Your shining example:
CUBA 2021
In the wake of historic protests in July, Cuban authorities imprisoned many hundreds of protesters, almost 700 of whom remained in prison at the end of the year. The authorities ramped up their machinery of control over freedom of expression and assembly with physical surveillance of human rights activists, artists and journalists, and by subjecting them to house arrest, arbitrary detention, violations of due process and, in some cases, ill-treatment, while also disrupting the internet. The economic situation continued to deteriorate and the US authorities again failed to lift the economic embargo.
Repression of dissent
Thousands of people took to the streets on 11 July to peacefully protest over the economy, shortages of medicines, the government’s response to Covid-19 and harsh restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, in one of the largest demonstrations seen in decades.1
In response to the protests, the Cuban authorities detained many hundreds of protesters, of whom almost 700 remained in prison at the end of the year, according to NGO Cubalex. Authorities also subjected activists and journalists to house arrest and arbitrary detention, violated due process rights and, in some instances, ill-treated detainees, all while disrupting the internet.2
The majority of those detained were charged with crimes historically used to silence dissent and often inconsistent with international human rights law and standards. These included “public disorder”, “resistance”, “contempt”, “incitement to commit a crime” and “damages”.
Following the protests, many of those released from prison were formally put under house arrest pending their trial. Cuban authorities also subjected activists and journalists to physical surveillance by positioning security officials permanently outside their homes and threatening them with arrest if they left, amounting to arbitrary detention.
Relatives of those detained, and detainees who were later released, widely reported a range of violations of due process rights and incommunicado detention. While the Prosecutor General’s Office denied that detainees lacked access to legal assistance or had been held incommunicado, testimonies indicated otherwise.
The mass detentions also resulted in widespread reports of ill-treatment, including against women, and authorities subjected women journalists and activists to house arrest, surveillance and harassment. The authorities denied human rights violations were committed in the wake of the crackdown and, using their monopoly over the media, broadcast selected footage of incidents of violence during the protests to wrongly characterize them as violent overall. The President of the Supreme Court insisted that the justice system and judges operated with independence and indicated that the media was publishing false information distributed by “enemies of institutional order and the Cuban Revolution”. Meanwhile, during the period of protests, the authorities disrupted the internet and regularly blocked instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.
In November, the government refused requests by civil society to hold a Civic March for Change, once again demonstrating its intolerance of protest.
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Everything you need to know about human rights in Cuba - Amnesty International Amnesty International
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Indigenous women continued to experience disproportionately high levels of rape and sexual violence and lacked access to basic post-rape care. Additionally, Indigenous women continued to experience high rates of disappearance and murder. The exact number of Indigenous women victims of violence or who went missing remained unknown as the US government did not collect data or adequately coordinate with Tribal governments.
Border control officials carried out unnecessary and unlawful pushbacks of nearly 1.5 million refugees and migrants at the USA-Mexico border, both at and between official ports of entry, using as a pretext public health provisions under Title 42 of the US Code during the Covid-19 pandemic. Returnees were summarily expelled without access to asylum procedures, legal remedies, or individual risk assessments. Upon his resignation, a senior legal adviser to the US Department of State denounced the mass expulsions of Haitian asylum seekers as constituting unlawful forced returns.
Although the Biden administration exempted unaccompanied migrant children from expulsions under Title 42, US Border Patrol misused an anti-trafficking law to continue to summarily repatriate thousands of unaccompanied Mexican children (over 95% of those apprehended), without providing them with adequate access to asylum procedures or effective screenings for the harm they could face upon return.
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Thirty-nine Muslim men remained arbitrarily and indefinitely detained by the US military in the detention facility at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in violation of international law. The authorities made little progress in closing the facility, despite the Biden administration´s stated intention to do so.
Authorities failed to adopt and implement significant police oversight and accountability measures promised by the Biden administration in response to nationwide protests against police violence in 2020, which were marked by widespread excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies.
Instead, lawmakers in at least 36 states and at the federal level introduced more than 80 pieces of draft legislation limiting freedom of assembly, with nine states enacting 10 such bills into law in 2021. At the end of the year, a further 44 such bills were pending in 18 states. Proposed legal restrictions on freedom of assembly included increased penalties for acts of civil disobedience relating to infrastructure projects such as pipelines, obstructing roads and defacing monuments. Other laws sought to prevent reductions to policing budgets by local governments and remove civil liability for car drivers who hit protesters blocking streets, among other things.
Authorities failed to adopt and implement significant police oversight and accountability measures promised by the Biden administration in response to nationwide protests against police violence in 2020, which were marked by widespread excessive use of force by law enforcement agencies.
Instead, lawmakers in at least 36 states and at the federal level introduced more than 80 pieces of draft legislation limiting freedom of assembly, with nine states enacting 10 such bills into law in 2021. At the end of the year, a further 44 such bills were pending in 18 states. Proposed legal restrictions on freedom of assembly included increased penalties for acts of civil disobedience relating to infrastructure projects such as pipelines, obstructing roads and defacing monuments. Other laws sought to prevent reductions to policing budgets by local governments and remove civil liability for car drivers who hit protesters blocking streets, among other things.
A decade after dozens of detainees were held in a CIA-operated secret detention system – authorized from 2001 to 2009 – no one had been brought to justice for the systematic human rights violations committed under that programme, including enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture remained classified, years after the limited investigations conducted into those crimes were closed without charges being brought against anyone.
The US government repeatedly used lethal force in countries around the world, including with armed drones, in violation of its obligations under international human rights law and, where applicable, international humanitarian law. NGOs, UN experts and the news media documented how such strikes inside and outside zones of active armed conflict resulted in injuries or arbitrarily deprived protected individuals, including many civilians, of their right to life, in some cases constituting war crimes.
The US government weakened protections for civilians during lethal operations, which increased the likelihood of unlawful killings; impeded the assessment of the legality of strikes; and prevented accountability and access to justice and effective remedies for victims of unlawful killings and civilian harm.