Status: 03/29/2022 01:02
Amnesty International has denounced Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Civilian targets would be attacked “indiscriminately”. According to the human rights organization, the international community often looks the other way.
Amnesty International has accused Russia of “a flagrant violation of international law” in Ukraine. The human rights organization documented “indiscriminate attacks on hospitals, residential areas and kindergartens, as well as the use of prohibited cluster munitions”, explained Markus N. Beeko, Amnesty International’s secretary general in Germany, in the presentation of the annual report. of the organization. They are war crimes.
In the annual report, which documents the human rights situation in 154 countries, Amnesty accused the international community of failing to respond adequately to conflicts around the world. A climate prevails “in which violations of international humanitarian law and the most serious violations of human rights are not sanctioned by the international community – not in Yemen, Syria or the African continent”.
“Russian attacks the tip of the iceberg”
“The reaction of the international community to many trouble spots around the world has been insufficient or very hesitant in the past year,” said Beeko. Due to economic or political power interests, States often avoid demanding compliance with international and human rights at an early stage.
“In that sense, the illegal Russian attack on Ukraine is the tip of the iceberg,” Beeko said.
Amnesty also referred to the increased crackdown on critical voices around the world. These included restrictions on freedom of expression, association or assembly or detention, enforced disappearances and even the killing of human rights activists.
Praise for admitting refugees
“The behavior of the Russian government shows in the most dramatic way the consequences of such a worldwide evasion,” explained Beeko. However, the human rights organization praised the quick reaction of the EU and Germany to the flight movement in the course of the war in Ukraine. With over 3.8 million people, this is the largest since World War II.
However, Beeko warned not to forget about refugees from other regions. Refugees from the Middle East and other regions of the world continue to face a high level of rejection in many places, Amnesty said. They are denied illegal and violent access to the asylum procedures to which they are entitled under international law at the EU’s external borders.
The organization has also documented ill-treatment and illegal setbacks in 2021 – including by Greek border officials, the Croatian-Bosnian and Polish-Belarusian borders. On the Belarusian border with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania alone, more than 40,000 people were expelled in 2021.
US authorities also illegally returned nearly 1.5 million refugees at the US-Mexico border last year, including tens of thousands of unaccompanied children.
Criticism of the lack of vaccination justice
In its annual report, the human rights organization also criticized the lack of fair vaccination in the global fight against the corona pandemic: “While more than 70% of the EU population is fully vaccinated, people in many parts of the global south are still waiting for the first vaccine,” Beeko said. At the end of 2021, not even 8% of the 1.2 billion people on the African continent were vaccinated.
The human rights organization therefore accuses politicians of industrialized countries of hypocrisy. Western countries have colluded with big companies in the race for vaccines, exacerbating the gap between rich and poor countries. While pharmaceutical companies would have made huge profits, the US or European industrialized countries would have hoarded vaccines.