Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 1 September 2014

Bahraini activist Maryam Alkhawaja has been arrested on arrival in Bahrain. She was travelling there to see her father, a leading rights defender on hunger strike in prison. Arrested in April 2011, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja was handed a life sentence two months later as part of a group trial of 21 activists and human rights defenders for their role in peaceful demonstrations in February and March 2011. As news came of local forces and US airstrikes breaking Islamic State's siege of Amirli, the past few days have also brought further reports of serious abuses by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, including alleged mass sex slavery and training of potential child soldiers. This is in addition to earlier evidence of attacks on minorities, mass executions, abduction of children, public executions by stoning, and other crimes. Next door, in Syria, the ongoing conflict has produced 3 million refugees in neighboring states, and 6.5 million people have been displaced internally, meaning "almost half of all Syrians have now been forced to abandon their homes and flee for their lives." Most Western countries have not been taking in significant numbers of Syrian refugees. It's been a busy weekend in and around Ukraine's conflict between Kiev and Russia-backed rebels. With reports suggesting ever deeper involvement by Moscow both on land and at sea, the EU has threatened additional economic sanctions, and voices in the US are calling for arms shipments to Ukraine. Recent evidence demonstrated insurgent abuses, including arbitrary detention of civilians, torture and forced labor, adding to the growing wealth of information about serious abuses on both sides in the war.  Demonstrators in Hong Kong have vowed an "era of civil disobedience" after China announced "reforms" to prevent residents from freely electing the region's next leader. A political standoff turned deadly in Pakistan, with clashes between police and protesters killing three and injuring some 500.  In a sign of major settlement expansion to come, Israel announced its largest appropriation of land in the occupied West Bank in three decades. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has ratified, makes it a war crime for an occupying power to transfer parts of its population to occupied territory, as Israel has done in facilitating the growth of its settlements.