Dear Amnesty activists and supporters,
Here is our latest newsletter with updates and actions.
United Kingdom
Appointment of Country Coordinator
For the first time in the history of Amnesty UK a Country Coordinator for the United Kingdom has been appointed and we are delighted to welcome Elena Fowler to this role as part of the Europe Team. Below is Elena’s first contribution to this newsletter together with a link to a new UK Human Rights Newsletter that she will be regularly producing.
Why do we need a Coordinator for the UK you might ask, and why now? Here’s why! – There is increasing evidence that human rights in the UK are under serious threat and there is a worrying steady slide towards authoritarianism that threatens our democracy. We have evidence of: –
• Increasing restriction and criminalisation of protest.
•Erosion of democracy with increasing use of secondary legislation and statutory instruments taking power away from Parliament and giving it to the Executive.
• Increasing use of multiple big databases where our highly personal information is gathered and shared. We can’t know who accesses it, what exactly is on it or what it is being used for.
• Facial recognition and surveillance used alongside AI to inform decisions made about us, despite well documented flaws in the technology.
• A rise in racism which is becoming “normal” and is seldom challenged. We need to know about these frightening developments. We need to help others to know what is going on. We need to turn our concerns into actions. You or your local group can opt in on the Amnesty website and Community Platform to receive Actions, Campaigns and Updates on the UK. We need to turn our concerns into actions, and for that we will need your help. Click on this link download the full UK Human Rights Newsletter. For more information contact Elena Fowler, United Kingdom Country Coordinator
Greece
New campaign against the use of stun guns at demonstrations and public protests
Protests Are Not Battlefields -Patterns of Unlawful Use of Force by Police and Impunity in Greece
Greece has a long history of protest, from anti-austerity, trade unions and student demonstrations, to protests against unlawful use of force by police, mass mobilizations demanding justice for the 2023 Tempi rail tragedy, and protests in solidarity with Palestinians. Despite this tradition and repeated assurances by the Greek authorities that the right to freedom of assembly is guaranteed, Amnesty International’s research reveals persistent and serious breaches both in law and in practice. The findings show a troubling pattern of punitive protest policing and abusive use of force, seemingly aimed at punishing participation and deterring people from exercising their right to peaceful assembly, rather than respecting and facilitating the same.
In 2022, student Giorgos Mavros suffered a perforated eardrum, hearing loss & other injuries after police deployed stun grenades during a peaceful student demo in Thessaloniki Four years on, he’s still suffering. Watch his statement here:
Giorgos: https://x.com/stefsimanowitz/status/2062444918035911003?s=46
Photojournalist Marios also suffered injuries and hearing loss after being hit by a stun grenade while covering a demonstration. Hear his story here:
Marios: https://x.com/stefsimanowitz/status/2062406132753175002?s=46
ACTION REQUEST:
Please sign and share on all your social media platforms Amnesty’s petition against the use of stun guns at demonstrations and public protests, https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/ban-stun-grenades-in-policing-protests-in-greece/
Find the full report here:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur25/1012/2026/en/
Good News from Hungary
Campaigning works! 88,000 people around the world took action and all criminal charges against Pride organizer in Hungary dropped.
In June 2026, the prosecutorial authorities in Hungary dropped all criminal charges against human rights defender and Pécs Pride organizer Géza Buzás-Hábel, bringing an end to the criminal proceedings against him. Please find attached and online the outcome UA.
Géza Buzás-Hábel had been charged for his role in organizing the 2025 Pécs Pride march, a peaceful LGBTI event. The charges were brought under restrictive legislation adopted in 2025 that has adversely affected LGBTI rights and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Hungary. Had he been convicted, he could have faced up to one year in prison.
With the charges now dropped, Géza Buzás-Hábel is no longer at risk of prosecution or punishment in this case. This outcome represents an important victory for the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, as well as for those defending LGBTI rights in Hungary.
Speaking to Amnesty International, Géza said: “I cannot give into fear and let anyone take away our rights. I would like to send the message to everyone that you should not be scared. Thank you very much for supporting me and my case.”
This positive development follows the efforts of supporters around the world who took action in solidarity with Géza and called on the Hungarian authorities to uphold his human rights.
Thank you all for taking action. Given that all criminal proceedings have now been terminated, no further action is required at this stage.
The Human Frame Podcast launches this July
We’re delighted to share that the next season of The Human Frame Podcast, created by our Central Europe Country Coordinator, Łucja Jastrzębska, will officially launch at the end of July 2026.
As both an actor and human rights campaigner, Łucja works at the intersection of the arts and activism, exploring how creativity can uncover deeper truths about what it means to be human. Through The Human Frame, she brings together artists, activists and thinkers to discuss how performance can become a powerful tool for resistance, empathy and social change.
The series features conversations with leading voices from across the human rights and creative sectors, including Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Alissa Kovalen, Strictly Come Dancing’s Honor Roche and Polish Musician-Activist Ania Drewniok.
You can follow the launch of the podcast and listen here:
Website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2552626
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-human-frame/id1850736235
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6IPqSt0zivytyfaqtNvhBg?si=1bcadc8cda46458a
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_humanframe?igsh=NWd3dzZwdXo0MW4w&utm_source=qr
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@humanframepodcast
Support Bodies of The Nation: Abortion Rights in Poland documentary
We’re also pleased to share an update on Łucja’s documentary exploring intergenerational trauma, memory and Poland’s fight for women’s bodily autonomy. The project is now in post-production, and fundraising continues to support the editing phase of the film.
The documentary brings together family members from different generations, activists and experts to examine how bodily autonomy has become intertwined with ideas of nationhood, motherhood and survival. Rather than presenting a sensational account, the film aims to offer an honest and grounded exploration of Poland’s current abortion debate as part of a much longer story about memory, control and resilience.
Through this work, we hope audiences will reflect on how inherited trauma can continue to shape political choices across generations.
The Crowdfunder remains open, and we would be very grateful for any support. To read more about the project or make a donation, please visit:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/intergenerational-trauma-and-abortion-in-poland-do#
If you would like to help with fundraising efforts to support the final stages of editing, please contact Lucja.jastrzebska@amnesty.org.uk.
Once editing is completed, there will also be opportunities to attend future screenings of the film.
Thank you for your ongoing support. Together, we continue to amplify voices, stories and struggles for human rights across Central Europe and beyond.
Poland
Stop cooperating with ICE on unlawful returns of Ukrainians
Amnesty International and Human Rights First published a joint letter to Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior urging an end to the Polish government’s cooperation with the US administration’s unlawful mass deportations of immigrant communities.
According to information gathered by Amnesty International and Human Rights First, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) passed through Polish airports and travelled through Polish territory during at least two operations to remove more than 50 people to Ukraine – an active war zone – in November 2025 and March 2026.
Read more here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/05/poland-stop-cooperating-with-ice-on-unlawful-returns-of-ukrainians/
New Refugee Welcome Network to be established at Amnesty UK
The Amnesty AGM voted overwhelmingly (97.6%) for the establishment of a Refugee Welcome network to help roll back the toxic anti refugee and migrant narrative of the Far Right. This toxic propaganda, based on the notion of white supremacy and the myth of the great replacement targets refugees and migrants first, and Black and Asian, particularly Muslim communities second. Refugees and migrants are easy scapegoats and some mainstream parties and politicians have shamefully adopted this narrative in order reclaim votes from far-right parties.
The refugees and migrants who arrived at our shores by small boat or in the back of a truck because safe and legal routes are not available, have often fled the most atrocious human rights violations, in their countries of origin and on the journey. The majority are from countries with shocking human rights records: Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan. Most have a valid claim for asylum. As human rights defenders we need to campaign and advocate for their protection. We need to reclaim the narrative and challenge the toxic propaganda with compassion and facts.
The network will enable us to work together across the UK, and with other networks and refugee supporting organisations locally and nationally. I am meeting Mike Quinn our Amnesty community organiser for first talks on the implementation.
ACTION REQUEST: Please email me if you and/or your group wants to be involved. Kind regards Ulrike Ulrike.schmidt@amnesty.org.uk
TÜRKİYE
Turkish Human Rights Defender, Günal Kurşun was a keynote speaker at Amplify 2026 in Brighton
Günal Kurşun, is a lawyer and human rights defender, who is a member of the Board of Amnesty Türkiye and (some of you may remember) was one of the Istanbul 10 caught up in the Büyükada case 2017-2022 with Amnesty Türkiye Board Chair Taner Kılıç and Director Idil Eser.
4 of the original 10, including Günal, were convicted on spurious terrorism related charges but eventually acquitted on appeal. Amnesty UK was very heavily involved in campaigning on the case, both centrally through the office as well as through me as CC, and Kate Allen visited Türkiye on a number of occasions to attend the court hearings.
The introductory, keynote panel chaired by Kerry Moscogiuri focussed on the worldwide rise in Authoritarianism. With his lived experience of that in Türkiye Günal was able to talk to us not only about his personal experience but also about how Amnesty Türkiye are having to deal with that on a day to day basis.
Having a member of another Amnesty section as a keynote speaker was an important show of solidarity within the beleaguered Amnesty movement.
As part of his role as a Board member at Amnesty Türkiye, Günal regularly visits other human rights defenders in prison including the 5 Gezi Prisoners of Conscience who we have campaigned on behalf of for several years. In his most recent visit he went to see Osman Kavala, sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. One of the messages he brought us from Osman and the other Gezi PoCs was how much they value all the solidarity cards and letters that they receive from Amnesty activists in the UK. Not only do value them for the messages they receive but also for the important way in which they remind the authorities in Türkiye that there are people all over the world who will continue to campaign for the release of these unjustly imprisoned brave individuals.
PLEASE CONTINUE WITH THIS WORK
Türkiye: Conviction of peaceful environmental activist Esra Işık, “a devastating blow”
Reacting to news that environmental activist Esra Işık has been convicted of “resisting a public official to prevent them from performing their duty” and “insulting a public official” for taking part in a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation decision that is paving the way for a project to expand a coal mine in south-western Türkiye, Esther Major, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Europe, said on 6 July:
“Today’s decision is a devastating blow for Esra Işık and for those engaged in the long struggle to stave off eviction and protect rural settlements and farmland from an expansion of mining activities. It is also a deeply disappointing outcome for those fighting to end the criminalization of environmental human rights defenders by Turkish authorities.
“It is unconscionable that Esra Işık has been convicted and could be facing imprisonment if her conviction is upheld on appeal, simply for defending her community and the local environment.
“Authorities in Türkiye must stop misusing the criminal justice system to crack down on dissent and instead protect the right to protest.”
Background:
Esra Işık is a prominent figure in the campaign against the expansion of coal mining activities in Akbelen Forest in Muğla, south-western Türkiye, which are intended to feed nearby power plants resulting in deforestation and the loss of local livelihoods.
Esra Işık was taken into custody on 30 March 2026 and detained for 42 days for joining a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation decision impacting over 600 parcels of land in the Akbelen Forest area. She was charged with “resisting a public official to prevent them from performing their duty” and “insulting a public official.”
On 6 July at the fourth hearing in her trial, she was found guilty of “resisting a public official to prevent them from performing their duty” and “insulting a public official”. She was sentenced to two years and one month in prison for “resisting a public official” and to a fine of 44,200 TL (830 Euro) for “insulting a public official”.
The court ruled to defer the announcement of the verdict for the latter charge for five years. Esra Işık will be at liberty pending the appeal against her conviction and Amnesty will now consider what further follow up action to take. In the mean time Esra has sent the following message to all Amnesty activists who have supported her in the last 3 months:
“During this period, when I was unjustly imprisoned, deprived of my freedom, prosecuted and punished, every letter you sent, every message you wrote, every word of encouragement, and every act of solidarity you showed in the courtroom and outside the prison reminded me that I was not alone. As I have always said, I am simply defending the land where I was born and raised—the land to which my roots belong—our olive groves and our villages. But through your solidarity, you stood for much more than Esra, the daughter of a villager. You stood with İkizköy. You stood with Akbelen. You stood with the villagers who, despite all the pressure, refuse to abandon their land and their future. You showed that there are still people in this country who believe in conscience, justice, and the power of standing together. For this, I thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart. They may sentence me. But they cannot intimidate me or the struggle we have built together into giving up. Because we did not embark on this path for ourselves alone. We are fighting so that we can continue to live with dignity on the land where we were born, continue to make our living from it, and leave our children a country that has not been plundered by corporations. Today I am free, but our struggle has not yet won its freedom. Our lands are still under threat. Our villages are still being sacrificed to corporate interests. That is why I know that now, more than ever, we need solidarity. We need to stand side by side, amplify one another’s voices, and keep hope alive.
This experience has reminded me of something deeply important: there are still people in this country who refuse to bow to injustice. There are people who, even without knowing one another, can share the same pain and the same hope. That is where my hope lies. Thank you for being here. Now it is time to stand shoulder to shoulder once again. It is time to defend our land, our villages, our olive groves, and our future together. Because I know that what will keep this country and hope itself alive is our refusal to give up on one another. By standing united, by remaining steadfast with one another and with our just cause, we will prevail in the end.” With love and solidarity, Esra Işık
TÜRKİYE: RESPECT THE RULE OF LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS (AI Public statement 9 June 2026)
The regional appeals court interim ruling in May annulling the outcome of the November 2023 congress and subsequent congresses of the main opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) is a serious blow to the rule of law and human rights in Türkiye. The decision, which was made public on 21 May, constitutes a serious escalation in the politically motivated attacks on the right to freedom of association and crackdown on the CHP and its hundreds of elected representatives and municipality officials since the imprisonment of its presidential candidate and Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu in March 2025. There are serious concerns that the justice system is being instrumentalized to change the outcome of internal elections of a political party in direct violation of the rights of its membership to freedom of association and expression as guaranteed under international human rights law and domestic law.
In October 2025, a first instance court had rejected the allegations by a few current and former members of the CHP that the election of Özgür Özel MP as their leader at the November 2023 party congress had been as a result of fraudulent activities, including payments to delegates to secure votes. In reaching its decision, the first instance court stated that a number of the applicants had no legal capacity to bring proceedings on grounds of their non membership of the CHP and that subsequent elections had also confirmed Özgür Özel as the elected leader, thus anyhow superseding the disputed prior congress outcome. Despite the lack of concrete evidence to substantiate the allegations of fraud, the Ankara regional court of appeals No. 36 overturned the first instance court ruling and ordered the restoration of former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to lead the Party. The decision is subject to an appeal at the Court of Cassation.
On Sunday 24 May, the police intervened to implement the ruling and to physically remove Özgür Özel and his team from the CHP headquarters in Ankara. Law enforcement officials used tear gas inside the building injuring some individuals inside. Police also deployed water cannons outside the headquarters, injuring individuals gathered outside, despite the crowd being peaceful. The use of tear gas in confined or enclosed spaces where individuals cannot safely escape, particularly in areas with poor ventilation, is unlawful and could amount to torture and other ill-treatment. Similarly, the use of water cannons is strictly limited to situations involving widespread violence where less harmful and more targeted crowd control measures are unavailable, ineffective or inappropriate to contain any unlawful conduct. Any such use of force must comply with the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality, and accountability.
The politically motivated mass trial of the CHP politician, presidential candidate and Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, and over 400 others including members of his team, district mayors, municipality workers and businesspeople on charges including of running a criminal organization, bribery, embezzlement, money laundering, extortion and tender rigging began on 9 March 2026 in a courtroom at the Marmara prison complex in Silivri, Istanbul.2 Ekrem İmamoğlu, who has been held in pretrial detention since March 2025, faces up to 2,352 years in prison if he is found guilty. The bulk of the charges rely on some defendants making allegations in exchange for possible leniency such as a reduced sentence and 15 alleged witnesses whose identities are not available to the defence. In addition to the 4,000-page indictment,there are the investigation documents which run into hundreds of thousands, the large number of people being indicted and a trial expected to last several years which raise serious fair trial concerns, including with regard to the right to mount an effective defence. The highly politicized nature of the charges brought against the main opposition party’s presidential candidate were preceded by other actions which would impede or deter him from being a presidential candidate, including the cancellation of his university degree 30 years after he received it and the targeting of his and relatives of some of the other defendants with allegations of corruption. In a further indication of the weaponization of the criminal justice system to crack down on the political opposition more broadly, CHP held municipalities have been exclusively targeted with mass detentions across the country in politically motivated investigations.
Amnesty International calls on the Turkish authorities to uphold the state’s obligations under international human rights law and standards including by respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of everyone to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, ending the crackdown on peaceful dissent and political opposition, as well as International also calls on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release those detained solely for the peaceful exercise of their human rights and drop the charges they face.
Europe
Council of Europe’s political declaration on the European Convention on Human Rights “weakens protections for refugees and migrants”
Kerry Moscogiuri, Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, commenting on the Council of Europe’s political declaration on 15 May 2026 in Chisinau, Moldovaon the 15 May concerning ECHR and migration, said:
“It is deeply disappointing to see a UK government that pledged to remain committed to the European Convention on Human Rights now supporting efforts to weaken protections for refugees and migrants.”
“Attempts to pressure courts into interpreting human rights protections in ways more politically convenient to Governments risk undermining respect for the rule of law and the fundamental principle that human rights must be universal and permanent.
“Governments across Europe may feel politically threatened by rising populism, but human rights protections exist precisely for moments like this, when fear, political pressure and scapegoating are at their height. Weakening protections for some of the most vulnerable people in Europe will not reduce the need for people to seek safety or make societies fairer or safer. It risks fuelling a damaging race to the bottom while handing victories to those who will never be satisfied until the UK leaves the Convention altogether.”
For more details of the Chisinau declaration, see the UK_Human_Rights_Newsletter.
Please contact us using the addresses below for further information or to make comments on the newsletter.
Türkiye : Chris Ramsey Chris.ramsey@amnesty.org.uk
Central Europe: Lucja Jastrzebska Lucja.Jastrzebska@amnesty.org.uk
Western and Northern Europe: Jovana Bosnjak Jovana.Bosnjak@amnesty.org.uk
South East Europe: Ulrike Schmidt Ulrike.schmidt@amnesty.org.uk
United Kingdom: Elena Fowler Elena.Fowler@amnesty.org.uk
