Families of Interpol Targets Harassed in China: Daily Brief

Chinese authorities are harassing and detaining family members of corruption suspects living abroad to compel their return to China - an abuse which Interpol is enabling, HRW has said. Police have barred family members from traveling outside China, and some children have been blocked from attending schools abroad. Other collective punishments on relatives include freezing their assets and firing them from their positions in government-owned companies. Staying with China, imagine if you wanted to organize an election that looked democratic, but actually ensured that your side had the upper hand? How would you do it? You would find ways to restrict who could run, who could vote, and what they could vote for, which is precisely what's happening in Hong Kong. There is confusion and dismay in Istanbul today, where the chair of Amnesty Turkey was ordered to be freed on bail yesterday - sparking celebration - only for him to be rearrested as his family waited to welcome him outside the prison gates. Taner Kilic has now been ordered to remain in pre-trial detention. Armed groups in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi are preventing thousands of internally displaced families from returning to their homes. The Philippine government should urgently support the creation of a UN-led investigation into the thousands of killings linked to its “war on drugs". The Australian government’s abandonment of hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea is a form of prolonged punishment, Amnesty International said in a new report. And finally, a court in Burma has rejected bail for two Reuters journalists accused of violating the country’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The move comes as other journalists working for Associated Press say they have uncovered five mass graves in Burma's Rakhine state, where security forces have carried out ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims.