Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 29 July 2014

President Obama announced new sanctions on Russia today, hours after the European Union announced its own sanctions, in response to the situation in Ukraine. The sanctions include an arms embargo, deeper financial measures, and technological trade restrictions. Mr. Obama said that declassified satellite imagery shows that “forces inside Russia have launched artillery strikes into Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, Reuters traces the terrestrial trajectory of a surface-to-air rocket manufactured twenty years ago from Moscow, to the Russian-Ukrainian border, to a pro-separatist camp where it and its logbook was confiscated by Ukrainian forces. Detaining immigrant families is unnecessary and cruel. Instead of funding additional detention beds, the US Congress should be adding immigration judges and improving access to legal counsel to make the asylum process fairer and more efficient. Staying in the US, the Senate should move swiftly to approve a surveillance reform bill introduced Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. The bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, is a significant improvement over a companion bill that the House and has the potential to end bulk collection of phone records in the US.