How Many More Are to Die at Europe’s Borders? Daily Brief

European countries and EU institutions are pursuing or proposing policies that endanger lives, writes Human Rights Watch’s associate Europe director Judith Sunderland. Of the estimated 22,748 people who have died in the Mediterranean region since 2014 at least 848 were children. European countries should reckon with their responsibilities for the deaths of so many people at its borders, cease violent pushbacks, and ensure robust search and rescue capacity at their sea and land borders. More legal migration opportunities and fewer punishing visa requirements could help avert dangerous irregular journeys. 

There has been global condemnation of the military takeover in Sudan. The coup has jeopardized the country’s hard-won political, economic and legal gains made over the past two years, and undermined people’s hope for democracy and a rights-respecting government. In an important move, the African Union (AU) on Wednesday suspended the country from all AU sessions until a civilian government has been restored. And the World Bank halted disbursements for operations in Sudan, where thousands of people have taken to the streets since Monday's dissolution of the country’s transitional government. 

The Myanmar military has been torturing detainees across the country in a methodical and systemic way since it seized power in February, an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) has found. The AP report, which is based on interviews with people who were imprisoned and released in recent months as well as photographic evidence, sketches and letters, along with testimony from three recently defected military officials, tells a disturbing story of a highly secretive detention system. While most of the torture, according to witnesses, has occurred inside military compounds, the junta has also transformed public facilities such as community halls and a royal palace into interrogation centers. 

Dozens of former ISIS suspects in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region for Islamic State (ISIS) are stuck in limbo in a camp in Kurdistan, with no hope for the future. The men, who were released from prison or acquitted between 2018 and 2020, risk rearrest or retaliation if they try to reunite with their families. Some were boys as young as 14, and had been forced into becoming child soldiers when Kurdish security forces arrested them. 

Two police officers apparently brutally attacked the director of a Tunis-based LGBT rights group as he was on his way home. The attack on Badr Baabou was a dangerous attempt to silence him, and took place against a backdrop of mounting abuses targeting LGBT activists by Tunisian security forces. 

And finally: When the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on August 15, a group of outspoken graffiti artists who had been painting murals around the war-ravaged city, knew they were in danger. Some made it on to an evacuation flight and to refugee camps in Europe, from where they watched online as the Taliban erased their murals, one after another. They remain undeterred, however, and continue to create new pieces in exile, which they hope to show as part of an exhibition of works by displaced artists soon.