Call to End Child Detention: Daily Brief

Call to end child detention; political opponent freed in Cameroon; new trial of Turkey's Gezi Park case; Kashmir restrictions persist; UK should dial down dangerous Brexit language; need to investigate riot deaths in Papua, Indonesia; France should hold firm against Saudi abuses; and new arrest for Facebook postings in Vietnam.

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Detention is fundamentally harmful to children, yet many countries still use it as their first response to difficult circumstances. A group of 170 non-governmental organizations are calling on United Nations member countries to take steps to dramatically decrease the number of children detained and confined.

Cameroon's President Paul Biya has ordered the release of a prominent opposition leader, Maurice Kamto. 

Osman Kavala, a leading figure in Turkish civil society, is the main defendant in Turkey's Gezi Park case and has spent over 700 days in prison. Today, a third hearing on the case of Kavala and 15 other defendants is taking place in Istanbul. The group are accused of organising and financing peaceful protests in Gezi Park which took place in 2013.

It has been over two months since the Indian government revoked constitutional autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir and split the state into two centrally-administered territories. And yet abusive restrictions, including a lockdown on internet and mobile phone services, remain.

Some of the political rhetoric used by the UK government and ruling Conservative party has begun to mirror the extremes of social media, HRW says, including talk of surrender, coups, treason, parliament versus the people, and violence in the streets.

Indonesian authorities should independently investigate recent riots in Wamena, Papua that resulted in 33 deaths. Since September 29, 2019, at least 8,000 indigenous Papuan and other Indonesians have been displaced from their homes in Papua.

During the last session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, 25 countries supported a joint statement highlighting serious human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, and calling on Saudi authorities to ensure truth and justice for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. France should stand by its own words in condemning the Saudi authorities’ blatant human rights violations and endorse this declaration.

And there has been another new arrest for Facebook postings in Vietnam, where police have arrested the pro-democracy activist Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong. None of his postings involve incitement to crime, violence, or hate speech. 

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