Amnesty International Special Report: Iranian Regime sees Human Rights Defenders as a threat

The COVID-19 pandemic and states’ response to it have presented an array of new challenges and threats for those who defend human rights. In April 2020, Amnesty International urged states to ensure that human rights defenders are included in their responses to address the pandemic, as they are key actors to guarantee that any measures implemented respect human rights and do not leave anyone behind. The organization also called on all states not to use pandemic-related restrictions as a pretext to further shrink civic space and crackdown on dissent and those who defend human rights, or to suppress relevant information deemed uncomfortable to the government.1

Despite these warnings, and notwithstanding the commitments from the international community over two decades ago to protect and recognise the right to defend human rights,2 Amnesty International has documented with alarm the continued threats and attacks against human rights defenders in the context of the pandemic.

In these unprecedented times, human rights defenders around the world have stepped up and have played different roles in their own communities, including by providing information on how to protect ourselves from COVID-19, particularly when information is lacking or contradictory; by denouncing the lack of adequate prevention measures and health services, or deficient testing and protective equipment; by providing humanitarian aid for groups that are marginalized and discriminated against; by denouncing the pushback on human rights under the cover of emergency legislation; and by continuing with their long standing human rights work, showing resilience, adaptability and determination.

Despite the important and necessary work human rights defenders do all over the world, Amnesty International has documented scores of different attacks on those who defend human rights since the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. Many states around the world, including those who have long advocated for the protection of human rights, have targeted human rights defenders and other critical voices who have spoken up against their handling of the public health crisis. As a result, in many parts of the world authorities have lashed out against those who have dared to expose and criticise inadequate government responses to the pandemic, or used COVID-19 related measures and other existing legislation to silence those who defend human rights.

Where states were already pushing back on human rights long before the pandemic, this crisis has provided a new pretext to continue violating human rights, shrinking civic space, and attacking human rights defenders and perceived opponents. In the case of those human rights defenders unjustly imprisoned before the pandemic, the political nature of their detention has been further exposed. Indeed, while thousands of prisoners worldwide have been granted early, conditional or temporary release due to the risks posed by COVID-19 in overcrowded prisons, numerous human rights defenders were excluded from these programmes and unjustly remain in prison facing an additional punishment for their activism.

Human rights defenders who live in countries where physical attacks and killings are frequent have been left unprotected and exposed. Despite states’ obligations to provide protection to human rights defenders at risk, lockdowns and other human rights restrictions appear to have led to reduced protection measures and increased opportunities for those who want to silence human rights defenders.

At the same time, those defenders who are marginalized and highly discriminated against have often been excluded and forgotten in the responses to the pandemic. Hard-won rights are being lost in the process as marginalized groups lose their livelihoods, Indigenous lands are further encroached, and women lose their bodily autonomy and face increased gender-based violence.

This briefing brings together examples of these attacks, documented by Amnesty International, on those who have defended human rights since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the briefing includes an annex with a list of other cases documented by the organization in the past few months which are not included in the body of the briefing but which equally represent the breadth of attacks that human rights defenders have been facing in the context of the global pandemic.