Category: Human Rights

Eight Tamil Hindu worshippers arrested by Sri Lankan police while engaging in festival rituals last week were detained for more than 10 days and allegedly abused. A magistrate released them on March 19.  In recent years, Sri Lankan government authorities and nationalist Sinhala Buddhist monks have been targeting Hindu as well as Muslim religious sites […]

(Austin, March 19, 2024) – The US Supreme Court ruling on March 19, 2024, that allows Texas state police to arrest and deport people Texas officials claim have entered the US illegally while federal courts consider the constitutionality of these powers puts people fearing persecution into immediate danger, Human Rights Watch said today. It also […]

In February 2021 the military overthrew the elected Government in Myanmar arresting hundreds of officials, political leaders and activists, including President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. The takeover triggered an intensification of armed conflicts with separatists and opposition forces across the country, including indiscriminate air strikes which have killed numerous civilians. There have […]

A group of Japanese ruling party and opposition lawmakers are calling on the government to investigate links between carmakers and forced labor in the aluminum industry in Xinjiang, a region in northwestern China. Human Rights Watch published a report earlier this year exposing global carmakers’ failure to minimize the risk of Uyghur forced labor being […]

The third edition of the European Humanitarian Forum concluded today in Brussels, co-organised by the European Commission and the Belgian Presidency of the EU. At the Forum, EU Member States together with the European Commission announced the planned humanitarian funding of more than €7.7 billion for 2024, as a concrete expression of global solidarity and […]

“It is alarming that such consequential legislation was rushed through the legislature through an accelerated process, in spite of serious concerns raised about the incompatibility of many of its provisions with international human rights law,” Volker Türk said in a statement deploring the move in the former British colony which has been a Special Administrative […]

Last week, the Australian state of Queensland released a report on the deaths of two boys who had spent extensive time in solitary confinement in youth detention. Both were First Nations children with disabilities. Solitary confinement is harmful for all prisoners, but it is particularly damaging for children and for people with disabilities. The Child […]

(New York) – Indian authorities are revoking visa privileges to overseas critics of Indian origin who have spoken out against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s policies, Human Rights Watch said today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi often attends mass gatherings of diaspora party supporters in the United States, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere to celebrate […]

This year, at the United Nations’ top human rights body in Geneva, there are signs of a potential giant leap forward, with growing hopes for new legal recognition of every child’s right to free education, from pre-primary through secondary education. On March 20, the Dominican Republic, along with other states including Luxembourg, Sierra Leone,  Colombia, […]

“They held him there to send a message to the rest of us: be careful, or else.” A human rights activist from the Central African Republic said this to Human Rights Watch after Crépin Mboli Goumba, a prominent political opponent, was arrested and sent to a police unit notorious for torture, executions, and shooting suspects […]