Photo Gallery: Murder, Torture and Represssion Around the World
Amnesty International Report Slams European Asylum Policies
The numbers are shocking. Between 800,000 and 1.1 million people were killed in 131 civil wars around the world last year. The Syrian rebellion alone claimed some 60,000 lives by the end of 2012. Since then, the United Nations has raised its estimates to nearly 80,000 victims.
According to human rights organization Amnesty International, the situation in Syria has escalated dramatically in recent months. Yet European Union countries have welcomed only 40,000 refugees from the war-torn country -- a fact that Amnesty harshly criticizes in its annual assessment of global human rights abuses, released late on Wednesday.
"The EU is holding back on this issue," said Selmin Caliskan, the general secretary for the organization in Germany, at a press presentation of the report on Wednesday. Germany and other European nations must offer generous support to the countries surrounding Syria that are taking in refugees, she added.
The "restrictive" asylum and refugee policies of the EU, which collectively won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, have been "unworthy" of such an honor, the German branch of the organization said. Not only have border controls become even tougher, but Europe has sealed itself off, Caliskan said, adding that this must change. "The EU has so far taken on no responsibility for the refugees, which is why so many people die in the Mediterranean Sea," she said.
In fact, the European Union is using border control measures "that put the lives of migrants and asylum-seekers at risk and fail to guarantee the safety of those fleeing conflict and persecution," a press release said.
Amnesty also pilloried EU member Hungary for making controversial changes to its constitution that limit human rights. Soon, "insulting the honor of the Hungarian nation" will also be a crime there, and Europe must try to stop such policies, the organization urged. Furthermore, Germany must end the deportation of asylum seekers to Hungary, where they face human rights abuses, the organization said.
Activists in Danger
The list of countries that violated human rights in 2012 is long. Having analyzed 159 countries for the report, Amnesty concluded that 12 states abused and tortured people, while security forces in more than 50 countries were responsible for illegal killings. Some 21 governments had people executed, while unfair trials took place in 80 countries. Non-violent political prisoners were held in 57 countries, and 101 states suppressed free speech.
Meanwhile, human rights activists around the globe are in danger because of their work. Among the best-known cases from 2012 was that of 15-year-old Pakistani student Malala Yousafzai , who was shot in the head by the Taliban in retaliation for her education and women's rights activism in October. Though her prognosis was grim, Yousafzai survived.
Russia also garnered fierce criticism from Amnesty for its actions against foreign non-governmental agencies (NGOs). After parliament there ruled last year that any political organizations with funding from abroad must register as "foreign agents," a number of foreign NGOs were raided in March, including Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a political think tank aligned with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union party, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), the think tank of the center-left Social Democratic Party.
Ethiopia, Egypt and Uganda were also cited for having stifled civil engagement in 2012.
A Bit of Good News
The news wasn't all bad, though. Amnesty reported progress in some places, such as Malaysia and Singapore, countries that began taking steps to end the death penalty. The US state of Connecticut, which banned the death penalty in April, was also singled out.
Another positive development included the approval of a historic global arms treaty in the United Nations General Assembly by the 155 countries. Only Iran, Syria and North Korea voted against the treaty, which aims to regulate the international trade of weapons.
"Our demand is that where there is a substantial risk that these weapons will be used to commit violations of international humanitarian law or serious violations of human rights law -- the transfer should be prohibited," wrote Salil Shetty, the organization's secretary general, in an essay accompanying the report.
