The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (“BHRC”) has raised concerns regarding the prosecution and judicial harassment of a number of lawyers and human rights defenders in Bahrain in a letter to the King sent today. The letter follows the recent conviction and sentencing of human rights lawyer Abdullah Al-Shamlawi on 30 June...
The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (“BHRC”) and Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada (“LRWC”) condemn the mass arrests, violence and excessive use of force against peaceful protesters in Belarus following the contested preliminary results of the presidential election on Sunday 9 August 2020. The USA, UK and the EU have refused to accept...
On Friday 14th August senior human rights lawyer Prashant Bhushan was convicted of criminal contempt of court by the Supreme Court of India. In publishing two tweets relating to the Chief Justice of India and the role of the Supreme Court in the last six years, on his Twitter feed, he was found to have...
On Wednesday 22 July, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC), the All Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group (PHRG) and the APPG on Uyghurs were pleased to host an online panel event to launch BHRC’s new high-level report: The Responsibility of States under International Law to Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. Allegations...
The undersigned organisations have been following recent developments in the cases of human rights lawyers Ebru Timtik and Aytaç Ünsal, who have been on hunger strike since February 2020. On 5 April 2020, the Turkish Day of the Lawyer, Timtik and Ünsal announced that they would persist in their hunger strike even if it leads...
Last week, Hong Kong Watch and the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) held a closed-door Webinar bringing together prominent members of the British and Hong Kong legal and academic community, with parliamentarians from the UK and the EU also in attendance, to discuss the impact of the new National Security Law in Hong Kong. The topics...
The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (“BHRC”) has called on the King of Bahrain to suspend or commute the death sentences of Mohamed Ramadan and Husain Ali Moosa in an open letter sent today. Mr Ramadan and Mr Moosa were convicted of carrying out a 2014 bombing in Bahrain. Both men allege...
The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) welcomes the UN Human Rights Committee’s decision to adopt the Resolution on the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, jurors and assessors, and the independence of lawyers. The Resolution condemns “the increasingly frequent attacks on the independence of judges, lawyers, prosecutors and court officials, in...
The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) has today published a new high-level Briefing Paper on the responsibility of governments under international law in relation to the widely reported severe ill-treatment, repression and abuse of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims by China. The report, “Responsibility of States under international law to Uyghurs...
Marking the 30th anniversaries of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and the IBA Standards for the Independence of the Legal Profession, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, together with its partner organisations – IBAHRI, Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada, Lawyers for Lawyers, International Commission of Jurists, and Human Rights...
The Bar Human Rights Committee is the independent,
international human rights arm of the Bar of England
and Wales, dedicated to promoting justice and respect
for human rights through the rule of law.