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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

NEWS FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

AI Bulletin Vol. 13 No. 23, 26 November 2010

AI Index: ACT 84/023/2010

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Contents:

Amnesty International reports & statements

Amnesty International Web Actions

News articles

Death Penalty

Gender Based Violence

Mental Health

Prisons and Detention Centres

Refugees and Migrants

Torture and Ill-treatment

Transmissible Diseases

Courses and Conferences

Publications

Amnesty International Reports & Statements:

25 November: Nicaragua: A new report, Listen to their Voice and Act: Stop the Rape and Sexual Abuse of Girls in Nicaragua, follows the experiences of survivors as they try to overcome the barriers which obstruct their access to justice and recovery services. The report reveals through testimonies how the state does not sufficiently help survivors to rebuild their lives after sexual violence. http://tinyurl.com/349y22u

18 November: Colombia: Carolina Rubio, who is more than eight months pregnant, is a member of the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE) and of the Committee of Solidarity for Political Prisoners (FCSPP), and is being held in prison despite concerns over her health. http://tinyurl.com/29qdga7

16 November: Egypt: Egyptian authorities must independently investigate, without delay, allegations that a young man was tortured to death at a police station in Alexandria, and guarantee the safety of another young man still in custody there, AI said. http://tinyurl.com/2edhynd

16 November: Bahrain: AI has called on the Bahraini authorities to investigate fresh allegations of torture made by some of the 23 detained opposition activists accused of terrorism and plotting to overthrow the government. http://tinyurl.com/37rr4no

Amnesty International Web Actions

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Authorities must ensure access to reparation for survivors of war rapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Take action: http://tinyurl.com/36wth8k

EU: Sign the petition to end FGM: http://www.endfgm.eu/en/petition

Nicaragua: Stop sexual violence against Nicaraguan girls. Take action: http://tinyurl.com/37v2vsd

Death Penalty

USA: A clear majority of US voters - 61 percent - would choose a punishment other than death for murder if given a choice, the Death Penalty Information Centre said as it released the results of "one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted" of US citizens' views on capital punishment. IRIN (16 December) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53572 (See also Publications below)

Gender Based Violence

Uganda: Thousands of women were raped during Uganda’s war but there have been few government efforts to assist them, especially with psychosocial and counselling services. IRIN (17 November) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53581

Medical Ethics

Kosovo: At least seven people, including a former senior health ministry official, are suspected of involvement in an international network that falsely promised poor people payment for their kidneys and then sold the organs for as much as $137,000, according to a European Union indictment obtained by the Associated Press. Associated Press (13 November)

http://tinyurl.com/24ymlyx

Mental Health

Canada: A steep increase in mentally ill offenders is flooding prisons and psychiatric institutions, confounding officials whose job is to find accommodation and treatment for them. The Globe and Mail (17 November) http://tinyurl.com/2cuplq9

Global. Mental health is very much the neglected child of the global health scene, argues Wayne Kondro in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (23 November): http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/182/17/E767

USA: State officials and the Concerned Lifers Organization, a prisoners' group, have a common goal: better psychiatric care in prisons and on the outside, a case bolstered by the police killings by a mentally ill person last year. Crosscut (19 November) http://tinyurl.com/24czcev

Prisons and Detention Centres

Global: Providing the more than 10 million people incarcerated around the world "with better health care could prevent outbreaks of HIV and tuberculosis from spilling over into the general population experts say," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. Medical News Today (22 November) http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/208814.php

Haiti: Cholera cases appeared to be surging in Haiti with news that the outbreak had reached Haiti's National Prison in the capital, Port-au-Prince. EITB (20 November) http://www.eitb.com/news/world/detail/546730/1100-people-killed-cholera-haiti-far/

Nigeria: The acting director general of the Legal Aid council has said that Nigerian prisons are congested with awaiting trial inmates, and not with convicted prisoners.. Most prison inmates in Nigeria have not been convicted of any offence; instead, they wait years for their trial in appalling conditions. Next (23 November) http://tinyurl.com/2ffpcuw

Zimbabwe: An alleged motorcycle thief spent two months in a Zimbabwe prison awaiting trial without receiving medical treatment for a police bullet wound, which left his intestines protruding through his abdomen, local media reported. Mail and Guardian (24 November) http://tinyurl.com/34ldbno

Refugees and Migrants

Australia: Ten asylum seekers at an Australian detention centre have sewn their lips together to protest delays in processing their refugee applications, as the government warned that protests will not change the outcome of the visa process. The male asylum seekers have refused medical assistance since sewing their lips together at the Christmas Island detention centre. Washington Post (19 November) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/19/AR2010111905937.html

Israel: Israel's Cabinet, hoping to staunch the flow of Africans through the country's porous southern border with Egypt, is scheduled to vote on a proposal to build a massive detention centre to hold the migrants. Arab news (25 November) http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article200362.ece

Torture and Ill-treatment

Committee Against Torture: The UN Committee Against Torture has examined reports from a number of countries -- Bosnia, Cambodia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Mongolia and Turkey -- and documentation is available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cat/cats45.htm

Palestinian Authority: Claims of torture and abuse by members of the Palestinian security forces are not new. There has, however, been a sharp rise in reported cases, leading Human Rights Watch (HRW) to remark last month that “reports of torture by Palestinian security forces keep rolling in”. The New York-based organisation also bemoaned the “rampant impunity” of officers allegedly involved in the abuses. The Financial Times (21 November)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c5ceda42-f58b-11df-99d6-00144feab49a.html#axzz16x1yxQtd

(may require registration). The HRW article is available at http://tinyurl.com/2epkvja

Thailand: Is the Thai Military Torturing Detainees? asks Time Magazine (1 December)

http://tinyurl.com/28mw32e

Transmissible Diseases

USA: Massachusetts prisons have changed how they dispense medication to inmates living with HIV in a calculated effort to discourage them from taking life-saving drugs that cost the state millions of dollars a year, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit. Staff have argued that changes were “by no means fueled by discriminatory intentions,’’ The Boston Globe (22 November) http://tinyurl.com/2dg4fb6

Conferences and Courses

Training Course: Certificates in Humanitarian Assistance (Africa), 3 May – 11 June 2011, Johannesburg, South Africa. The multi-disciplinary programmes take a regional focus on tackling humanitarian issues across Africa and are designed and taught by experts from leading Organisations and Academic Institutions. For more information, contact: Edith.lefine@wits.ac.za or Stephen.porter@wits.ac.za.See also: http://www.msf.org.za/dynamicpages.php?p=78

Publications

Bloom JD (2010), “The incarceration revolution": the abandonment of the seriously mentally ill to our jails and prisons”, J Law Med Ethics, ;38(4):727-34. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-720X.2010.00526.x/abstract

Fazel S, Baillargeon J. (2010), “The health of prisoners”, Lancet. [Epub ahead of print] http://tinyurl.com/355nntr

Garland D. Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 417 pp. See review by retired Justice John Paul Stevens in New York Review of Books (23 December): http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/dec/23/death-sentence/

Liuzzi C, Carabellese F, Vinci F. (2010), “Perineal-Vaginal Injuries in Children: Accident or Abuse?” J Forensic Sci; ePub, 2010: http://tinyurl.com/2uojmxz

Parfitt T. (2010), “Crime and unjust punishment in Russia” The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9755 , Pages 1815 - 1816, 27 November 2010 http://tinyurl.com/2dmstrq

Rosenblatt A. International Forensic Investigations and the Human Rights of the Dead. Human Rights Quarterly Nov 2010; 32(4): 921-950. http://tinyurl.com/32kyeay

Vogel L (2010) “Pan-Canadian strategy being developed to tackle mental health in prisons”, CMAJ. [Epub ahead of print] http://tinyurl.com/3337uar

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