"Living Nightmare" in Ukraine: Daily Brief

The war in Ukraine will soon enter its 4th week, and the number of civilian casualties keeps growing by the day. A pregnant woman and her baby have died after Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, where "time is running out for hundreds of thousands" who are trapped in a "living nightmare". They cannot hold on any longer," says the International Committee of the Red Cross in a thread on Twitter. The international community now needs to ensure that the International Criminal Court has the financial means and political backing to do its vital work on behalf of victims. Every effort needs to be made to support the collection and preservation of evidence so that, one day, those who commit and order crimes in this conflict can face justice. The world should continue to send a clear message that serious crimes will not be tolerated. Ukraine’s civilians are counting on it.

The regime in Saudi Arabia executed 81 people in a single day on Saturday, in the kingdom's biggest mass execution in decades. The number dwarfed the 67 executions reported there in all of 2021 and the 27 in 2020. Human Rights Watch opposes capital punishment in all countries and under all circumstances. Capital punishment is unique in its cruelty and finality, and it is inevitably and universally plagued with arbitrariness, prejudice, and error.

One day earlier, the authorities in Saudi Arabia released Raif Badawi, a liberal activist who had been unjustly jailed for 10 years. Good news, but he is not really free yet, as he remains trapped in Saudi Arabia under another 10-year travel ban. The regime should release all human rights activists and people held for their peaceful opinions, and lift all travel bans on them.

The human rights minister in DR Congo has launched national consultations on a new transitional justice initiative that, if implemented, would help the country emerge from conflict, address grave human rights violations, and institute needed reforms. Representatives of Congo’s presidency and government, along with United Nations officials, international experts, and members of the national human rights commission participated in a ceremony last week in Kalemie, Tanganyika, in eastern Congo. The Congolese government reaffirmed its commitment to justice and reconciliation and to holding to account those responsible for serious crimes committed across the country. Throughout decades of conflict in Congo, armed groups and national security forces have violated the laws of war, attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, leaving death, displacement, and destitution in their wake. Much of the violence has been committed on ethnic lines, and both rebels and national forces have committed sexual slavery and rape.

Abderrazak Kilani, a former government minister and head of the national bar association, has now become one of the most prominent Tunisians to be put behind bars for his peaceful expression since the ouster of the authoritarian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. Kilani has been jailed since March 2 for speech. So far, Tunisia has not seen massive round-ups or police violence since President Saied's power grab on July 25 last year. What is happening is a step-by-step dismantling of democracy and rule of law. Death by a thousand cuts.  

On March 14, 2021, “Zarni” joined protests in Hlaing Tharyar, near Yangon, against the Myanmar military’s February 1 coup. The large protests were planned by factory workers, a large portion of the industrial area’s residents. Protesters prepared barricades to ward off security forces, who had been cracking down on peaceful protests around the country. But there were no arrests that day, Zarni said. “They just shot to kill.”