Human Rights Watch - The African Mirror

Jan

15

2026

Saudi Arabia executes record 356 people in 2025, surpassing previous year’s high

WORLD

SAUDI Arabia executed at least 356 people in 2025, marking the highest number of executions in a single year since monitoring began and breaking the record set just one year earlier, Human Rights Watch has reported. The 2025 total surpasses the 345 executions recorded in 2024, representing the second consecutive year Saudi authorities have set a new execution record. Foreign nationals convicted of nonlethal drug offences accounted for the majority of executions, according to data compiled by Reprieve and the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights. Of the 356 executed, 240 had been convicted of drug-related offences, with 188 of…

Jan

10

2026

By The African Mirror

Iran protests: At least 28 killed in security crackdown

WORLD

IRANIAN security forces have killed at least 28 protesters and bystanders in a deadly crackdown on nationwide demonstrations that began last week, according to human rights organisations. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said Friday that security forces unlawfully used firearms, metal pellets, tear gas and beatings to disperse largely peaceful protests that erupted on December 28 following a sharp currency collapse. The deaths occurred between December 31 and January 3 across 13 cities in eight provinces, with the deadliest violence concentrated in areas home to ethnic minorities. At least eight people were killed in Lorestan province and five in…

Dec

03

2025

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Tunisia: Opposition leader arrested hours after 45-year sentences to other leaders

NEWS

TUNISIAN police arrested prominent opposition figure Chaima Issa during a Saturday protest in the capital, just one day after an appeals court delivered prison sentences of up to 45 years to a group of opposition leaders, businessmen, and lawyers in what human rights observers have condemned as a politically motivated show trial. The dramatic arrest—which Issa herself predicted moments before police detained her—crystallises the central role Tunisia's criminal justice system now plays in President Kais Saied's systematic suppression of political opposition, transforming what was once the Arab Spring's sole democratic success story into an increasingly authoritarian state lurching from one…

Nov

21

2025

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of war crimes in mass West Bank expulsions

WORLD

HUMAN Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcibly expelling 32,000 Palestinians from three West Bank refugee camps earlier this year and barring them from returning to their demolished homes. In a 105-page report, the international rights organisation detailed what it called "ethnic cleansing" carried out by Israeli forces in coordinated raids on the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps between January and February 2025, while global attention remained focused on the Gaza ceasefire. The report documents "Operation Iron Wall," which began January 21 with Israeli forces storming Jenin camp using Apache…

Aug

21

2025

By The African Mirror

Peace hopes for eastern DRC shattered by mass killings during ceasefire talks

NEWS

THE most promising international peace initiative for eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in decades has been dealt a devastating blow following revelations that Rwanda-backed M23 rebels executed over 140 civilians during the same period that diplomats celebrated breakthrough agreements in Washington and Doha. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has disclosed that the M23 armed group carried out systematic killings of mostly ethnic Hutu civilians between July 10-30 in at least 14 villages near Virunga National Park — even as negotiators were finalising what was hailed as a historic ceasefire agreement signed in Qatar on July 19. The massacre represents one of…

Dec

18

2024

By The African Mirror

Voices of resilience: Sudan’s survivors speak out

NEWS

IN the aftermath of unimaginable violence, the women of Sudan's South Kordofan state have shown extraordinary courage. Their stories, meticulously documented by Human Rights Watch, reveal not just the depths of human cruelty, but the profound strength of survival. Take Hania's experience. At 18 and three months pregnant, she was abducted by Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters from her home in Fayu. For three months, she was held captive at a military base, repeatedly raped and beaten. "My head is full of bad thoughts," she says. "I became absent-minded. I cannot function normally, sometimes I think I lost my mind."…

Dec

18

2024

By The African Mirror

Syria: Mass grave in Damascus should be protected, investigated

WORLD

THE state of a mass grave in Damascus and statements by people living in the surrounding area suggest that the area is a mass crime scene and may have been the site of other summary executions, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch visited the site in the southern Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamon on December 11 and 12, 2024, finding scores of human remains both at the location of an April 2013 massacre and strewn throughout the surrounding neighbourhood. Transitional Syrian authorities should take steps to urgently secure and preserve physical evidence across the country of grave international crimes…

Aug

01

2024

By The African Mirror

Sudan’s RSF committing widespread sexual violence: report

NEWS

THE Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group has “terrorised” women and girls in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and the adjacent cities of Omdurman and Bahri, committing acts of sexual violence that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch has said in a new report. Based on interviews with dozens of healthcare providers, social workers, lawyers, and emergency response room volunteers, the report documents widespread cases of rape, gang rape, and the forced marriage of women and girls by RSF fighters. “I have slept with a knife under my pillow for months in fear from the raids that lead to rape…

Jul

30

2024

By The African Mirror

Sexual violence rife in the Sudan civil war

NEWS

SEXUAL violence - against women and men - has become widespread in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, amid the ongoing civil war, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. The report alleges that the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been accused of committing numerous acts of sexual violence, including gang rape and forced marriages. While some attacks have also been attributed to the Sudanese army, the RSF is reported to be the primary perpetrator. Reuters reports that women and girls have been held in conditions potentially amounting to sexual slavery, with assaults sometimes occurring in front of victims' families. The…

Jul

18

2024

By The African Mirror

Salvadoran minors pay price of gang crackdown

WORLD

ALMOST 3,000 children have been arrested and 1,000 convicted over mostly gang membership-related charges in El Salvador as part of President Nayib Bukele’s so-called “war on gangs”, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The report includes testimonies of 90 people, among them 66 victims of abuse. Documented are several instances of human rights violations against minors, including coercion into false confessions and, at times, mistreatment and torture. The arrests began in March 2022, when Bukele announced a state of exception and a set of “mano dura” (“iron fist”) policies aimed at tackling gang violence in what was then…