End Inhumane Shackling in Ghana: Daily Brief

In Ghana and many other countries, people with psychosocial disabilities end up chained like animals to trees or concrete structures, often because there are few, if any, mental health services in their communities. In other cases, shackling happens because of false but widely-held beliefs that people with psychosocial disabilities are possessed by evil spirits or demons. New HRW research released today asks for an end to shackling in Ghana. The authorities in Greece must speed up winter preparations at refugee camps on islands in the Aegean Sea, says the United Nations refugee agency. In Moria camp, more than 1,500 people including pregnant women, people with disabilities, and very young children are living in makeshift shelters or tents without insulation, flooring or heating. The European Union and the United States are apparently considering sanctions against military leaders in Burma over a campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity that have already forced more than half a million Rohingya Muslims to flee the country. HRW has been calling for an arms embargo and targeted sanctions for some time now. Officials in the Philippines are denying that extrajudicial killings are taking place in the country's bloody "war on drugs" by using a "convenient definition" of the term that miraculously - and entirely incorrectly - reduces the number of those murdered to zero. The United States has announced that it will lift a range of sanctions against Sudan, including a trade embargo. According to the Trump administration, Sudan has made progress on a number of issues, like cooperating on counter-terror efforts and making modest human rights improvements. But HRW does not agree. In outrageous news from Turkey, a prosecutor has called for prison sentences of up to 15 years on terrorism charges for a group of rights activists, including the local head of Amnesty International. And police officers in Indonesia's capital Jakarta have raided a sauna popular with gay men over the weekend, arresting 51 people. It's the latest in a slew of actions targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the country.