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(Berlin, April 23, 2024) – Kazakhstan’s President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev signed a new law on April,15, 2024, to strengthen protections from violence for women and children, including domestic violence survivors, but it falls short in key areas, Human Rights Watch said today. The law aims to advance women’s rights and enhance their safety, but among other concerns, it fails to explicitly make domestic violence a stand-alone offense in the criminal code or elsewhere.

“It is significant that Kazakhstan’s leadership has prioritized protecting women and children from violence, and adopting this law is an important step forward,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “But more should be done to ensure that women and children are protected from family abuse in accordance with international human rights standards, including by criminalizing domestic violence as a stand-alone offense.”

The new law, known as Kazakhstan’s “domestic violence” law, introduces amendments to Kazakhstan’s Criminal Code, the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence, the Law on Marriage and Family, and other laws. The passage of the new law coincides with the ongoing high-profile trial of Kuandyk Bishimbayev, Kazakhstan’s former economy minister, who is charged with the murder of his wife, Saltanat Nukenova. The trial has drawn national and international attention and ensured a focus on the urgent need to tackle domestic violence with adequate sanctions for abusers and trauma-informed support for survivors.

Women in Kazakhstan face high rates of domestic abuse. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 2023 police received 99,026 complaints related to family violence and courts sentenced 67,270 people with administrative sanctions.

The law reimposes criminal penalties for “battery” and “intentional infliction of light bodily harm” committed against “an individual in helpless condition or financially or otherwise dependent on the perpetrator,” the articles most commonly used in domestic violence cases and introduces tougher penalties for convicted abusers. Both offenses had been decriminalized in 2017.

Under the new law, the duty to collect evidence in cases of domestic abuse is assigned to the police, a shift from its being the sole responsibility of the survivor. In addition, the law provides that police must register and investigate all cases of domestic violence, even in the absence of a survivor’s complaint, including in response to reports of domestic violence in the media or on social media.

The law also eliminates the option of seeking “reconciliation” between parties as a way of resolving cases of repeated “battery” and “light bodily harm.”

These are notable and important improvements, but the changes introduced by the law fall short of criminalizing domestic violence as a stand-alone offense either in the Criminal Code or Kazakhstan’s 2019 Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence.

International human rights law mandates recognizing domestic violence as a serious crime against a person and society, Human Rights Watch said.

But the law lacks a separate definition of the offenses when they occur within the family or household relations, a missed opportunity to ensure that when committed as a form of domestic violence, such offenses, including “battery” and “light bodily harm” are treated as a separate crime from other types of violence, and with the seriousness required by international human rights norms.

The creation of a stand-alone offense of domestic violence, could ensure that other types of violence within the family, such as psychological or sexual violence, are also properly investigated and prosecuted, Human Rights Watch said.

The law includes a reference to the promotion of “traditional family values” based on “strengthening the institute of marriage and family…” Such language risks downplaying domestic violence as such, as well as violence that takes place in unregistered relationships, or is inflicted by relatives or in-laws, and does not reflect a zero-tolerance approach to domestic violence, Human Rights Watch said.

The law also lacks concrete provisions on monitoring and evaluating its implementation and impact. Putting the law into effect without delay, raising public awareness about it, as well as ensuring survivors’ access to justice, services, and support, especially in rural areas, should be the next priorities for the government of Kazakhstan, Human Rights Watch said.

Kazakhstan’s international partners should also take this opportunity to urge the Kazakh government to criminalize domestic violence as a stand-alone offense, establish a monitoring mechanism to ensure the law is being properly implemented, and to ratify the Council of Europe’s convention on preventing domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention.

“Women in Kazakhstan have been waiting for comprehensive legislation to help end domestic violence and violence against women, and to effectively prosecute their abusers for a long time,” Williamson said. “It is important for Kazakhstan’s authorities to see the adoption of this law as only the start of many steps needed to eradicate the scourge of violence against women in Kazakhstan.”

(Johannesburg) – Angola’s parliament should significantly revise or withdraw a proposed national security law that fails to meet international human rights standards, Human Rights Watch said today. The draft National Security Law passed a first vote in parliament on January 25, 2024. Following specialist committee review, the bill is expected to be submitted to parliament for final approval.

The draft law in its current form would permit excessive government control over private institutions, including media organizations, and undermine the rights to freedom of the press, expression, and association.

“The proposed national security law would give the Angolan government broad authority to improperly interfere with the media and civil society groups,” said Zenaida Machado, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Parliament should stand up for basic rights and freedoms, and substantially revise or reject the current bill.”

The national security bill has not been made public, but Human Rights Watch has reviewed a recent draft. It contains a number of provisions contrary to the rights to freedom of expression and the press set out in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Angola ratified in 1992, and other international and regional human rights treaties. The Angolan constitution also protects these rights.

For instance, draft article 36 gives government security forces the authority to prohibit public or private radio stations from broadcasting and to disrupt some telecommunication services under “exceptional circumstances” without a court order. The bill does not specify what would constitute “exceptional circumstances.” It would also authorize security forces to inspect “establishments or other public places or places open to the public” and “surveil [their] security equipment,” without judicial approval or oversight.

Draft article 40 would require workers of public and private companies and others to report to security forces any facts they become aware of in the course of their duties or because of them that constitute risks and threats to national security. Failure to abide by this provision could result in criminal prosecution.

Domestic and international human rights groups have been highly critical of the draft law. Florindo Chivucute, president of the human rights group Friends of Angola, told Human Rights Watch that the bill posed a long-term threat to Angola’s democracy. The Angolan organization Mãos Livres (Free Hands) expressed concern that the new law would “promote an authoritarian and repressive state.” The Committee to Protect Journalists said the bill could “severely undermine press freedom, further exposing journalists to harassment, intimidation, and censorship by authorities.”

The Angolan government has not publicly discussed the contents of the draft law. The Minister of State and head of the Military House of the President, Francisco Furtado, told members of parliament that it “was not appropriate” to discuss the national security law, and that lawmakers would have the opportunity “to enrich the bill” during specialist committee review. The minister did not respond to a Human Rights Watch text message requesting a comment.

The Angolan government has repeatedly enacted repressive legislation, Human Rights Watch said. In January 2017, then-President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos signed a media law that severely limited freedom of expression. In May 2023, parliament voted on the first draft of the law on the status of nongovernmental organizations, which civil society groups said contradicts Angola’s international legal obligations to uphold the freedoms of expression and assembly.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa provide for limitations on the right to freedom of expression to protect national security. However, such limitations must be necessary and proportionate and fulfill certain conditions that the draft law does not provide.

The African declaration of principles adds that “[s]tates shall ensure that any law limiting the rights to freedom of expression and access to information is overseen by an independent body in a manner that is not arbitrary or discriminatory” and “effectively safeguards against abuse including through the provision of a right of appeal to independent and impartial courts.”

The lack of provisions for judicial oversight in the proposed national security law opens the door for the Angolan government to arbitrarily prosecute and criminally charge media and civil society groups, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Angolan government appears intent on using a broad national security law as a pretext to further undermine people’s rights,” Machado said. “Parliament should act to ensure that the media and civil society can operate free from improper government intervention.”

This Earth Day is an opportunity to celebrate the work of the courageous people who put themselves at risk fighting for a world in which people and the planet can thrive.

I personally would like to honor Osvalinda Marcelino Alves Pereira. Sadly, she passed away from a long-standing illness just over a week ago. I first met her in 2018: She was a small-scale farmer from Trairão, a village in the state of Pará, in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon.

When I met Osvalinda, she lived on a settlement set up by Brazil’s federal land reform agency. She had been forced to flee her home within her community because of death threats that began in 2011, after Pereira, who had already founded a women's association, also took on illegal loggers.

While still living with her community, Pereira had obtained support from an environmental nongovernmental organization to develop sustainable organic agricultural practices and reforest the area. A group of illegal loggers exploring the area told Pereira to stop. When she did not, they began threatening her, but she persisted and repeatedly reported the issue to the authorities and the police. The authorities did nothing to protect Pereira and her family, which lead to her move in 2018.

Two years later, she returned home but again received death threats. Even in these circumstances she never gave up. She told me many times in the last six years that she would not stop defending nature and the forest, which was, as she repeatedly said, “her home.”

In 2020, Pereira was the first Brazilian woman to receive the Edelstam Prize because she, as the  citation read, “fearlessly stood up against the criminal networks in her work to defend the rainforest.” This contributed to Brazil’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and helped mitigate global warming.

Environmental activists are increasingly harassed, intimidated, threatened, or subjected to deadly violence for defending the planet, be they small farmers, Indigenous peoples, people from other Amazon forest communities, or young activists in the streets of Europe and the United States. Individuals like Pereira, who put their lives in danger to protect our world, our rainforests, and the environment, deserve strong support from the global human rights community as they take on one of the world’s most pressing issues.

(Geneva) – United Nations member countries should use the upcoming review of Vietnam’s rights record at the UN Human Rights Council to press the government to end its crackdown on dissent and other fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch said in its submission to the UN. Vietnam’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) will take place on May 7, 2024, in Geneva.

The Vietnamese government’s human rights record has worsened significantly since its last appearance periodic review in January 2019. In February, the government, which has criticized the UPR process as “unobjective,” submitted its own human rights report to the Human Rights Council.

“Governments at the UN Human Rights Council should not be swayed by the Vietnamese government’s attempt to whitewash its appalling human rights record,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “UN member countries should use Vietnam’s review to call out the government’s systematic repression of civil and political rights and demand genuine reforms.”

The Vietnamese government’s UN submission is riddled with falsehoods about the rights to freedom of speech and media freedom in the country, Human Rights Watch said. More than 160 people are currently imprisoned in Vietnam for criticizing the government, which the penal code criminalizes. All media are under the control of the Vietnamese Communist Party and Vietnam is the world’s third largest jailer of journalists. The authorities carry out intrusive surveillance of the internet, and posting or sharing criticism of the government online could lead to a long prison sentence.

Between January 2019 and August 2023, the Vietnamese authorities prosecuted and convicted at least 139 people, for criticizing the government or joining pro-democracy groups, all of whom were sentenced to long prison terms. Among them was the prominent blogger Pham Doan Trang, who on May 16 will receive the 2024 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.

Since August 2023 the authorities have imprisoned an additional 23 people for peacefully exercising their basic civil and political rights, and sentenced them to between 9 months and 13 years in prison. During the first four months of 2024, the police arrested at least 11 people on politically motivated charges, including the prominent rights activists Nguyen Chi Tuyen and Nguyen Vu Binh, and the religious freedom campaigners Thach Chanh Da Ra and Kim Khiem.

People arrested on politically motivated charges face months in pretrial detention without access to lawyers. The authorities may not even allow family members to be present at trials. The trials of rights activists last only a few hours, leaving no time for a genuine defense or cross-examination of evidence. Vietnam has no presumption of innocence or fair trial rights.

Despite government claims to the contrary, the authorities frequently hold “mobile trials,” informal courts in public spaces, to shame defendants and their families even before conviction. Between 2019 and 2023, Vietnam carried out mobile trials in at least 55 of its 58 provinces and the major cities of Hanoi, Hai Phong, Can Tho, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang. During the first four months of 2024 alone, mobile trials took place in at least 39 provinces and all five cities.

On January 16, a court in Dak Lak began a mobile trial against 100 defendants who were accused of terrorism in a violent attack on government offices that caused nine deaths in June 2023. On January 20, the court convicted and sentenced all 100 to terms ranging from nine months to life in prison, with each defendant’s hearing lasting less than 24 minutes.

The right to religious freedom is also sharply controlled, Human Rights Watch said. All religious organizations allowed to operate must be officially recognized by the state and under the management of state-approved boards. Religious groups not recognized by the government are labeled “evil religions.”

Unrecognized independent religious groups face constant surveillance, harassment, and intimidation, and their followers are subject to public criticism, forced renunciation of faith, arbitrary detention, abusive interrogation, torture, and imprisonment.

In December 2023, Y Bum Bya, 49, from Dak Lak province, reported that he had been detained, interrogated, and beaten by the police for being affiliated with the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ, a religious group that the government has labeled “reactionary.” He was also publicly criticized and forced to renounce his faith on television. On March 8, he allegedly received a phone call from the police and then went out. An hour later, he was found dead, hanging in a local cemetery. As far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine, officials are not investigating his death.

“Case after case of abuse is why concerned countries should speak out about Hanoi’s terrible human rights record,” Pearson said. “UN member countries should not only press Vietnam at its UN review for real change but follow up to ensure that reforms are actually being undertaken.”

(Beirut) – Iran's security forces raped, tortured, and sexually assaulted detainees while repressing widespread protests in 2022 and 2023, Human Rights Watch said today. The grave abuses are part of a broader pattern of serious human rights violations to repress dissent.

Human Rights Watch investigated abuses against ten detained people from Kurdish, Baluch, and Azeri minority regions that occurred between September and November 2022. Detainees described being raped by security forces and some said they witnessed security forces raping other detainees. In seven of the cases, detainees said that security forces had tortured them to coerce them into making confessions.

“Iranian security forces’ brutality against detained protesters, including rape and torture, are not only egregious crimes, but a weapon of injustice wielded against detainees to coerce them into false confessions,” said Nahid Naghshbandi, acting Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “These methods are also a twisted and despicable means of further stigmatizing and repressing marginalized ethnic minorities.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed the survivors by phone between September 2022 and 2023, including five women, three men, and two children. Three shared medical records that supported their accounts.

In December 2023, Amnesty International released a report that documented that security forces “used rape and other forms of sexual violence” to “intimidate and punish peaceful protesters during the 2022 ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising.” Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran have all separately documented Iranian authorities’ use of severe repressive violence in ethnic minority regions.

A Kurdish woman told Human Rights Watch that in November 2022 two men from the security forces raped her while a woman agent held her down and facilitated the rape.

A 24-year-old Kurdish man from West Azerbaijan province said he was severely tortured and raped with a baton by intelligence agency forces in a secret detention center in September 2022. A 30-year-old man from East Azerbaijan province said he was blindfolded and beaten along with other protesters, and he was gang raped with another man by security forces in a van in October 2022.

Human Rights Watch also documented government security forces restraining, blindfolding, and torturing protesters in detention. Authorities beat and sexually assaulted a Baluch woman who witnessed at least two other women being raped in a detention center in Sistan and Baluchistan in October 2022, leaving them physically and psychologically traumatized.

One woman who experienced sexual violence from security forces attempted suicide, while another required surgery for her injuries. A family member of another Baluch woman in her twenties told Human Rights Watch that in October 2022 her relative was raped twice in detention, and after her release she also attempted suicide.

Human Rights Watch previously reported cases of Iranian security forces’ use of torture and sexual assault against men, women, and children, as well as suspicious deaths in detention. The authorities did not provide medical treatment or even basic hygiene supplies to those assaulted by security forces, exacerbating their long-term injuries, and have not investigated these cases or held anyone accountable for these serious violations.

The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Iran should continue to investigate these grave abuses as part of its broader reporting on the Iranian government’s serial human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said.

“Accounts of brutal rape and the lasting traumatic consequences of those crimes should mobilize countries to meet the physical and psychological health needs of survivors who have managed to flee Iran,” Naghshbandi said. “They should also mobilize Iranians at home and abroad to push for accountability and justice.”

A university student from Sistan and Baluchistan, who, like some others interviewed, asked not to identify her by name, told Human Rights Watch that in October 2022, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces arrested her, along with approximately 20 other women, after they protested and shouted anti-government slogans. The forces beat all of the women so severely during their arrest that one woman lost consciousness.

They blindfolded and bound the women, then loaded them into a van and took them to an undisclosed location. The woman described the place they were transferred to as a small room with a low ceiling. Security forces separated them into groups of three, in separate cells.

The security forces detained the women for over a month, during which the women were subjected to torture and sexual violence, including being kicked in their genitals to coerce false confessions that they were involved with political groups. The woman interviewed said that security forces handed her papers with Revolutionary Guard letterhead to write and sign a confession:

When I told the interrogator that I am not affiliated with any political party and will no longer participate in protests, he said: “No, you won't cooperate, I'll have to deal with you differently.” Then he called two people and said: “This whore likes to be torn apart.” They tore my clothes apart and brutally raped me. I lost consciousness, and when they poured water on my head, I regained consciousness and saw that my entire body was covered in blood.

They blindfolded her and took her to her cell, where her cellmates told her the same thing had happened to them. She said she could see that they were also badly hurt and scared. They told each other that if they get out alive, they would kill themselves.

She said she was raped three times during her approximately 50-day detention, mostly during the first days of her arrest. She was not given any medicine or hygienic supplies:

They didn’t even give us a single tissue, let alone medical aid. They only gave us a pill every night … I didn’t know what it was, maybe some sort of a sedative or sleeping pill. They would make us take the pill and wouldn’t leave the cell until we swallowed it.

She was forced to sign dozens of pages of confessions without any questions. They accused her of “destroying public property” and “disturbing the security of the population.”

She faced charges of “disrupting public order,” “blasphemy,” and “destruction of public property.” She said after she was released, she had an infection in her kidneys and uterus and underwent surgery twice.

Another person interviewed said that a relative of hers, a Baluch woman in her twenties, was arrested and beaten by Revolutionary Guard forces in October 2022 in Sistan and Baluchistan province while participating in a small protest. The security forces informed the detainee’s family about her whereabouts after four days, and she was only allowed to call them herself after nine days. She was in detention for almost a month, facing charges of “blasphemy” and “collaboration with opposition groups,” before being released on bail.

The relative said that the woman was raped twice in detention and was in very poor physical and mental health after her release, during which she attempted suicide. She was rushed to the hospital where she received life-saving treatment. The woman told her relative that nearly 20 other women ages 20 to 26 were detained with her, and she was aware that two others were sexually assaulted and raped.

A 21-year-old Kurdish woman said that in November 2022 she was arrested by security forces while she was walking toward the university campus in Kermanshah with some other students. They were blindfolded and taken to an undisclosed detention center, where two interrogators raped her:

Two men interrogated me, then a woman came and took me to another room. She told me I needed to take off my clothes for a body search and be transferred to the general ward. While I was busy taking off my clothes, two other men came in; one of them grabbed me with that woman while the other raped me. Once the first was done I was already half unconscious and the other man started raping me. After that, another woman came and gave me a paper towel, telling me to clean myself up. She also took me to another room. The next morning, they blindfolded me again and took me to Razi Square, where they threw me out of the car. I managed to make my way back to the dormitory from there.

Revolutionary Guard plainclothes agents arrested a 30-year-old male protester in October 2022. They took the man and other protesters who were arrested to a mosque courtyard nearby and blindfolded them and started beating them with batons and tasers. The men were then sent into a police van and told to take off all their clothes. Some of them protested, which he said made the security forces angry. The security forces took the man Human Rights Watch interviewed and another man to a riot control vehicle and forcibly took their clothes off using a taser on their back and behind their knees. Three officers raped both men.

The man interviewed said:

I was blindfolded but I could say that they were raping the other man too since we were next to each other, and I could also hear him crying and begging them to stop. He was in his twenties, and I asked him not to say anything to the others when they took us back. When they took us back, they put us in the van with the others and used pepper spray and closed the doors. After all the beating and torture and rape I felt I was dead and the things I was seeing weren’t real.

He was sent to jail in Tabriz, where he was not provided with any medical or hygienic services and finally was released on bail. He had been bleeding from his rectum for days after his release, he said, and is suffering from severe depression. He said he told the judges he had been raped and that one of them responded: “If you don’t shut up, I will rape you myself as well.”

He faced the charge of “assembly and collusion to commit acts against national security” that ultimately wasn’t  substantiated, leading to the charge being dropped and his release.

On September 29, 2022, Keivan Samadi, a 24-year-old medical student, was arrested in Oshnavieh by plainclothes officers near his home. Three officers approached him in a car under the pretext of asking for directions. When they got close to him, they threatened him with a pistol and ordered him into their car. He said they pushed his head down so he couldn't see where they were taking him and took him to a hidden detention center.

They placed him in a small cell with a dirty blanket and a toilet without any hygiene items, such as soap. He was held alone in this cell for 21 days, and he was only taken out for interrogation. He said that intelligence agents tortured and sexually assaulted him during interrogation, including raping him with a baton, using a taser on his genitals, burning his body hair, severely beating him with batons, and giving him electric shocks that led to bleeding from his left ear. He said he was whipped on the back, resulting in wounds and skin infection on his lower back:

They were from [Iran’s Ministry of Interior’s Intelligence Agency] in Oshnavieh, I knew this from the papers they gave me to sign a false confession. They kicked me so that I fell from the chair during the interrogation, and they kept kicking me in the stomach and my ear … and eventually my left ear started bleeding, every day they would take me and torture me in different ways using the taser on my neck and back. Another day they whipped me 43 times before I lost consciousness, which resulted in bleeding in my back. I asked them for antibiotics, but they didn’t give me anything. Once one of the interrogators took a cutter and wanted to cut the middle finger of my right hand when the other one stopped him.

From day 12 they started using a taser on my genitals. On day 16, they took off my pants I thought they are going to use the taser on my genitals again, but they raped me with a baton. I was shocked at that moment and couldn't believe they would do such a thing. I just stood there, speechless, and couldn't even scream because I was mute, as if four people had grabbed my throat so that my voice wouldn't come out.”