Greece's Hired Masked Men Push Back Migrants: Daily Brief

Greek security forces are employing third country nationals, men who appear to be of Middle Eastern or South Asian origin, to push asylum seekers back at the Greece-Turkey land border. The new report “‘Their Faces Were Covered’: Greece’s Use of Migrants as Police Auxiliaries in Pushbacks,” found that Greek police are detaining asylum seekers at the Greece-Turkey land border at the Evros River, in many cases stripping them of most of their clothing and stealing their money, phones, and other possessions.

On April 5, Belarus’s prosecutor general announced that Human Rights Watch’s website had been blocked, following an order by the Minsk City Prosecutor’s office. Belarus is one of very few countries openly supporting Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine. Like their counterparts in Russia, Belarusian authorities show zero tolerance for any forms of anti-war sentiment. Since the war began, authorities have detained hundreds of peaceful anti-war protesters.

A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sentenced 12 activists from the citizen movement Lucha (Lutte pour le Changement or Struggle for Change) to one year in prison for having participated in a peaceful demonstration last November. Their sentence for “provocation and incitement to breaches of public authority” is a stark reminder of how the military authorities are using martial law and military courts to suppress peaceful critics. During the November 11 demonstration, the Lucha members had stood in front of the Beni town hall holding placards to highlight their demands: better protection for civilians and an end to martial law.

Iranian authorities once again prevented women and girls from entering a sports stadium. The national football team played Lebanon in a FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 qualifying match in the city of Mashhad last week. But authorities stopped dozens of women who had reportedly purchased tickets from entering the stadium. Videos circulating on social media suggested that some women outside the stadium were possibly attacked with pepper spray.

Despite draconian controls on the flow of information between Tibet and the outside world, word recently emerged of the death of 86-year-old lama Tulku Dawa who had been targeted by Beijing for connections with the Dalai Lama. After the religious leader's death, officials announced that only devotees from Lhasa would be permitted to pay their respects, knowing this would exclude the majority of his followers and students, who are from areas near his monastery. Authorities scrubbed mentions of his death from social media.