Newly elected members of Russia’s State Duma, or lower house of parliament, must not shirk their duty to urgently address the country’s increasingly dismal human rights record by amending repressive legislation and resuming parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, Amnesty International said today.
The US must now commit to a full, transparent, and impartial investigation into this incident. Anyone suspected of criminal responsibility should be prosecuted in a fair trial. Survivors and families of the victims should be kept informed of the progress of the investigation and be given full reparation.
Responding to the jailing after convictions for “unauthorized assembly” of 12 people who took part in a peaceful vigil to mark the Tiananmen crackdown on June 4 last year, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director Yamini Mishra said:
“The jailing of 12 Hongkongers who took part in an entirely peaceful, but ‘unauthorized’, vigil to commemorate the victims of China’s violent Tiananmen crackdown is another outrageous attack on the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.
