Authorities must launch a prompt and effective investigation into the army’s killing of three protesters and injury of scores others following post elections violence, said Amnesty International.

“It is unfortunate that this election has descended into bloodshed, which could have been avoided if security forces had exercised restraint against protesters. The army’s conduct should be promptly investigated, with those responsible brought to justice,” said Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Amnesty International’s Acting Secretary General.

“By using live ammunition against unarmed protesters, the army has broken the very same rule of law that they should protect. The militarization of the prevailing post-election environment is muzzling freedom of expression, association and assembly. People must be guaranteed their right to protest.”

Police have confirmed that three people have been killed after soldiers fired live ammunition on fleeing people following post-election protests in Harare, with some of the injured and dead being shot from the back.

The army also ordered journalists covering riotous demonstrations to switch off their video recording equipment and cameras.

Demonstrators were calling for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to expedite the release of the presidential election results after voting on 30 July.

Firearms must never be used as a tool for containing violence by protesters. They may only be used in defense against an imminent threat of death or serious injury, in order to save another life.

“The loss of life for people protesting for the release of the election results was totally unnecessary. They wanted to see how they had voted and Zimbabwean authorities had a duty to facilitate this in a peaceful manner, without deploying the army to the streets,” said Colm Ó Cuanacháin.

“Media freedom must also be guaranteed and respected in this prevailing post-election environment. Journalists should not be intimidated for doing their work.”

Background

The post-election violence earlier today follows the country’s elections on 30 July 2018. The vote combined presidential, parliamentary and local government elections.

The 30 July election took place in a context of intimidation of people in some rural parts of Zimbabwe, with uniformed military men and intelligence agents deployed into villages. Military intelligence were reported going house to house, sometimes at night, in the lead up to the elections telling villagers to “vote right” in places such as Mutoko and Domboshava in Mashonaland East.

As a new law banning the wearing of face coverings in public comes into force in Denmark, Amnesty International’s Deputy Europe Director Fotis Filippou said:

“All women should be free to dress as they please and to wear clothing that expresses their identity or beliefs. This ban will have a particularly negative impact on Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab or burqa.”

“All women should be free to dress as they please and to wear clothing that expresses their identity or beliefs. This ban will have a particularly negative impact on Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab or burqa.

“Whilst some specific restrictions on the wearing of full face veils for the purposes of public safety may be legitimate, this blanket ban is neither necessary nor proportionate and violates women’s rights to freedom of expression and religion.

“If the intention of this law was to protect women’s rights it fails abjectly. Instead, the law criminalises women for their choice of clothing – making a mockery of the freedoms Denmark purports to uphold.”

Background

The Danish ban follows similar recent bans on full face veils in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and parts of Switzerland.

The new Danish ban on covering the face in public places includes the niqab and burka as well as false beards, masks and other ways of obscuring the face in public. Key arguments from proponents of the new law centred on an alleged need to ensure that no Muslim women or girls are being forced to wear full-faced clothing, maintaining that this ban would help ensure better integration of asylum-seekers and migrants into Danish society.

The Indian authorities should ensure that documenting and updating the names of citizens in the northeastern state of Assam is transparent and nondiscriminatory, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International India said.

The potential exclusion of over 4 million people, many of them Muslims, raises concerns over arbitrary detention and possible statelessness without due process.

On 30 July 2018, the Assam state government published a draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), aimed at identifying Indian citizens and legitimate residents following repeated protests and violence over irregular migration from Bangladesh.

The register only lists those people as citizens who can prove that they or their ancestors entered India before midnight on 24 March 1971 – the eve of the war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. The process to update the register, which various political parties and ethnic groups in Assam have demanded, is being monitored by the Supreme Court.

Millions stateless

“Assam has long sought to preserve its ethnic identity, but rendering millions of people stateless is not the answer,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Indian authorities need to move swiftly to ensure the rights of Muslims and other vulnerable communities in Assam are protected from statelessness.”

The government has said that this is a draft list and those whose names are missing from the register have until 28 September 2018 to seek a correction. “No one will be sent to detention camps,” said Assam’s finance and health minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma. “Rights or privileges will not be taken away from them just because their names have not appeared in the draft NRC.” The central government has also said that after the final list is published in December, applicants left out will have an opportunity to seek a correction from the Foreigners Tribunals.

However, the government has not formulated an official policy for those people who are excluded from the National Register of Citizens and declared foreigners by the tribunals. In December 2017, Sarma said that, “the NRC is being done to identify illegal Bangladeshis residing in Assam,” and that “all those whose names do not figure in the NRC will have to be deported.”

However, Bangladesh has not agreed to claims that these people are irregular migrants, making deportation to Bangladesh unlikely. India does not have an agreement on deportation with Bangladesh.

Ensure rights, nondiscrimination for all residents

Irregular migration from Bangladesh has long been a volatile issue in Assam and concerns over the inclusion of these so-called “illegal immigrants” in electoral rolls has grown in recent years. Assam has a long history of armed groups targeting those considered outsiders to protect the claims of “indigenous” citizens.

In May 2018, protests erupted in Assam over a Citizenship Amendment Bill, which would grant citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. While the proposed law deliberately excludes Muslims, including Shia and Ahmadiyya who also face persecution in Pakistan, many groups in Assam fear that this will increase influx of Hindu Bangladeshi migrants to the state.

“The NRC should not become a political tool to render stateless people who have been living in India for decades and have established strong links with the country,” said Aakar Patel, Executive Director of Amnesty International India. “During the process of claims and appeals, the state government should ensure that the people excluded from the NRC are not deprived of any government services, nor targeted or stigmatized in any manner.”

An Amnesty International staff member has been targeted by a sophisticated surveillance campaign, in what the organization suspects was a deliberate attempt to spy on its staff by a government hostile to its work.

In early June 2018, an Amnesty International staff member received a suspicious WhatsApp message in Arabic. The text contained details about an alleged protest outside the Saudi embassy in Washington D.C., followed by a link to a website. Investigations by Amnesty International’s technology team revealed that clicking the link would have, according to prior knowledge, installed “Pegasus”, a sophisticated surveillance tool developed by the Israel-based company NSO Group.

“NSO Group is known to only sell its spyware to governments. We therefore believe that this was a deliberate attempt to infiltrate Amnesty International by a government hostile to our human rights work,” said Joshua Franco, Amnesty International’s Head of Technology and Human Rights.

“The potent state hacking tools manufactured by NSO Group allow for an extraordinarily invasive form of surveillance. A smartphone infected with Pegasus is essentially controlled by the attacker – it can relay phone calls, photos, messages and more directly to the operator. This chilling attack on Amnesty International highlights the grave risk posed to activists around the world by this kind of surveillance technology.”

In a statement to Amnesty International, NSO Group said that their product “is intended to be used exclusively for the investigation and prevention of crime and terrorism” and that any other use violate their policies and contracts.

Saudi alleged protest used as bait

The WhatsApp message was sent to Amnesty International in a week when the organization was campaigning for the release of six women’s rights activists detained in Saudi Arabia.

The message, carefully analyzed by Amnesty International’s technology experts, read: “Can you please cover [the protest] for your brothers detained in Saudi Arabia in front of the Saudi embassy in Washington. My brother was detained in Ramadan and I am on a scholarship here so please do not link me to this. [LINK]. Cover the protest now it will start in less than an hour. We need your support please.”

The link, if clicked, would have allowed the Pegasus software to infect the user’s smartphone, tracking keystrokes, taking control of the phone’s cameras and microphone and accessing contact lists.

Amnesty International’s investigation also discovered that another Saudi Arabia rights activist received a similar malicious message.

Connection to NSO Group and suspicious websites

Further investigations by Amnesty International revealed that the domain link in the message belongs to a large infrastructure of more than 600 suspicious websites which had been previously connected to NSO Group. Amnesty International is concerned that these could be used to bait and spy on activists in countries including Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and Hungary, in addition to the Gulf.

Last year Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab uncovered NSO Group’s involvement in a similar spyware scheme in Mexico. Activists, journalists and opposition party leaders were targeted by false messages containing Pegasus software in an attempt to silence government opposition. Pegasus was also used to target the Emirati award-winning human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, who has been in prison in the United Arab Emirates since March 2017.

“The message sent to us seems to be part of a much broader surveillance campaign, which we suspect is being used to spy on human rights activists worldwide and prevent their vital work,” said Joshua Franco.

“Defending human rights is not a crime, and we refuse to be intimidated by this attack. Attempts to spy on us will never prevent Amnesty International from speaking up for truth, justice and equality. We are working with human rights activists to help them protect themselves against similar cowardly attacks, and ensure that abusive governments cannot use technology to silence them.”

Background

While law enforcement agencies in many countries have used secret surveillance in relation to national security objectives, Amnesty International is concerned that in many cases surveillance is being carried out in a manner contrary to international human rights law. Tools like Pegasus are especially problematic from a human rights law perspective as they are so deeply invasive.

As laid out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), companies also have a responsibility to respect human rights wherever they operate in the world.

NSO Group response

In a written response, NSO Group said: “NSO Group develops cyber technology to allow government agencies to identify and disrupt terrorist and criminal plots. Our product is intended to be used exclusively for the investigation and prevention of crime and terrorism. Any use of our technology that is counter to that purpose is a violation of our policies, legal contracts, and the values that we stand for as a company.

If an allegation arises concerning a violation of our contract or inappropriate use of our technology, as Amnesty has offered, we investigate the issue and take appropriate action based on those findings. We welcome any specific information that can assist us in further investigating of the matter.”

In response to the detention of 30 individuals who were peacefully protesting in support of factory workers’ attempt to form their own trade union at Jasic Technology in Shenzhen, southern China, Patrick Poon, China Researcher at Amnesty International commented:

“The detention of the workers and their supporters is deplorable. The workers’ demand to form a union of their choice to protect their rights is entirely legitimate. Instead of trying to silence the protesters, the authorities should address the underlying allegations of abusive working conditions and respect the workers’ right to freedom of association.

“The charges against many of those detained by police are nothing more than an attempt to restrict their rights of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association”

“The charges against many of those detained by police are nothing more than an attempt to restrict their rights of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. All those involved in the protest should be released immediately and unconditionally unless there is evidence that internationally recognized crimes were committed.”

Background

The 30 individuals – 23 men and seven women, including workers from the Jasic Technology factory, workers from other factories and a student – were placed under criminal detention on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” on 27 July by Yanziling Police Station in Pingshan district in Shenzhen, southern China.

According to labour groups in Hong Kong who have been following the case, the workers at the Jasic Technology factory were accused by company management of trying to form an illegal trade union.

Some workers’ representatives were dismissed from their jobs and several of them were beaten up by unidentified people after they tried to return to work at the factory. The situation immediately attracted widespread attention on Chinese social media and many people came out to support the workers, including student groups from leading Chinese universities.

Other protesters were briefly detained and questioned by the police after they demonstrated outside the police station in support of the detained individuals.