Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 16 December 2014

In Pakistan today the Taliban have attacked an army-run school in Peshawar killing at least 126 people, including 80 children, and there are fears the death toll could rise higher. Armed groups in Pakistan are increasingly attacking children, educational personnel and schools. The government has failed to clean up toxic lead in a stream in western Thailand, threatening hundreds of families with serious and irreversible health problems, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Many residents suffer from the symptoms of chronic lead poisoning, including abdominal pain, headaches and fatigue, while some children have been born with severe disabilities. Scores of people have been killed by unidentified rebel fighters in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in brutal attacks which amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch has said. Rebel fighters "methodically hacked and shot civilians to death" with axes, machetes and firearms, researchers found. The UN and Congolese forces need to urgently improve the protection of civilians in the Beni area of eastern DRC. Authorities in Egypt have become so thin-skinned they are seemingly threatened by American scholars. As Australia mourns victims of yesterday's cafe siege in Sydney, the actions of one individual should not be used as an excuse to rush in new anti-terror laws. The prosecution of 35 football fans on coup-plot charges in Turkey is a blatant misuse of the criminal justice system. Charging Beşiktaş football club fans as enemies of the state for joining a public protest is "a ludicrous travesty”, Human Rights Watch said. Two years after a horrific gang rape on a bus in New Delhi shocked India and the world, women there still feel no safer on the streets.