@DiazCanelB@EmbaCubaUS@lianystr Hundreds of people remain detained for peacefully protesting in Cuba, including during the mass demonstrations on July 11, 2021. The cases of prisoners of conscience Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, José Daniel Ferrer García, Esteban Rodríguez,
and Maykel Castillo Pérez represent only a tiny fraction of the total number of people who are detained solely because of their political, religious, or other beliefs without having used or advocated violence.
All prisoners of conscience must be immediately and unconditionally
released. Activists, independent journalists, and human rights defenders must be free to do their jobs, without being subjected to surveillance or arrest.
@AlsisiOfficialOn @EgyptEmbassyUSA@MotazZahran On September 28, 2021, Patrick George Zaki, a human rights defender and masters student was referred to trial in front of the Emergency State Security Court (ESSC) on the charge of "spreading false news at home and abroad" in
connection to an article published in 2019, containing exerpts from his personal diary about the discrimination faced by Coptic Christians in Egypt. He already spent 20 months in unjust pretrial detention pending investigations into charges of "disseminating false news",
"incitement to protest" and "incitement to violence and terrorist crimes" in a separate case.
His trial was adjourned to December 7, 2021, following requests by his lawyer to obtain a copy of his casefile. Even though Patrick George Zaki suffers from asthma, he has not been
@AlsisiOfficial@EgyptEmbassyUSA ; @MotazZahran Ahmed Samir Santawy, started a hunger strike on June 23, 2021 in protest over his unjust conviction by an Emergency State Security Court. He was convicted of publishing “false news to undermine the state, its national interests and
public order and spread panic among the people” and sentenced to four years imprisonment on the basis of social media posts, criticizing human rights violations in Egyptian prisons and the state’s mishandling of the pandemic, that he denied writing. Regardless who wrote the
posts, everyone has the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Egyptian constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Egypt is a state party.
@ChineseEmbinUS@AmbCuiTiankai Rinchen Tsultrim (仁青持真), a Tibetan Monk was sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment in March 2020 without any trial.
Rinchen Tsultrim’s family members only learned about his sentence when the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous
Prefecture Public Security Bureau informed them in March 2021 that he was in a prison in Chengdu. Rinchen Tsultrim is apparently imprisoned due to his expression of his political views on his WeChat account and personal website. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and
other international covenants, guarantee everyone the right to peaceful expression of their beliefs.
@TakhtRavanchi@Iran_UN Vahid Afkari and Habib Afkari have been repeatedly tortured, following their arrests in 2018. They reported being subjected to severe beatings in Adelabad prison in Shiraz on September 5, 2020 before being placed in solitary confinement cells in
apparent retaliation for asking about the fate and whereabouts of their brother Navid Afkari, who had been removed from death row to an unidentified location on September 3; he was executed in secret on September 12, 2020. Since then, they have been held in windowless
solitary confinement cells, either together in a single cell or separately. Prison authorities are denying them access to meaningful contact with other prisoners, fresh air, telephone calls and face to face family visits. They are also being deliberately denied adequate health
@Khaled_Bin_Ali@BahrainEmbDC Husain Abdulrasool Salman Abdulla Husain (16), Sayed Hasan Ameen Jawad Abdulla (16), Faris Husain Habib Ahmed Salman (17) and Mohammed Jaafar Jasim Ali Abdulla (16) – who are being tried as adults before Branch Four of the High Criminal Court, a
court specializing in terror-related cases. They stand charged with arson for handling (and using) Molotov cocktails on February 14, 2020 in Karrana, a village north west of Manama. They each face between two and ten years in prison.
On November 30, 2020, the Criminal
Investigations Department (CID) summoned Husain Abdulrasool, and interrogated him without the presence of a lawyer or a parent, and detained him. The CID referred his case to the prosecution unit for terrorism crimes. On February 10, of this year, the CID summoned the other three
@ChineseEmbinUS Human rights defender Yang Maodong, better known by his pen name Guo Feixiong (杨茂东,笔名郭飞雄), has been unreachable since the morning of January 29. He began an indefinite hunger strike at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, on January 28, after being
prevented from leaving the country to visit his critically ill wife in the United States. When Yang was prevented from leaving the country, he was told that he was under suspicion of “endangering national security”, yet he is currently not known to be under any criminal
investigation. Authorities had told Yang that they would only allow him to travel if he would first make an “agreement” with officials from the Ministry of Public Security in Hubei. It is not clear as to what the nature of the “agreement” is, but possibly a tactic to stop him