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On 1 November 2019, the Saudi authorities released two Qatari citizens, Ali Nasser Ali Jarallah (70) and his son Abdulhadi Ali Nasser Ali Jarallah (17), who then returned home to Doha. On 18 August 2019, their family lost all contact with them as they travelled through Saudi Arabia to visit relatives. Amnesty International was concerned that they may have been forcibly disappeared and urged King Salman to reveal the whereabouts of the father and his son and immediately release them unless they were promptly charged with a recognizable criminal offence.
Slovak MPs are debating a bill that aims to further restrict access to abortion. If passed, it would require women seeking abortion care to fulfil a number of mandatory requirements that are not justified by medical reasons and would undermine women’s privacy, personal integrity, autonomy in decision-making about health care and will subject them to harmful stigma, humiliation and degrading treatment. The Slovak Parliament must urgently reject this bill.
On 12 November, renowned Turkish author and former newspaper editor Ahmet Altan was detained after a court overturned the decision taken on 4 November to release him from over three years in detention. Ahmet Altan is a prisoner of conscience and must be immediately and unconditionally released.
On 23 November, adequate police protection enabled up to one hundred transgender rights activists in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to hold the 2019 Trans March and mark Transgender Day of Remembrance. The police successfully prevented attempts by groups openly advocating hatred and discrimination to disrupt the event.
University lecturer Firew Bekele was released on 19 November, after spending three months in detention for his alleged role in writing and publishing a book "the Hijacked Revolution". He was a prisoner of conscience and should have never been persecuted.
Nigerian authorities have continued to detain human rights defenders Omoyele Sowore and Olawale Bakare at the Department of State Services in Abuja, and Agba Jalingo in Calabar prison, southern Nigeria, since their arrests in August. They are facing trumped-up charges of treason because they demanded government accountability. The maximum penalty for the offense of treason is the death penalty. They must be released immediately and unconditionally.
Ubai Aboudi, NGO worker and education activist, has been issued a four-month administrative detention order by the Israeli military commander of the West Bank. Ubai Aboudi has been detained since 13 November 2019, without charge or trial in Ofer prison, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Authorities found the body of Arnulfo Cerón Soriano, indigenous human rights defender, on 20 November in a clandestine grave near the city of Tlapa, Guerrero state in western Mexico. Arnulfo was a member of the Popular Mountain Front and Movement for the Freedom of Political Prisoners of the State of Guerrero (MOLPEG). He disappeared on 11 October on his way to a meeting in this city. Authorities must redouble their efforts to investigate his disappearance and death, holding those responsible to account, and ensure safety of Arnulfo´s family and organizations that support him.
The whereabouts of Gökhan Türkmen and Mustafa Yılmaz, who were missing for nine and eight months respectively, have been disclosed to their families by the Turkish authorities. Gökhan Türkmen was registered in police detention on 5 November and Mustafa Yılmaz on 21 October. They have both been remanded in prison pending their prosecution and are being held in Sincan prison, Ankara.
On 15 November President Sebastián Piñera announced an agreement among all political parties to hold a referendum in 2020 about a new Constitution, which was part of the main demand of those protesting since 18 October. The President previously decreed the end of the state of emergency, effectively taking the army from the streets on 27 October. We are closely following the dire situation in the country and will set a new campaign on this human rights crisis.