Serbia

Detention facilities were overcrowded and health risks to inmates were exacerbated by COVID-19. By October, there were 10,804 detainees of which 5,052 were in pre-trial detention. Between March and September, the government released 3,731 prisoners in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The death of two detainees from COVID-19 in Thiès prison led to hunger strikes by inmates calling for mass testing. At least six people died apparently due to poor detention conditions while in police custody and in Thiès and Diourbel prisons.

LGBTI activists were subjected to smear campaigns and death threats. Under the Criminal Code, same-sex sexual relations were punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. In October, 25 men and boys were arrested at a private party in Dakar and charged with “unnatural acts” and detained. On 6 November, a court in Dakar sentenced two of the men indicted to six-months and five men to three-months in prison. The rest, including those who were under-age, were acquitted.

A draft law to regulate Qur ’anic schools awaited parliamentary approval. Twelve Qur ’anic students were reportedly tortured and otherwise ill-treated by their teachers. In February, a 13-year-old boy was beaten to death by his teacher in Louga city. In March, the Dakar Criminal Court sentenced a Qur ’anic teacher to 10 years’ imprisonment for “assault and battery of an individual under 13”; another staff member was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for failing to assist the victim.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government said it had taken 2,015 children off the streets, returned 1,424 of them to their families and placed the rest in government centres. Rural communities in the Thiès region continued to challenge the threat of forced eviction as agricultural and petrochemical companies encroached on their land. A farming community in the village of Ndingler, near Mbour city, lost 0.75 square kilometers of communal land to an agri-business project. In July, the authorities brokered a truce, allowing farmers limited access to their land.

The villagers of Tobène accused a petrochemical company of polluting their farmlands and challenged the government’s decision to allocate an additional 6 hectares of farming land to the company. The residents protested the company’s compensation offer of XOF9 million (US$16,110). In August, demonstrations turned violent and the gendarmerie arrested 22 residents, including the activist Ardo Gningue, who said he was tortured and otherwise ill-treated during detention in Tivaouane.

ABUSES BY ARMED GROUPS

There was a resurgence of violence in Casamance. In August, Hamidou Diémé, a former combatant of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance armed group, was killed in Diégoune in the Ziguinchor region, by unidentified gunmen. No one had been brought to justice for the attack by the end of the year.

Republic of Serbia Head of state: Aleksandar Vučić Head of government: Ana Brnabjić

With an increasingly repressive President, and no viable opposition, the Serbian government controlled both police and judiciary, weakening the rule of law, eroding political and civil rights and enabling widespread corruption.

In March, state of emergency COVID-19 legislation introduced a 5pm to 5am curfew and other restrictive measures; armed forces patrolled Belgrade and other cities to enforce public health measures.1 People who violated unclear self-isolation regulations were sentenced to up to three years' imprisonment. Measures were lifted in May for election campaigning and reimposed in June, triggering mass demonstrations.

There was little progress in normalizing Serbia-Kosovo relations in EU-facilitated talks.

No progress was made towards implementing the national war crimes strategy, opening investigations into the backlog of more than 2,500 war crimes cases, or indicting senior police or military officials for command responsibility. Seven indictments were raised, and five first instance decisions were delivered. Prosecutions of low-level perpetrators in cases transferred from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were extremely slow. Proceedings against 10 men related to the Srebrenica genocide continued to be delayed by absences of the accused. In January, proceedings opened against a Bosnian Serb police officer, charged with raping a Bosniak woman in August 1992.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the retrial continued of former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović for “ethnic cleansing” in Croatia and BiH.

New legislation providing reparation to victims of war discriminated against civilian victims. A series of cumulative conditions required a higher percentage of bodily injury, only applied to those injured in Serbia and discriminated between physical and psychological damage. An estimated 15,000 people, including relatives of the missing and survivors of sexual violence, still had no right to reparation.

Impunity persisted for those responsible for the transfer of bodies of over 900 KosovoAlbanians from Kosovo to Serbia in 1999. The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions urged Serbia to prosecute senior police officials suspected of murdering the three US-Albanian Bytici brothers, whose remains were recovered from a police training ground in 2001. In November, human remains, believed to be Kosovo Albanians, were discovered in a quarry in Kizevak.

Over 70 people were seriously injured and 223 arrested during several days of demonstrations in July following the President’s ban on public gatherings and proposed weekend curfew. Although rightwing activists invaded the Parliament, most protesters were peaceful. However, police fired tear gas and stun grenades indiscriminately, and protesters and bystanders alike were charged by mounted police or beaten. Four journalists were seriously injured by police in separate incidents across the country, including Žikica Stevanović who was hospitalized with head injuries, despite showing his press card. A joint NGO report documenting 13 allegations of ill-treatment was sent in July to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture. No police officers had been prosecuted by the end of the year.

Discrimination persisted against ethnic minorities, and anti-migrant protests and attacks increased. The Equality Commissioner reported an increase in hate speech during the state of emergency; her

mandate expired in May, rendering the institution unable to function effectively until her re-election in November.

Physical attacks, intimidation and political slurs on social media against media workers continued. In April, journalist Ana Lalić was arrested for “causing panic” when investigating conditions in hospitals; staff were prohibited from providing “unauthorized” information. Journalists were briefly excluded from government press conferences, ostensibly for health reasons.

In July, the Finance Ministry targeted individuals, investigative journalists and 37 human rights NGOs in demanding bank account details under a law used to investigate terrorist financing and money laundering.

In June, the Belgrade Court of Appeal awarded €2,600 compensation each to two Roma families who were unlawfully evicted from their homes in Belvil, Belgrade, in 2012 and bussed to a derelict warehouse in Niš. Violating legal protections against eviction, Belgrade authorities paid Roma residents at Resnik €19,000 “compensation” to leave the settlement in December.

Between January and November, 24,180 refugees and migrants arrived in Serbia. Asylum claims were suspended until May as refugees and migrants in overcrowded asylum reception centres were placed under mandatory quarantine controlled by the military. Support staff and NGOs were denied entry, although preventative health measures were not implemented. In May, a government order restricting exit from asylum centres was successfully challenged by NGOs, but in October refugees’ freedom of movement was again limited.

The asylum process remained inadequate: of 2,639 refugees registering an intention to claim asylum, only 118 applied; by 30 November, 16 had received asylum and 18 subsidiary protection.

Pushbacks into Serbia from EU member states, and from Serbia to neighbouring countries, continued. In April, 16 men, believing they were being moved to another temporary reception centre due to COVID-19, were driven by police to the southern border and forced at gunpoint to walk into North Macedonia.

In April, the NGO Autonomous Women’s Center reported a threefold increase in contacts from women during the curfew. Many described the intensification of psychological, economic or physical violence, and their fear of reporting violence to the authorities without access to protection. At least 22 women were killed by a partner or family member before 25 November.

1. Policing the pandemic: Human rights violations in the enforcement of

COVID-19 measures in Europe (EUR 01/2511/2020)

Republic of Sierra Leone Head of state and government: Julius Maada Bio

The political tensions between the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party and the All People's Congress (APC), the main opposition party, persisted. Measures taken

to fight the COVID-19 pandemic led to violations of economic, social, civil and political rights.

In May, Sylvia Blyden, publisher of the Awareness Times newspaper and a leading APC member, was arrested and charged with, among other things, seditious and defamatory libel, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and publication of false news for alleging, on social media, that former Defence Minister Alfred Paolo Conteh had been ill-treated in detention. Her case was brought on the same charges before a magistrate court and the High Court. In July, the High Court dismissed the charges against her on the basis of insufficient evidence.

In July, Parliament repealed Part V of the 1965 POA, used to prosecute people on defamation and sedition charges for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Consequently, all charges against Sylvia Blyden before the magistrate court were dropped in November.

On 9 December, 17 environmental and land rights activists, members of the Malen Affected Land Owners Association, were discharged after a prolonged trial which followed their arrest in early 2019 after a land rights demonstration.

Concerns about public order management by the security forces continued.

In April, during the lockdown period imposed to control the spread of COVID-19, there were multiple allegations of police brutality on social media, notably against those who went out for essentials like food and water.

According to the Freetown Correctional Centre’s July report, 30 prisoners and one correction officer were killed, and dozens of people injured during a riot at the Pademba Road prison in the capital, Freetown, on 29 April. The prisoners were protesting against overcrowding and COVID-19 restrictions. The report concluded that the military used reasonable force to control the riot while NGOs called for an independent investigation into the incident.

Between 17 and 18 July, security forces used excessive force against protesters at a demonstration, which turned violent in Makeni, a city in the Northern Province. According to NGO reports, six protesters were killed in the demonstration against the government’s decision to relocate an electricity power generator to another town.

Sexual violence continued unabated. The Rainbo Initiative NGO said it received over 1,000 reports of sexual assault between January and May. Survivors of sexual violence continued to struggle to access justice, health care, legal aid and counselling. In July, the first Sexual Offences Model Court was established to expedite sexual offencesrelated trials and reduce the backlog of cases. A one-stop centre for sexual violence survivors was established, providing psychosocial support and treatment.

On 30 March, the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education announced with immediate effect the lifting of the ban on pregnant girls attending school and sitting exams. In 2019, the ECOWAS Court of Justice had ruled that the ban should be revoked.

In December, the President launched the first Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy, partly to normalize the gender balance within the political process.

Male consensual same-sex sexual relations remained a criminal offence under the Offences Against the Person Act, carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. LGBTI people continued to suffer discrimination and stigmatization.

In April, the government pledged that health workers’ wages would reflect the risks to their