Against the background of corona virus pandemic in the world, UN Special Rapporteur called on member states to release inmates who were unlawfully imprisoned including political prisoners
UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings Agnes Callamard issued a dispatch on 6 May on the responsibilities of states with regard to the COVID-19 outbreak and protection of right to life in places of detention. The Special Rapporteur Callamard recommended governments to release “prisoners whose incarceration is illegal or arbitrary under international law, including all children, prisoners of conscience, religious prisoners as well as political prisoners.”
“With more than 11 million prisoners and other detainees held worldwide in often overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, without access to adequate health care and unable to practice self-and-mutual protection measures, the real and present risk is that for many, detention during the Covid-19 pandemic may become effectively a death sentence,” the Special Rapporteur warned.
“Places of detention are or will be a possible disaster zone and ought to be treated as such,” she added.
In her report the Special Rapporteur recommended the governments, among others, to release “all prisoners whose incarceration is illegal or arbitrary under international law, including all children, prisoners of conscience, religious prisoners as well as political prisoners, to “reduce the overall size of the prison populations” and to “consider alternatives to pre-trial detention such as bail, release under judicial control, or others.”
Tens of thousands of political prisoners such as politicians, journalists, lawyers, academics and human right defenders convicted on country’s controversial and broadly interpreted counter-terrorism laws in Turkey.
Turkish Parliament in April adopted an amendment on the execution of sentences as a measure against the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic to the country’s overcrowded prisons. The bill contained basically early parole and house arrest possibilities for a broad range of offenders, yet excluded political prisoners from the scope of the bill.
The post Political prisoners should be released immediately: UN Special Rapporteur appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/political-prisoners-should-be-released-immediately-un-special-rapporteur/
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