A group of more than 1,100 academics calling for an end of Turkish state violence against the country's Kurdish population won the prestigious Aachen Peace Award. The Academics for Peace, a group of scholars from universities inside and outside of Turkey, came into President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's crosshairs in January after they issued an open letter calling for the state to end ongoing military operations in southeastern Turkey and resume peace negotiations with Kurdish militants. The academics asked the state to "abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region" and end human rights violations contrary to Turkish and international law. "We will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent and demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state," the letter says. The academics were immediately attacked by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Erdogan himself, who called on the judiciary to go after the signatories for "treason" and "terrorism" under the country's broad antiterror laws. Several signatories have since faced trial, dozens have lost their university jobs, and many face threats in another extreme reaction against freedom of speech and thought in Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian Turkey. The Aachen Peace Award committee cited the response of Erdogan, government agencies, and AKP-controlled school administrations as one reason for honoring Academics for Peace with the award. "The call of Academics for Peace has a special status due to the clarity of the text and the massive backlash of the Turkish state, its organs and the defamatory public reaction," the German committee said. "Erdogan and his AKP government have created an enormous rift between Turkey and the Kurdish people." The award came days after Erdogan lashed out at the EU for linking reform of the country's sweeping antiterrorism laws to visa free travel for Turkish citizens as part of a migrant deal with the bloc. The antiterror laws have sent journalists, academics, politicians, and activists to trial and prison. Erdogan's attempt to clamp down on all criticism has even reached Germany, where a controversial investigation has been opened against a popular satirist who allegedly insulted the Turkish leader. The Aachen Peace Award will be granted on September 1. #Turkey #esw #News

Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a group* of UN human rights experts warn that over a dozen political prisoners in Iran, including prominent human rights defenders, lawyers, and political activists, are at risk of death due to their worsening health conditions and the continued refusal by Iranian authorities to provide them with medical treatment. “The condition of several prisoners of conscience with serious health problems has been exacerbated by their continued detention and by repeated refusals to allow their access to the medical facilities and treatment they so urgently require,” the experts said. “The denial of medical care, physical abuse, either in overcrowded prisons or in solitary confinement and other forms of torture and ill-treatment exposes prisoners to risk of serious injuries and death . . . Unfortunately, Iranian prisons are no strangers to such tragedies, many of which could have been avoided if authorities exercised proper care.” The UN experts highlighted the cases of political prisoners Mohammad Hossein Rafiee Farnood and Kamal Foroughi; human rights defender Nargis Mohammadi; lawyer Abdulfattah Soltani; blogger Hossein Ronaghi Maleki; religious figure Sayed Hossein Kazemeyni Boroujerdi; and physicist Omid Kokabee. Kokabee was arrested in January 2011 upon his return from studies in the US and is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for his alleged "connections with a hostile government." He was diagnosed with kidney cancer and recently underwent surgery to remove his right kidney, a procedure that could have been avoided had he been provided with adequate and timely access to proper treatment at an earlier stage. As in Kokabee's case, when medical care is finally provided, patients are often transferred to and from prisons chained to their beds. “The situation of these prisoners and the continued disregard for their health and well-being by the Iranian authorities is completely unacceptable,” the experts stressed. “This is especially the case given that allegedly all of them have been arrested, detained and convicted purely for their peaceful exercise of their fundamental freedoms and rights.” “We urge the authorities to consider the release of Mr. Kokabee and other political prisoners on medical or humanitarian grounds and to ensure their well-being by facilitating regular access to medical care." The human rights experts reminded the Iranian government of its obligations under international standards to respect the prisoners’ right to health and to ensure their humane treatment. “Failure to provide adequate medical care to prisoners is in breach of Iran’s international human rights obligations and domestic standards,” they said. “We have repeatedly drawn the attention of the Iranian authorities to allegations related to the denial of access to medical care and to substandard conditions of detention and urged them to embark on a more comprehensive prison reform. We regret that the government has so far failed to properly investigate these allegations and take the necessary measures." *Dainius Pūras, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; Juan E. Méndez, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; Maina Kiai, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; and Seong-Phil Hong, Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Source: YubaNet #Iran #Student #News

According to Radio Free Asia, the family of jailed Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti is facing extreme hardship and increasing isolation as his wife struggles to raise her young sons in Beijing. Guzelnur has been left with scant income to care for her children while her husband serves a life sentence for "separatism." "Sometimes I get financial help from friends or relatives, but they've got their own kids too, and their own expenses to meet," she said in an interview. "I make 3,500 yuan ($US 540) a month, and the nursery fees for my youngest are 1,200 yuan a month, while it costs 300 yuan a month for my eldest just to eat lunch in school." Guzelnur said she has asked Tibetan poet and writer Woeser for help when things get tough. When asked if she visits her husband, Guzelnur said, "There is nobody to take care of the kids." However, she said the family has plans to travel back to the region during the summer holidays. Beijing-based rights activist and family friend Hu Jia said Guzelnur has also become socially isolated since Tohti's incarceration, as many of the couple's former friends have withdrawn contact for fear of political reprisals. "Guzelnur," he says, "and the two kids have been living a very lonely life in Beijing since Ilham Tohti was detained." Biography of Ilham Tohti Ilham Tohti, former professor at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, was sentenced to life in prison following his conviction of “separatism” by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court in Xinjiang on September 23, 2014. Tohti is currently serving the longest sentence handed down to a political prisoner in China. Uyghurs and members of other non-Han Chinese groups in Xinjiang face huge barriers to applying for passports, and those who already hold them have been ordered in some regions to hand them into police stations. China has been keen to portray its Uyghur population as potential terrorists after a wave of violent incidents hit the region following a crackdown on deadly ethnic riots in Urumqi in July 2009. Many Uyghurs try to leave China illegally, saying they are fleeing systematic persecution by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which then puts strong diplomatic pressure on neighboring countries to return the fugitives to China rather than treating them as refugees. Endangered Scholars Worldwide joins the effort to call on the international community to show more concern and support for Uyghur minorities, as well as for Tohti, his family, and the hardships they face. #China #News

Imad al-Barghouti, a 53-year-old professor of astrophysics at al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, was arrested at an Israeli military checkpoint near the village of Nabi Saleh in the central-occupied West Bank. He had been returning home to a nearby village. Barghouthi was previously arrested in 2014 while passing though the Israeli-controlled border to Jordan on his way to a conference in the United Arab Emirates and was interrogated about material he had posted on Facebook. Protests from scientists worldwide led to his release a month later. Barghouti is a leading researcher, publishing frequently in academic astrophysics journals, and has previously worked for NASA. Endangered Scholars Worldwide calls for the immediate release of Imad al-Barghouthi. We are concerned about the prosecution, arrest, detention, and professional retaliation of and against Palestinian scholars in response to their nonviolent exercise of the rights to academic freedom, free expression, and free association. These arrests have a profound, chilling effect on academic freedom and may represent a grave threat to higher education on a global scale. #Israel #News

A professor of English was hacked to death and nearly beheaded near his home in northwestern Bangladesh on Saturday, in what the police said they suspected was the latest in a series of targeted killings by Islamist militants. The professor, Rezaul Karim Siddiquee, 61, was attacked by assailants about 60 yards from his home and died at the scene, said Mohammad Shamsuddin, the commissioner of the metropolitan police in the city of Rajshahi. Neighbors said they had heard the victim screaming and alerted his family. Mr. Shamsuddin said that “our preliminary suspicion is that the murder was committed by an Islamist militant group,” based on the attack’s similarities to recent killings of secularist bloggers in Bangladesh. He said that Mr. Siddiquee had three deep wounds to the neck and that his head had been nearly severed. Later Saturday, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a message posted on Twitter by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist websites. No further details were available. Social media accounts linked to the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in recent months in Bangladesh. The government and the police have expressed skepticism about those claims, denying that the organization has a presence inside the country. The murder on Saturday echoed one that took place at Rajshahi University, where Mr. Siddiquee taught, in November 2014, when a sociology professor was hacked to death on his way home from the campus. That professor had said students should not be allowed to wear burqas, the traditional Islamic covering, during sociology examinations. Killings of secular activists have become a grim commonplace in Bangladesh over the past two years, and intellectuals have become reluctant to publish views critical of fundamentalist Islam. About two weeks ago, an atheist student blogger was killed by men with machetes at a crowded intersection in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. But Mr. Siddiquee was not, like most of the previous victims, an avowed atheist or anti-religious campaigner. He was involved in some cultural activities in his department and was fascinated by traditional Bangladeshi music and the poetry of literary figures like Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam, said Prof. Mohammad Shahidullah, the head of the English department at Rajshahi University. “He was a purely academic person, but he was a progressive and secular person,” Professor Shahidullah said. He added that Mr. Siddiquee had recently established a music school in his village. Police officers who interviewed Mr. Siddiquee’s family said he had never published any materials critical of Islam and had never received threats. *This article originally appeared on the New York Times. #Bangladesh #Professor #ESW #News

Thousands of Sudanese students have entered their second day of protests following the death of a student in North Kordofan, central Sudan. Abubakar Hassan, 18, was killed on Monday at Kordofan University by a gunshot wound to the head after intelligence agents opened fire on students taking part in a peaceful march. The students were walking to the student union building to nominate proopposition candidates for their campus elections, said Amnesty International. A further 27 students were reported to be injured after the clashes, five of them seriously. “We gathered at 5 AM to submit our candidates then suddenly they fired live bullets at us,” said Mohammed Shaga, a 24-year-old medical student at the university. Another student told Amnesty that he saw the intelligence agencies arrive in 15 pickup trucks armed with AK47 rifles and start shooting at the crowd. “The students fell down one-by-one. Among them was Hassan,” Shaga added. By Wednesday, students from the universities in Kordofan and Khartoum took to the streets to protest against Hassan’s killing and show solidarity with his family. The following day, students at the Red Sea University in east Sudan and the University of Nayala in South Darfur state marched in protest, calling for the Sudanese government to conduct an investigation into the incident. In an attempt to quell unrest, the authorities cancelled classes and used teargas on protesters. Samir Abdulaziz, a student at Red Sea, said the protesters had to take shelter on campus after being bombarded. Last week, in an unrelated incident, students at Khartoum University went on strike after hearing that the government was planning to relocate their university. Dozens of students were reported to have been detained after the protests spilled over on to the streets of the capital, many more were injured. According to political analyst and author Fathi El Daw, more than 100 students have been killed at Sudanese universities since the country’s authoritarian leader, Omar al-Bashir, seized power in an Islamist-backed military coup 27 years ago. Daw said the government had the worst record for cracking down on students in modern Sudanese history. Bashir keeps students repressed because of their potential role in disrupting government, he added. “Students overthrew two dictators in Sudan, in 1964 and in 1985,” he said. Daw’s book Spider House, which chronicles the harsh treatment of students at the hands of the authorities, has been banned from the country. Since January, the government has used extreme force against students in Darfur, Khartoum and Kordofan. One student was killed at El-Geneina University in West Darfur. “The government has to solve the students’ issues [by engaging in] dialogue with them, otherwise the students will overthrow it, as they have done before,” warned Haj Hamad, a political science professor at El Zaeem al Azhari University in Khartoum. Amnesty International has called for an immediate investigation into Hassan’s killing. “This violent attack is yet another shocking episode in a series of human rights violations against university students across Sudan and underlines the government’s determination to put out the last vestiges of dissent,” said the rights group’s regional director, Muthoni Wanveki. *This article originally appeared in The Guardian Newspaper. #Sudan #Student #News

Iranian physicist Omid Kokabee, who has been imprisoned in Tehran since 2011, is suffering from life-threatening kidney cancer, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported Monday. Kokabee, 34, was arrested while visiting Iran from the United States, where he was studying physics at the University of Texas. He was charged with communicating with a hostile government and receiving illegitimate funds. His family has asked for his immediate release due to his severe health condition. "The prison doctors were prescribing painkiller without even examining him," an informed source said. "It was only last week that Omid was diagnosed with cancer and now the cancerous tumor has spread all over his right kidney." Kokabee has said he had been tortured in prison, both physically and mentally, and forced to make confessions. In letters from Evin Prison in 2011 and 2013, Kokabee wrote that his imprisonment was the result of his refusal to heed pressure by Iranian government to collaborate on a secret research project, which likely refers to Iran's nuclear program. "My only sin is that I am following a rare field of study and no one in Iran has my expertise," wrote Kokabee, who has worked in laser technology and atomic physics. Iran has been seeking to enrich uranium by laser as it has the potential to reduce the cost and also to make the enrichment facility far smaller. In an accord with world powers signed last July, Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in return for lifting economic sanctions. Kokabee was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize in 2013 from the American Physical Society for "his courage in refusing to use his physics knowledge to work on projects that he deemed harmful to humanity, in the face of extreme physical and psychological pressure." #Iran #Student #News

The international scholarly community must take meaningful steps to support the Academics for Peace, says Mehmet Ugur. On January 10 of this year, a group of scholars calling themselves the Academics for Peace signed an open letter calling on the Turkish government to end its violence in Kurdish provinces. In line with their aim of studying peace and conflict-resolution processes worldwide, the academics also called for “a road map that would lead to a lasting peace in Turkey” and for independent observers to monitor the Kurdish provinces, where civilians, including children and the elderly, are still being killed under a security crackdown. The “Petition for Peace” was signed by 1,128 academics in Turkey and beyond. The next day, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the signatories of treason and called for their punishment. The judiciary then initiated public prosecutions under Turkish antiterror law alleging defamation of the Turkish state and accusing the signatories of spreading “terrorist organization propaganda.” Turkey’s Higher Education Council (YÖK) ordered university rectors to commence disciplinary investigations. Numerous suspensions, dismissals, and imprisonments have followed. To longterm observers of Turkey such as myself, none of this came as a great surprise. Lack of academic freedom has always been a hallmark of the Turkish higher education system. Any de facto respect for it has been wrenched from the Turkish state apparatus (including the government, the military, and the YÖK) as a result of resistance by academics and students alike. A salient fact about Turkish higher education is that universities that have toed the government line have remained poor performers, whereas those where staff and students showed resistance to state intrusion have done better in terms of research quality, graduate employability, and international recognition. Nevertheless, successive AKP governments since 2003, with Erdoğan as prime minister or president, have been determined to maintain the longstanding state tutelage over Turkey’s higher education system. The expected prize is the production of graduates disposed to submit to authority—particularly state authority—without much questioning. I did my first degree in Turkey in the second half of the 1970s, at a time of widespread student activism. I was involved in two long-term boycotts of classes and exams (one lasting for six months and one for nine) demanding the withdrawal of troops from campus, respect for academic freedom, and adoption of the standards in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Although the covenant entered into force in many countries in January 1976, Turkey refused to sign it until 2000—two years before the AKP came to power. It was ratified in June 2003, but subject to three reservations. One of these allows Turkey to interpret the right to education and academic freedom in accordance with certain articles of the Turkish Constitution. These specify that “the Turkish state, with its territory and nation, is an indivisible entity”; that “the freedom of education and training does not relieve the individual from loyalty to the constitution”; and that “no language other than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institution of education and training.” This means that any argument in favor of a multiethnic and multilingual polity can constitute a criminal offense, depending on the political whims of the government of the day. This official fixation with a unitarian/nationalist conception of statehood meant that both the right to education and academic freedom suffered both before and after the ascendance of the AKP to power. The denial of academic freedom was enshrined in law in 1981 by Turkey’s military rulers. This law, which remains in force, means that university rectors or the YÖK can directly initiate dismissal proceedings against staff and students without objective criteria for implementation. Academics dismissed because of political activity may also be banned from holding any position in the public sector. The law was invoked by the YÖK and rectors to expel academics who refused to toe the military’s line, and was also used in the late 1990s to manipulate universities and secure obedience to political authority. In 2003 the AKP government introduced four draft laws on higher education. These stipulated that the aim of the education system is to produce “individuals…who accept the Turkish Republic and its people as an individual unity” and that universities should be responsible for “establishing in students a service consciousness allied with Ataturkist nationalism.” None of the draft laws provided for any amendment to article 4 of the 1981 act, which also provides that the aim of higher education is to “educate students so that they . . . will be conscious of the privilege of being a Turk” and “enhance the welfare of the Turkish State as a whole, conducive to national and territorial indivisibility.” In a 2004 report on academic freedom in Turkish higher education, Human Rights Watch said that the draft laws would only perpetuate the YÖK as a guardian of political orthodoxy. Although the laws were ultimately vetoed by the president, successive AKP governments have continued to violate the right to academic freedom on the basis of existing legislation. A report for Turkey’s Foundation for Political, Economic, and Social Research, published last year, notes that Turkish academics tend to believe that academic freedom does not exist in their country and that the legal provisions leave ample room for politically motivated interventions. The report, From Past to Present: Academic Freedom in Turkey, cites a number of worrying incidents, including a 2005 investigation of an associate professor from Hacettepe University in Ankara for his research on forced Kurdish migration and a 2012 investigation of a law professor at Akdeniz University in Antalya for asking an exam question on homosexuality. In 2014 a new clause was introduced into universities’ government-dictated disciplinary procedures requiring academics to obtain permission beforehand—and making them subject to possible punishment regardless—if they issue statements considered to be “non-academic” to the press. And, late last year, the YÖK was given powers to close private universities “that have become a focal point for activities against the state’s indivisible integrity.” This brings us to the current witch hunt against Academics for Peace. As of March 30, there had been 533 “administrative investigations” and 159 legal investigations into signatories of the letter, according to Academics for Peace. There had also been 38 dismissals, 30 suspensions and 38 detentions. Furthermore, on March 15, three members of Academics for Peace were jailed for announcing they would start an “academic vigil.” These were Esra Mungan, an expert in cognitive psychology at Boğaziçi University; Kıvanç Ersoy, a mathematician at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University; and Muzaffer Kaya, a political scientist formerly at Nişantaşı University (all three institutions are in Istanbul). The court also requested the arrest of Meral Camcı, formerly of Istanbul’s Yeni Yuzyıl University. This was not possible at the time because she was in France, but she was sent to prison on April 1 upon her return. A computer scientist and UK citizen, Chris Stephenson of the private Bilgi University in Istanbul, was also detained for holding a vigil outside the court in support of the jailed academics and for carrying in his bag invitations to a Newroz (a Kurdish new year festival) from a parliamentary party. As reported in Times Higher Education, Stephenson was accused of handing out propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and was deported, although he was later permitted to return—due, presumably, to the bad publicity that his treatment had generated (“Academics call for end to ‘witch-hunt’ of scholars in Turkey,” News, March 24). As for the other detainees, the Academics for Peace website indicates that Mungan was initially held in solitary confinement. Kaya and Ersoy are reportedly still suffering the same fate, without access to books and having been strip searched and kept naked for 20 minutes on arrival at the prison. Thousands of academics from all continents—including myself—reacted to the witch hunt by signing a number of petitions calling on the Turkish government and the international community to stop the persecutions and ensure respect for academic freedom. Some of the letters of support have been published in THE (on January 28 and March 24), as well as in a number of the media outlets in Turkey that the government has not yet silenced. Nevertheless, the calls have fallen on deaf ears and, on March 25, the chief adviser to the president, Yalcin Topcu, took the attack to a new level by accusing the academics of plotting a coup to impose the will of the unelected “over the will of those elected by the nation.” The Turkish government and the president must be held accountable for persecuting members of Academics for Peace—not to mention the civilian deaths and large-scale destruction in Kurdish towns and cities that precipitated their petition in the first place. A prominent German scholar of international law, Norman Paech of the University of Hamburg, has declared the state violence to be beyond all norms of international law and has vowed to set up an alternative international court to rule on it if the United Nations’ International Court of Justice fails to carry out its duties. Western governments have a historical pattern of appeasing Turkey—always with devastating consequences. During the First World War, Germany struck an alliance with the Ottoman Empire and the world witnessed the latter’s massacre of the Armenians. During the Second World War, France and the UK appeased Turkey and, in return, they got tacit support for the Nazi war machine until Hitler was about to be defeated. This was not because history was repeating itself but because the reflex of the Turkish state remained more or less the same: hostility to political dissent and obsession with preserving a pecking order in which minorities are subservient to a nationalist conception of statehood. President Erdoğan’s recent comments on the effectiveness of Hitler’s regime illustrate much the same point. But even if Western governments remain silent in their naive belief that Turkey is a strategic partner in fighting terrorism and stemming the refugee crisis, there is no need for Western academics to do likewise. It is time for the international scholarly community to take practical, meaningful steps to express their solidarity with Academics for Peace and their commitment to academic freedom more broadly. These could include declining invitations to conferences held in Turkey or withdrawing from cooperation with Turkish universities based on the partner institution’s track record in defending their scholars’ right to speak out. Academic freedom is a precious gift, and those who have it should do all they can to extend it to those who do not. *Mehmet Ugur is a professor of economics and institutions and a member of the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre at the University of Greenwich Business School. *This article first published in Times Higher Education. #Turkey #News

Faran Hesami, one of the imprisoned teachers from the Bahai Open University (BIHE), was released from Evin Prison in Tehran today at the end of a four-year sentence for educational activities. Hesami and her husband, Kamran Rahimiyan, were arrested in September 2011. Both were charged with membership of the Bahai community, with assembly, and with collusion to undermine national security in relation to their work for the Bahai Open University, which offers courses to Bahai students who have been excluded from Iranian tertiary institutions because of their beliefs. The couple each received four-year sentences, handed down by Judge Salvati. As Rahimiyan began his sentence before his wife, he was released on August 17, 2015. In March 2015, Hesami was awarded the Raha Südwind Award, which honors individuals who have participated in the promotion and protection of human rights in Iran. #Iran #Released #News

According to Amnesty International, student leaders Phyoe Phyoe Aung and Lin Htet Naing (aka James and Aung Thant Zin) were released on April 8 after all charges against them were dropped by courts in Myanmar. The releases follow the government's announcement on April 7 that it would work to free all prisoners of conscience at the first possible opportunity. Phyoe Phyoe Aung is the secretary general of the prominent All Burma Federation Student Union. Such unions are illegal in Myanmar. She was imprisoned on March 10, 2015 for charges relating to the student demonstrations she helped organize in February and March of that same year. The students were protesting a new education law passed by the government that the protesters claim limits free speech and democracy in the education system. On November 3, 2015, Phyoe Phyoe Aung’s husband, Lin Htet Naing, was also arrested for organizing the protests after nearly eight months in hiding. Reports indicate that Phyoe Phyoe Aung and Lin Htet Naing were also imprisoned following their part in organizing the student unions to demonstrate in 2007. The police violently cracked down on the protesters, and Phyoe Phyoe Aung served over three years in prison with a month in solitary confinement for her association with the demonstrations. Endangered Scholars Worldwide is looking forward to the release of all prisoners of conscience in Myanmar. #Released #Student #ESW #Myanmar #News

Mahdi Abu Dheeb, the founder and leader of the Bahrain Teachers Association who was arrested and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment before an “unfair” military court in 2011, has been released after five years. Abu Dheeb and his colleague Jalila al-Salman were both arrested and charged with inciting hatred and attempting to bring down the regime of Khalifah ibn Sulman al-Khalifah—Bahrain’s only prime minister since the country’s independence in the 70s. Both teachers were arrested and imprisoned during a time of great unrest in Bahrain; authorities were clamping down on protesters who had dared get involved in the Arab Spring. Amnesty International said that although no evidence was brought against Abu Dheeb, he was convicted with the following charges: Halting the educational process Inciting hatred of the regime Attempting to overthrow the ruling system by force Possessing pamphlets Disseminating fabricated stories and information Abu Dheeb was at his uncle’s house on April 6, 2011 when police seized him for interrogation. They took him to a secret location, and his family didn’t know where he was for over three weeks. He was kept in solitary confinement for 64 days. Abu Dheeb says the police beat him when he was under interrogation. His daughter Maryam also reiterated her father’s claim, adding that “he had two broken ribs and was suffering from severe neck and back pain” when she saw him after his time in detention. His colleague Salman was sentenced to three years, which was later reduced to six months. She was released in November 2012. Abu Dheeb, on the other hand, was initially sentenced to then years. On October 21, 2012, however, the appeal court upheld the guilty verdict against the head of the Bahrain Teachers’ Association but reduced his prison sentence to five years. During his time in prison, Abu Dheeb went on hunger strike on two occasions to protest the use of torture against detainees, having himself suffered broken ribs and kidney damage as a result of regular beatings. #ESW #Bahrain #News

On March 31, 2016, members of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) temporarily detained Professor Benjamin Scharifker, rector of the Universidad Metropolitana. PNB members reportedly approached Scharifker while he was out on a morning jog. After questioning him, they ordered Scharifker into a police vehicle and drove to his home where armed individuals were waiting. There, PNB members subjected Scharifker to further questions about his identity, profession, and connections before leaving his home and releasing him. #Venezuela #News