Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 10 December 2014

The US Senate report summary on the CIA detention and interrogation program is a powerful denunciation of the agency’s extensive and systematic use of torture. The summary underscores the need for the US government to promptly release the full report, bolster oversight of the CIA, and investigate and appropriately prosecute the senior officials responsible for the torture program. The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai today draws attention to the serious steps needed to protect child rights across the world, 25 years after the adoption of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. As they receive their awards, every world leader should commit to concrete steps to advance the rights of children. Today also marks four years since the Nobel Peace Prize was given to imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo. His Nobel medal was placed on an empty chair at the 2010 ceremony. Roughly halfway through Liu Xiaobo's 11-year sentence, it is clear Beijing’s leadership has not tempered its zeal for punishing peaceful critics. Life on the streets in Spain is difficult and dangerous enough, but it is about to get much harder. Rather than promoting social services, the Spanish Congress is poised to approve a bill on public security designed to punish behavior on the street. This bill include sanctions targeting some of the most vulnerable members of Spanish society - the homeless, people who use drugs, and sex workers. In Egypt, 25 to 33 men were arrested in a bathhouse for"practicing debauchery." The host of a pro-government television show claimed to have tipped off the police and included footage of the raid in an exposé broadcast. The deliberate, public humiliation of these men conducted in tandem with the media is shocking, but typical of an intensifying and troubling government clampdown on the LGBT community in Egypt. The Mexican Health Ministry took an important step yesterday to ensure access to relief for people suffering from pain due to incurable illness. By enacting provisions in Mexico's health law, it has finally lifted barriers faced by tens of thousands of patients who suffer unnecessarily from severe pain and other symptoms.