 | This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information.(March 2023) |
Idris Khattak | |
|---|---|
| Born | Pakistan |
| Disappeared | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa |
| Status | Imprisoned after a conviction by military court |
| Nationality | Pakistani |
| Known for | Human rights work |
| Children | 2 |
Idris Khattak is a Pakistani human rights activist. [1] [2] [3] [4] In early December 2021 a military court sentenced Khattak to 14 years in prison for espionage. [5] [6]
Idris Khattak was born in December 1963. [7] He had previously worked for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch [8] on a wide range of topics including people illegally disappeared by the military. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Saint Petersburg. [9] [10]
Khattak has two daughters, Shumaisa and Talia. [11] [12]
Khattak was abducted by four individuals on the Swabi motorway interchange in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 13 November 2019. [13]
He was kept in solitary confinement since November 2019 by military intelligence in Pakistan, although in February 2021 Amnesty International reported the Peshawar High Court had denied Khattak's appeal to be tried in a civilian court and that his hearing would instead take place in a military court. [14] [15]
He was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment in a secret military court trial in late-2021, not being allowed to defend his case. [16] Human Rights Watch condemned the sentencing, saying that "Pakistan's security forces have with impunity long carried out enforced disappearances" and calling for him to tried publicly in a civilian court. [17] Amnesty International called the sentencing "the culmination of a shameful two-year process that has been unjust from start to finish" and saying that "enforced disappearances must, once and for all, be put to an end." [18]
An enforced disappearance is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person with the support or acquiescence of a state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate or whereabouts with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. Often, forced disappearance implies murder whereby a victim is abducted, may be illegally detained, and is often tortured during interrogation, ultimately killed, and the body disposed of secretly. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability as there is no evidence of the victim's death.
Russia has consistently been criticized by international organizations and independent domestic media outlets for human rights violations. Some of the most commonly cited violations include deaths in custody, the systemic and widespread use of torture by security forces and prison guards, the existence of hazing rituals within the Russian Army —referred to as dedovshchina — as well as prevalent breaches of children's rights, instances of violence and prejudice against ethnic minorities, and the targeted killings of journalists.
Human rights in Turkey are protected by a variety of international law treaties, which take precedence over domestic legislation, according to Article 90 of the 1982 Constitution. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) was not signed by Turkey until 2000. As of today, however, Turkey is party to 16 out of 18 international human rights treaties of the United Nations. The issue of human rights is of high importance for the negotiations with the European Union (EU).
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) is an independent, democratic non-profit organisation. Founded in 1987, it is one of the oldest human rights organisations in the country.
The Government of Morocco sees Western Sahara as its Southern Provinces. The Moroccan government considers the Polisario Front as a separatist movement given the alleged Moroccan origins of some of its leaders.
Human Rights in the UAE are substantially restricted. The UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens don't have the right to change their government or form political parties. Activists and academics who criticize the government are detained and imprisoned, and their families are often harassed by the state security apparatus. There are reports of forced disappearances of foreign nationals and Emirati citizens, who have been abducted, detained and tortured in undisclosed locations, and denied the right to a speedy trial and access to counsel during investigations by the UAE government. Human Rights Watch states that Emirati laws maintain capital punishment and discriminate against women, migrants and LGBT individuals.
Human rights in Thailand have long been a contentious issue. The country was among the first to sign the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and seemed committed to upholding its stipulations; in practice, however, those in power have often abused the human rights of the Thai nation with impunity. From 1977 to 1988, Amnesty International (AI) reported that there were whitewashed cases of more than one thousand alleged arbitrary detentions, fifty forced disappearances, and at least one hundred instances of torture and extrajudicial killings. In the years since then, AI demonstrated that little had changed, and Thailand's overall human rights record remained problematic. A 2019 HRW report expanded on AI's overview as it focuses specifically on the case of Thailand, as the newly government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha assumes power in mid-2019, Thailand's human rights record shows no signs of change.
The situation of Human Rights in Pakistan is complex as a result of the country's diversity, large population, its status as a developing country and a sovereign Islamic democracy with a mixture of both Islamic and secular law.
Human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is also a party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, the state of human rights in the country has been criticized both in the past and the present, especially by foreign human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." International human rights organizations, such as the aforementioned HRW and Amnesty International, have alleged that as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Other complaints made are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence". The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
An extrajudicial killing is the deliberate killing of a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. It typically refers to government authorities, whether lawfully or unlawfully, targeting specific people for death, which in authoritarian regimes often involves political, trade union, dissident, religious and social figures. The term is typically used in situations that imply the human rights of the victims have been violated; deaths caused by legal police actions or legal warfighting on a battlefield are generally not included, even though military and police forces are often used for killings seen by critics as illegitimate. The label "extrajudicial killing" has also been applied to organized, lethal enforcement of extralegal social norms by non-government actors, including lynchings and honor killings.
MikolaViktaravich Statkevich is a Belarusian lieutenant colonel, politician, and opposition leader who was a presidential candidate at the 2010 Belarusian presidential election. Since 31 May 2020 he is held in prison by Belarusian authorities. Viasna Human Rights Centre recognized him as a political prisoner. On 14 December 2021, Statkevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Azimzhan Askarov was a Kyrgyzstani political activist who founded the group Vozduh in 2002 to investigate police brutality. Of ethnic Uzbek descent, during the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes, which primarily targeted people of the Uzbek nationality, Askarov worked to document the violence.
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Somyot Prueksakasemsuk is a Thai activist and magazine editor who in 2013 was sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment for lese majeste against King Bhumibol Adulyadej. His sentence drew protest from the European Union and from numerous human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which designated him a prisoner of conscience. He was an editor of the “Voice of Thaksin” magazine and a prominent labour rights activist affiliated with the Democratic Alliance of Trade Unions who protested for Thai labour law reform.
Gulalai Ismail is a Pakistani human rights activist from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. She is the chairperson of Aware Girls, a global ambassador for Humanists International, and a leading member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). She speaks on the subject of promoting peace and women's empowerment at conferences internationally, and is the recipient of the International Humanist of the Year Award, the Chirac Prize for Conflict Prevention, and the Anna Politkovskaya Award.
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Ahmad Waqass Goraya is a Pakistani-born activist and blogger based in the Netherlands. He is among several Pakistani bloggers and authors overseas who are critics of the Pakistan Army who have been persecuted, tortured and threatened. They include Salman Haider, Gul Bukhari, and others.
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