AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

surveillance, while independent media outlets
and journalists faced intimidation and
harassment by police and the security
services. The authorities continued to order
internet service providers to block access to
certain news or social media sites, while a
new decree required internet providers and
telecommunications operators to channel
their services through a new single
communications centre under the stateowned
company Tajiktelecom.
Azerbaijan continued to repress opposition
activists, human rights NGOs and
independent media. Twelve prisoners of
conscience were released, but 14 remained
in jail at the end of the year, including Ilgar
Mammadov, whose sentence was upheld by
the Supreme Court in November despite the
European Court of Human Rights ruling
requiring his release. Amnesty International
was denied entry to the country, bringing
Azerbaijan in line with Uzbekistan and
Turkmenistan. Public protests remained
severely restricted; the few that took place
were dispersed by police with excessive force
and political activists were arrested for
organizing them.
The media in Ukraine remained generally
free, but a number of media outlets
perceived as supporting pro-Russian or proseparatist
views and those particularly critical
of the authorities faced harassment.
Independent journalists were unable to work
in Crimea, where the occupying Russian
authorities continued to severely restrict the
rights to freedom of expression, of association
and of peaceful assembly. Crimean Tatars
faced particular repression.
The respect for freedom of expression
deteriorated sharply in Turkey, especially after
the declaration of a state of emergency in the
wake of the failed coup attempt in July. There
were 118 journalists remanded in pre-trial
detention and 184 media outlets were
arbitrarily and permanently closed down
under executive decrees. Internet censorship
increased and 375 NGOs, including women’s
rights groups, lawyers associations and
humanitarian organizations were shut by
executive decree in November.
IMPUNITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Torture and other ill-treatment was
widespread throughout the former Soviet
Union; nominal improvements in law
continued to be made in a few countries, but
impunity remained the norm. The prospect of
accountability for the large-scale abuses by
law enforcement officials during the
Euromaydan protests in 2013-14, the Gezi
park protests in 2013 and the ethnic clashes
in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 receded in
Ukraine, remained remote in Turkey and
dwindled to vanishing in Kyrgyzstan.
In the EU, accountability for complicity in
the US-led rendition programme remained
distant, despite ongoing proceedings before
the European Court of Human Rights. By the
end of the year, not a single person had been
found criminally liable for their involvement in
the unlawful detention and torture and other
ill-treatment of terrorism suspects in Poland,
Lithuania or Romania.
Having made notable progress in the
eradication of torture in places of detention
over the last decade, there was an alarming
spike in the number of reported cases in the
wake of the failed coup attempt in Turkey.
With thousands of people detained in official
and unofficial police detention, reports of
severe beatings, sexual assault, threats of
rape and rape were consistently but
implausibly denied by the Turkish authorities.
DEATH PENALTY
Towards the end of the year, Turkey’s
President Recip Tayyip Erdoğan promised to
put the reintroduction of the death penalty
before Parliament, in defiance of widespread
international condemnation and Turkey’s
obligations as a Council of Europe member
state. Belarus, Europe’s last remaining
executing state, executed four people in the
course of the year, despite the government
making – not for the first time – some
encouraging noises about its imminent
abolition. In Kazakhstan, one man was
sentenced to death on terrorism-related
charges.
46 Amnesty International Report 2016/17