Torture Fears for Hong Kong’s Extradition Laws: Daily Brief
Torture fears for Hong Kong’s extradition laws; Turkey goes to the polls; humanism wins in Slovakia's presidential elections; emigration not immigration worries southern and eastern Europe; China bent on suppressing international scrutiny; torture in Saudi Arabia's prisons revealed; Ecuador to decide whether to allow abortion after rape; and muzzling the media in Burundi.
Proposed changes to Hong Kong’s extradition laws would permit the transfer of people accused of crimes abroad to mainland China, as well as other countries, where they would be at risk of torture and unfair trials, HRW says. The amendments would be a devastating blow to the freedoms promised Hong Kong upon its handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suffered a major setback in local elections as his ruling AK Party lost control of the capital Ankara. According to Turkey’s Supreme Election Council, the opposition seemed poised to win the country’s largest city, Istanbul, too.
In Slovakia, a 45-year-old lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner, Zuzana Čaputová, has been elected the country’s first female president. Čaputová had made “humanism, solidarity and truth” major campaign issues. Her victory gives hope to those across central Europe who have struggled to counter right-wing messaging on migration and social issues.
Despite vehement anti-immigration rhetoric by some politicians in Europe, southern and eastern European countries are actually more concerned about citizens leaving than people immigrating, a poll conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) reveals.
Panicked about the growing global outcry over its mistreatment of Xinjiang’s Muslims, China is using public as well as private pressure to stifle criticism of its poor human rights record.
Leaked medical reports that are understood to have been prepared for Saudi Arabia’s ruler King Salman reveal severe abuse of political prisoners, according to the Guardian. The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that men and women in custody are being tortured, something the government has denied.
Ecuador is one of only a few countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that does not allow access to abortion for survivors of rape. Now, the country’s Justice Commission is finally considering a proposal to decriminalize abortion for women and girls pregnant from rape.
And in yet another attempt to prevent the world from knowing about severe human rights abuses in Burundi, the government of Pierre Nkurunziza has made it an offense for any journalist in Burundi to provide “information directly or indirectly that could be broadcast” by two international media outlets.