The United Arab Emirates (UAE; Arabic: al-Imrt al-Arabyah al-Muttaidah), or simply the Emirates (Arabic: al-Imrt), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East).It is located at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula and shares borders with Oman and Saudi Arabia, while . Human Rights Watch said the NYPD's violent conduct during the June 4, 2020, protest in the Bronx amounted to "serious violations of international human rights law." Clarissa-Jan Lim. Tallinn (Estonia), March 3 (AP/PTI): A Belarusian court on Friday sentenced Ales Bialiatski, Belarus' top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, to 10 years in prison. Of course, January 1 feels like a lifetime ago. As an 8 p.m. curfew neared, New York Police Department It follows a pattern of a government voicing support for protest around the world but cracking down on the right to speak up here at home.. On September 3, the Bronx District Attorney filed to dismiss the summonses, and on September 25 the Bronx District Attorneys office informed Human Rights Watch that the desk appearance tickets will also be dismissed. New York state and city officials should make structural changes to reduce the police role in addressing societal problems, including through significant decreases to the police force size and budget, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities demanded organizers call off the march, though large crowds stayed, leading to hundreds of arrests. Even before COVID-19 fully gripped the world, 2020 was shaping up to be a year of activism. Commenting on the Public Order Bill, Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty UK's Chief Executive Director said: These new attempts to reduce protest rights are in breach of international human rights law. After Hong KongactivistJoshua Wong was sentenced to jail last week, he shouted we will hang in there! This is a message for our times at the end of an extraordinary painful year, it is more important than ever to stand firm and defend the principles of human rights. In Brussels, Belgium(Opens in a new tab), for instance, protesters defaced and set fire to a statue of King Leopold II, who oversaw the violentcolonizationof the Congo. Belarusian human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by a Minsk court on Friday. Share this via Printer. Black Lives Matter demonstration in Vienna Christopher Glanzl/Amnesty International Austria. The spread ofCovid-19 in Zimbabweposedmajor risks to the countrys prisons and detention centers. Protest is a key tactic for humanity to win. Whats more, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act already criminalises Roma, Travellers and nomadic communities. Credit: ISAAC LAWRENCE / AFP via Getty Images, Dominique "Rem'mie" Fells and Riah Milton, restrict or prohibit the discussion of LGBTQ issues, authorities significant leeway in interpretation, protest against the legislation on July 1. The authorities arrested over 100. Help us continue to fight human rights abuses. Theamendment prohibits corporal punishmentand the exclusion of pregnant girls from school in accordance with theZimbabwe Constitution, whichguarantees the right to education. Somewhere in the process of being cuffed, I had a knee on my neck.. Corruption remained a powerful mobilizer in both authoritarian and democratic countries. They werethen dumped in Bindura, 80 kilometers from Harare. With much of the world implementing some form of social distancing, more routine protests, such as climate strikes and the LGBTQ Day of Silence, were moved online. 20052023 Mashable, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. As the chart below shows, the rapid proliferation of new protests continued for the rest of the year. Activists of Amnesty International Austria demanded justice of George Floyd who was killed by police officers in Minneapolis, USA. Hewasleft with a brokenleft legandfingerby men whoaccused him of organizing anti-government protests. Spontaneous celebrations for the Biden and Harris win weren't the only gatherings spurred by the election results. UN expert @cvoule welcomes as groundbreaking an authoritative new interpretation that the right to #PeacefulAssembly extends to digital activities. Current Chief of Department Terence Monahan was also a key player during those operations. Which language would you like to use this site in? Later that day, protesters in D.C. toppled a statue of Albert Pike(Opens in a new tab), a Confederate general, ultimately setting it on fire. They should also empower independent accountability systems to provide a genuine check on police misconduct. Welcome March with discounts on gadgets for your home. Cities across the country were staging similar protests soon after Floyd's death. . Activists of Amnesty International Austria demanded justice of George Floyd who was killed by police officers in Minneapolis, USA. Protests in support of the U.S. Black Lives Matter movement spread swiftly around the world, with people taking to the streets in Sydney(Opens in a new tab), Rio de Janeiro(Opens in a new tab), London(Opens in a new tab), and Seoul(Opens in a new tab), among other cities. These strikes have continued regularly throughout the period of social distancing, however, with youth around the world posting pictures of their protest signs on social media on designated days. However, the rapid globalization of the coronavirus in February and March drastically reduced the number and size of protests. Similarly, protesters in Bristol, England, toppled a statue of Edward Colston(Opens in a new tab), a 17th-century slave trader, and threw it in the harbor. Civil Society and the Global Pandemic: Building Back Different? To give just a few examples, thisyear Amnesty Internationalwasforced to, weresentenced to prison, Russian opposition leader. In the police departments response to Human Rights Watchs questions, the department said that, upon 8 p.m., the demonstration was unlawful under the Mayors Executive Order establishing the curfew, and that the detention of nonessential workers was lawful. The department also said that legal observers did not enjoy an exemption as essential workers, even though the Mayors office had clarified that legal observers were exempt from the curfew. Over2millionpeople in the capital, Harare,and the greater metropolitan area incorporating Chitungwiza, Epworth, Ruwa and Norton have no access to safe drinking water or adequate waste and wastewater disposal services. Around 50,000 people took part in an anti-racism demonstration in Vienna on Thursday, 4th of July 2020. Masaraure,thenational president of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe,wasseized fromhis home in Harare onJanuary 18, 2019,andbeatenseverely with leather whips. A Belarusian court yesterday sentenced Ales Bialiatski, Belarus's top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, to 10 years in prison. Watch what happened next. Right to Life In addition, Governments cannot block internet networks or close down any website because of their roles in organising or soliciting a peaceful assembly, according to the Committee. The first specific step towards the establishment of the United Nations was the Inter-Allied conference that led to the Declaration of St James's Palace on 12 June 1941. Focusing on Egyptian protests as well as peaceful protests in Syria, the book offers rich and unique data as it brings together the experiences and voices of the key figures involved in the protests, both on the ground and online. Another prevalent protest theme of 2020 was citizen anger over police brutality. To be heard, citizens band together in solidarity and demand their rights are respected. Share this via Telegram It describes the citys ineffectual accountability systems that protect abusive police officers, shows the shortcomings of incremental reforms, and makes the case for structural change. A company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (01735872). But the lull did not hold: just a few weeks after lockdowns were widely imposed, protests began to reemerge. The policeviolently dispersedprotests in July,wherein16 protesters were injured and a further60 were arrested. The crackdown, led by the departments highest-ranking uniformed officer, was among the most aggressive police responses to protests across the United States following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and could cost New York City taxpayers several million dollars in misconduct complaints and lawsuits. If you are talented and passionate about human rights then Amnesty International wants to hear from you. On August 3,the chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Solomon Dersso,responding to the arrests of protesters, warnedin a Twitterpost, As we follow [the] situation in Zimbabwe, critical to reiterate the African Commission on Human Rights view that actions of states even in fighting Covid-19 should comply with principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality, thus no basis for arbitrary deprivation of liberty or life, inhumane treatment or torture.. It was a year unlike any other, and it was also an election year. Back in 2019, youth-led climate strikes staged around the world in September of that year marked the ushering in of a new era of climate activism. Amnesty UK has urged MPs across divides to oppose this new Anti-Protest Bill in its entirety. In the UK, the right to protest is under threat. We have some thoughts. Protesters marched. As Nov. 3 loomed, the country held its breath for the results of the 2020 presidential election and then had to keep holding its breath for days. Share this via Twitter The biggest stories of the day delivered to your inbox. The NYPDs highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief of Department Terence Monahan, was present during the action, along with at least 24 other uniformed supervisory officers chiefs, lieutenants, captains, or inspectors in white shirts. On the eve of theJuly 30,anti-corruption protests, security forcesraidedtheBulawayohomeof Mduduzi Mathuthu. The team raised serious concerns over Zimbabwes deteriorating human rights situation. On June 26, the Minneapolis City Council voted(Opens in a new tab) unanimously to dismantle the police department, a first step in a complicated, bureaucratic process(Opens in a new tab). I am excited by this truly landmark affirmation that protection of the right to peaceful assembly extends to remote participation, including online assemblies, saidClment Voule, reacting to a document released by the Committee. A Human Rights Watch report and video produced with Situ Research documents the incident that is the subject of the lawsuit, which took place on June 4, 2020 in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the . These rallies also brought attention to the recent police killings of other Black Americans, like Breonna Taylor(Opens in a new tab), Rayshard Brooks(Opens in a new tab), Elijah McClain(Opens in a new tab), and Tony McDade(Opens in a new tab). In a March 2020 report on the human rights situation in Cuba, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern regarding the criminalization and arbitrary. Protest is a Human Right In the UK, the right to protest is under threat. A look back at some of the most consequential moments of the year. Share this via WhatsApp MOSCOW (Reuters) -A court in Belarus on Friday sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski to 10 years in prison, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported, a verdict likely to be strongly condemned by Western human rights groups. This is the us vs them style of leadership that hasalsoled toviolence against, It is clearer than ever that isolationism and inequality do not keep us safe, and that borders offer no protection against the virus. Climate Protests: Tracking Growing Unrest, Economic Anger Dominated Global Protests in 2022, The Four Dynamics That Drove Protests in 2021. For example, rampant corruption in Bulgaria has sparked months of demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Whilereceiving treatment for theirinjuries, thetriowere arrestedatthe hospitalandcharged with making false reportsabout their abduction. In March, the National Human Rights Institute reported that investigations into over 3,000 cases of human rights violations committed during the 2019-2020 mass protests had been halted. . 1. The January 1 protest carried the movement into 2020. As the year continued, an increased focus on society's most systemic ills, thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, motivated actions that followed, like Black Friday Amazon protests and U.S. election celebrations for Biden's win. Released after four days,hefled the countrya weekafter his release. The protests were partly co-ordinated by the Black Lives Matter movement. Thunberg's strike in Sweden, for instance, was adapted to meet the country's limitation of gatherings of over 50 people. There are countless examples of governments failingto protect their populations -the UK government sendingthousands of patients untested from hospitals into care homes;Russian and Egyptianauthoritiesarresting doctors who raised safety concerns;PresidentTrumpdownplayingthe pandemics seriousness for months. To make matters worse, many of the people who are documenting and campaigning against these violations are themselves under attack. Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people in close to 100 countries worldwide, spotlighting abuses and bringing perpetrators to justice, Human Rights Watch is a 501(C)(3)nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 13-2875808, Bidens Challenge: Redeeming a US Role for Human Rights, Addressing the Climate Crisis in Times of Pandemic, From Flight Logs to Homeschooling, Human Rights Watch Grapples with Covids Challenges, As Online Gender-Based Violence Booms, Governments Drag Their Feet, The Other Pandemic: Fighting Inequality as We Beat Back Covid, Poverty, Pandemic, Police Violence: Ongoing Crises Demand the US Address Pervasive Racism.