LONDON: The global system of law and human rights is under threat from a “multiplicity of assaults” which have accelerated since US President Donald Trump’s return to power, Amnesty International said Tuesday in its annual report.
“Unprecedented forces are hunting down the ideals of human rights for all, seeking to destroy an international system forged in the blood and grief of World War Two and its Holocaust,” said the rights group’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard.
The lives of millions of people had been “devastated” in 2024 as a result of conflicts and abuses committed in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine and Afghanistan where women’s freedoms continue to be curtailed.
The report singled out some of the world’s biggest powers such as the US, Russia and China for “undermining” the achievements of international law, as well as the fight against poverty and discrimination.
While these “reckless and punishing offensives” had been underway for several years, according to Amnesty, Trump had served as a “super-accelerator” of those trends.
The new administration has frozen US international aid and reduced its funding to several UN organizations.
The start of Trump’s second term had been marked by a “multiplicity of assaults — against human rights accountability, against international law, and against the UN,” Callamard said, calling for “concerted resistance.”
“While international justice mechanisms have taken important steps toward accountability in some cases, powerful governments have repeatedly blocked attempts to take meaningful action to end atrocities,” Amnesty said.
In particular, it took aim at countries that had challenged decisions by the International Court of Justice in The Hague against Israel, following a complaint of “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza filed by South Africa.
Others, like Hungary, were criticized for refusing to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against several Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The year would be remembered for how “Israel’s military occupation grew ever more brazen and deadly” and how “the USA, Germany and a handful of other European states supported Israel,” the report added.
Amnesty accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
It said Israel had acted with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide.” Israel has repeatedly denied such charges.
The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023 with an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas militants from Gaza resulting in the deaths of 1,218 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data.
Hamas also kidnapped 251 people, 58 of whom remain in the hands of the Islamist group, although the Israeli military says 34 are dead.
In response, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and is conducting a military offensive that has left more than 52,000 dead, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
In December, Amnesty condemned the ongoing “genocide” in Gaza, an accusation since echoed by other NGOs such as HRW and Doctors Without Borders, but strongly rejected by Israel.
Amnesty also highlighted the suffering in Sudan from famine and a conflict between the regular army and the RSF paramilitaries.
The conflict had led to the “largest forced displacement crisis in the world” today, uprooting some 12 million people but had been met with “near-complete global indifference,” Amnesty said.
On another front, the rights body said violence and discrimination against women had “soared” in 2024, both in conflicts, such as in Sudan, and in Afghanistan.
Women in the south Asian country are subject to draconian legislation restricting their freedoms under the Taliban.
Finally, the report highlighted an “urgent need” for governments to do more to regulate AI technologies to safeguard human rights.
It warned also that a growing number of governments were abusing spyware and other surveillance tools against opponents.
Human rights attacks accelerated by Trump second term: Amnesty
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Human rights attacks accelerated by Trump second term: Amnesty
- The lives of millions of people had been “devastated” in 2024 as a result of conflicts and abuses committed in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine and Afghanistan
- “Powerful governments have repeatedly blocked attempts to take meaningful action to end atrocities,” Amnesty said
Mass shooting at a South African bar leaves 11 dead, including 3 children
- Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital
- The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl
CAPE TOWN: A mass shooting carried out Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 11 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the South African Police Services. Police didn’t give details on the ages of those who were injured or their conditions.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and the 11th died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
There have been several mass shootings at bars — sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa — in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
Recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars, however. Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings minutes apart at two houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.
Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.
