public square to allegedly act as a deterrent.

Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry said the five men executed in Jizan were found guilty of forming an armed gang, armed robbery and the murder of a Saudi Arabian man. It is unclear if all five were convicted of the murder. Meanwhile, the sixth execution was carried out in Abha, where the Interior Ministry reported that a Saudi Arabian man was executed for murder.

"By the grace of God, the security authorities were able to apprehend the perpetrators. Investigation resulted in charging them with committing their crimes," the ministry's statement said, according to Reuters news agency. "A sharia verdict was issued against them affirming their indictment," it said. Their crimes were classified as among the most serious, according to sharia law.

   

Yesterday's executions take the figure of state killings in Saudi Arabia so far this year to at least 47 - an increase of 18 compared to this time last year, and a rise of 29 compared to the same period in 2011, according to Amnesty Inernational. There has also been an increase in executions for drug-related offences, with at least 12 executed for such offences so far this year.  Rates of executions in the Saudi Arabia are feared to be even higher than declared, as secret and unannounced executions have been reported.

Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther said: “Saudi Arabia’s increased use of this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is deeply disturbing and the authorities must halt what is a horrifying trend. The Kingdom must immediately establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing capital punishment.”

Saudi Arabia applies the death penalty for a wide range of crimes including “adultery”, armed robbery, “apostasy”, drug smuggling, kidnapping, rape, “witchcraft” and “sorcery”. Authorities  routinely flout international standards for fair trial and safeguards for defendants, who are often denied representation by lawyers and not informed of the progress of legal proceedings against them. They may be convicted solely on the basis of “confessions” obtained under torture or other ill-treatment.

Afghanistan: young woman killed in front of 300 - Stop Violence against Women

Members of Afghan activist group Young Women for Change/copyright AP

Enough!  Stop violence against women in Afghanistan.


Afghanistan has been called the most dangerous place to be born a girl. Violence against girls and women is endemic.   From beatings behind closed doors to targeted attacks on brave women human rights defenders speaking out in public, anything goes. The majority of these crimes go unpunished. Instead, victims are often punished for committing 'moral crimes' like running from abusive relationships, attempting to protect their children from a violent father.

"I work mostly on cases where women have been accused of 'moral crimes', like running away from home after being abused, or where women want to free their children from an abusive father…,” says Masiha Faiz of Medica Mondiale.  “The police and courts don’t want us to defend these victims. They will hide the cases and try to send the women back without investigating. A woman’s word isn’t worth anything to them." 

The killing of a young Afghan woman by her father in front of a large crowd last week - on the grounds that she had “dishonoured” the family - is yet another example of the shocking violence against women and further proof that the authorities are failing to tackle it. 

The woman, who has two children, was shot dead last Monday (22 April) by her father in front of a crowd of about 300 people in the village of Kookchaheel, in the Aabkamari district of Badghis province in north-western Afghanistan, according to an Amnesty International report issued today.

The woman, named Halima, who was believed to be between 18 and 20 years old, was accused of running away with a cousin while her husband was in Iran. Her cousin returned Halima to her relatives ten days after running away with her. His whereabouts are unknown.

The killing came after three of the village’s religious leaders, allegedly linked to the Taliban, issued a fatwa (religious edict) that Halima should be killed publicly, after her father sought their advice about his daughter’s elopement. Halima’s father and the three religious council members who issued the fatwa have reportedly gone into hiding. The local police say they are investigating the case, but no one has yet been arrested in connection with the killing.

Amnesty International’s Afghanistan researcher Horia Mosadiq said:  “The deeply shocking practice of women being subjected to violent ‘punishments’, including killing, publicly or privately, must end. The authorities across Afghanistan must ensure that perpetrators of violence against women are brought to justice."

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) documented more than 4,000 cases of violence against women in a six-month period last year (21 March-21 October 2012) - a rise of 28% compared with the same period in the previous year. The AIHRC has also criticised the Afghan police in Baghdis for recruiting suspected perpetrators of such violence, including a Taliban commander and his 20 men implicated in the stoning to death of 45-year-old widow Bibi Sanuber for alleged adultery in 2010.

In August 2009, Afghanistan passed the Elimination of Violence againstWomen Law, which criminalises forced marriage, rape, beatings and other acts of violence against women.

“Afghanistan’s law for the elimination of violence against women is a very positive step, but it will not be useful unless it is properly enforced - something we haven’t seen so far,” said AI's Mosadiq.

Amnesty is calling for people to ask their MPs to stand up with women in Afghanistan and pressure the UK Government to support practical steps to tackle the abuse – steps like supporting women’s shelters or facilitating specially trained domestic abuse representatives in the police force. 

With international troops leaving next year, peace negotiations with the Taliban and upcoming Presidential elections, it is a critical time for Afghanistan. “We need our Government to act now to ensure gains made since the fall of the Taliban are not lost, and that women are protected from violence in all its forms,” says Amnesty.

Sign the petition here.