July 2001

By planning to execute Napoleon Beazley for a crime committed when he was still a child, the USA is showing its contempt for international law and common standards of decency, Amnesty International said. Posted: 31 Jul 2001

All states should renew their commitment to the spirit and letter of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, Amnesty International said to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Convention. Posted: 30 Jul 2001

Amnesty International UK has today expressed deep concern about Government moves to block asylum claims by Czech Roma through apparently racially discriminatory embarkation checks. Posted: 30 Jul 2001

With only months to go before the mandate of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) expires its job in East Timor is far from complete. Law and order is barely maintained; justice is not being administered effectively; and the human rights of the East Timorese people cannot be guaranteed, Amnesty International said in a new report. Posted: 30 Jul 2001

Four human rights defenders, arrested solely for their lawful AIDS prevention activities, should be immediately and unconditionally released and the action of the Uttar Pradesh Police should be promptly and impartially investigated, Amnesty International said. Posted: 30 Jul 2001

Amnesty International called on the Kenyan government to investigate thoroughly reports of the roadside killing of seven suspected robbers by police officers along the Mombasa Road. Posted: 30 Jul 2001

Amnesty International welcomed the Lebanese Parliament's repeal of Law 302 which expanded the scope of the death penalty in Lebanon in 1994, abolished judges' discretion to consider mitigating factors and made capital punishment mandatory for certain offences. Posted: 27 Jul 2001

Human rights defenders and other members of civil society in Guatemala are coming under increasing attack, Amnesty International said as its members are starting an action in support of human rights activists in the country. Posted: 27 Jul 2001

On 30 July 2001 well-known Egyptian feminist writer Nawal al-Saadawi is due to appear before the Personal Status Court of North Cairo. A case was filed against her in May, calling for a divorce from her husband Sherif Hitata in relation to comments she made on religious issues as published in the Egyptian weekly newspaper, al-Midan. Posted: 27 Jul 2001

Isolation conditions in Wisconsin's supermaximum security Boscobel prison are harsh and in breach of international standards, Amnesty International said, asking for under 18 inmates to be urgently removed from it. Posted: 27 Jul 2001

Amnesty International deplored the sentencing of nine men to life imprisonment by the State Security Court (SSC) on 22 July 2001 for their alleged involvement in politically motivated bombings in March and April 1998. Posted: 26 Jul 2001

Amnesty International is very concerned by the circumstances in which - during anti-globalization demonstrations in Genoa on 20 July - a demonstrator was fatally shot by a 20-year-old law enforcement official performing his military service in the carabinieri force. Posted: 24 Jul 2001

The Indonesian police are exploiting the fact that the world's attention is focussed on the mounting political crisis in Jakarta to carry out a wave of arrests in Aceh, Amnesty International said. Posted: 23 Jul 2001

Amnesty International today called on Foreign Ministers attending this ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Hanoi next week to acknowledge that human rights are part of the regional security equation, and specifically to address the grave human rights situation in Indonesia. Posted: 20 Jul 2001

Amnesty International called on the Italian authorities to ensure that policing operations at this weekend's 'G8' summit meeting at Genoa protect the rights of people engaged in peaceful protests. Posted: 20 Jul 2001

Since the beginning of the conference on 9 July, an estimated 25,000 people worldwide will have been killed by small arms. But as negotiations enter their final hours there is no prospect of agreement on concrete steps to stop the slaughter. Posted: 20 Jul 2001

A representative of Amnesty International and Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, Mr Howard Rubin, will attend two appeals involving JB Jeyaretnam, former Secretary-General of the opposition Worker's Party, due to be heard before Singapore's Court of Appeal in the week commencing Monday 23 July 2001. Posted: 20 Jul 2001

The death of at least two people from bullet wounds and the injuring of well over 30 more as a result of police action against a predominantly peaceful demonstration in Colombo on Thursday constituted the use of excessive force on the part of the police, Amnesty International said condemning the police action. Posted: 20 Jul 2001

The Netherlands' ratification of the Rome Statute is a milestone in the establishment of the International Criminal Court, Amnesty International said today, after the Netherlands became the 37th state to ratify the Statute. Posted: 19 Jul 2001

"I cannot permit the office of the coroner to be seen as scapegoat for police refusal to investigate its own killings" (Chief Magistrate George Manuhu) Posted: 19 Jul 2001