More than 1,000 Human Rights Defenders killed, harassed in 2016

Islamabad: More than 1,000 human rights defenders (HRD) were killed, harassed, detained, or subjected to smear campaigns and other violations in 2016, says the annual report of Front Line Defenders launched on Friday. The report titled 'Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders at Risk in 2016' documents hundreds of physical, legal, and social attacks on activists around the world in 2016.

According to the report, 282 human rights defenders were murdered in 25 countries, 49 per cent of whom were defending land, indigenous and environmental rights. Front Line Defenders found that in the vast majority of cases, killings were preceded by warnings, death threats and intimidation which, when reported to police, were routinely ignored. Among the total murdered HRDs, three belonged to Pakistan including the names of Khurram Zaki, Alesha and Zafar Lund.

The report highlights the devastating effects of activist murders on communities and social movements; according to Front Line Defenders research in Bangladesh, refusal by police to investigate death threats and protect human rights defenders led to increased self-censorship, a breakdown in activist networks, and more than two dozen human rights defenders fleeing the country.

In addition to killings, over half of the cases reported by Front Line Defenders in 2016 concerned criminalisation, a tactic which the organisation calls “the first choice of governments to silence defenders and to dissuade others.” Arbitrary detention was widespread and ranged from a few hours to years-long house arrests.

In many countries in Asia, HRDs were portrayed as enemies of the state. Governments used all means at their disposal, including killings, disappearances, physical attacks, judicial harassment and arbitrary detention to hinder their work. Surveillance, intimidation, threats and smear campaigns remained widespread. HRDs were also targeted through repressive legislation including anti-terrorism laws and national security laws.

The report says that in Asia, killings were reported in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Pakistan. In Pakistan, Khurram Zaki, who campaigned for the rights of religious minorities and peace among religious groups, was shot dead by two assailants in Karachi.

In the same country, members of the Trans Action Alliance, a group which works for the promotion and protection of the rights of the transgender community in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, faced death threats, intimidation and an arson attack on one member’s home.

In May, after repeated attempts to seek help from local police, their Peshawar Coordinator, Alesha, was killed; she was the fifth member of the organisation to be violently attacked in 2016

It says that judicial harassment and arbitrary detention were the most common form of targeting HRDs. Cases were reported in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The report says the trend of introducing restrictive cybercrime legislation continued apace. Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe introduced or presented drafts of laws purportedly designed to combat terrorism or computer hacking but with significant implications for critical voices.

The most extreme of these was in Zimbabwe where a draft Computer Crime and Cyber Crime Bill would go so far as to allow police to confiscate electronic equipment in order to prevent protesters from mobilizing and was introduced following a successful protest movement organized on social media.

Accusations that HRDs present risks to the security of the state were often linked to allegations that they were in receipt of foreign funding, often a necessity for HRDs and NGOs who are unable to or prohibited from raising funds domestically. Although far from a new tactic, efforts to choke civil society organisations by cutting off their funding streams continued apace in 2016.