Amnesty International says human rights around the world are under threat because of politicians who are using “toxic, dehumanizing” rhetoric against ethnic or religious minorities in order to strengthen their political powers.
In the annual report, titled The State of The World's Human Rights, the human rights watchdog says that 2016 was the year of “us against them”, of populist leaders singling out groups of people as a threat to national interests. If more countries rollback our rights in the name of national security, the result could be a total collapse of the foundations of universal human rights.
Amnesty International's report says that, internationally, "hate rhetoric" has reached its worst level in politics since the 1930s and is "fueling a global pushback against human rights" which leaves a "global response to mass atrocities perilously weak."
The report predicts that 2017 will see "ongoing crises exacerbated by a debilitating absence of human rights leadership on a chaotic world stage."
The report includes a survey of 159 countries and territories in an exercise to show how people have been suffering from conflict, displacement, discrimination, or repression.
The human rights watchdog reported a “marked deterioration” in Tajikistan.
According to the report, Tajikistan saw a significant crackdown in the wake of the targeting of the banned opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, 14 of whose leading members were sentenced to long prison terms on terrorism charges in secret trials.
In August, the government issued a five-year decree giving it the right to “regulate and control” the content of all television and radio networks through the State Broadcasting Committee, says the report.
Human rights defenders came under tight surveillance, while independent media outlets and journalists faced intimidation and harassment by police and the security services.
The authorities continued to order internet service providers to block access to certain news or social media sites, while a new decree required internet providers and telecommunications operators to channel their services through a new single communications center under the state-owned company Tajiktelecom, according to the report.
The rights group reported a “marked deterioration” in Kazakhstan as well. It notes that Kazakhstan used criminal laws against leaders of nongovernment groups for the first time in 2016. The report also highlights the arrests of hundreds of people who took part in protests against a new land code.
Amnesty International says that repression of dissent, critical opinions, and political opposition remains serious problem in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
It says "torture in detention centers and prisons continued to be pervasive" in Uzbekistan, where forced labor was also widely used.
Although Turkmenistan launched a so-called National Human Rights Action Plan in April, 2016, Amnesty says there was no improvement in the rights situation, and the country remained closed to independent human rights monitors.
In Kyrgyzstan, Amnesty's report says “the perpetrators of torture and of violence against women enjoyed impunity” during 2016. It also says Kyrgyz authorities “continued to make no genuine effort to effectively investigate the June 2010 violence in Osh and Jalal-Abad.”
