Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, members of the committee. I'd like to start by thanking you for inviting Amnesty International to speak to the state of human rights globally. We're certainly meeting at a grim time.
There are several grave and urgent situations that merit your attention in China, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yemen and West Cameroon, among others. I would be happy to brief you further on these in the future, but today, as requested, I will focus my intervention on a few crises that are not widely covered in the Canadian media.
I'd like to start with one exception, which is the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine. To bring the committee up to speed with our latest information, Amnesty International has verified irrefutable evidence of Russia's violation of international humanitarian law by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons in densely populated areas. These are very inaccurate explosive weapons that regularly miss their targets by half a kilometre or more, and cause civilian deaths and severe injuries. Their use in populated areas is absolutely inexcusable.
We've also documented other incidents in the first hours of the Russian invasion on February 24, including four schools and one hospital. One rocket dropped cluster munitions on a nursery and kindergarten in Sumy Oblast, where civilians were sheltering from the fighting. They killed several civilians, including Alisa Hlans, a seven-year-old little girl, and wounded another child. This strike may constitute a war crime and should be investigated as such. These heinous crimes, as well as Russia's crackdown on anti-war protesters and domestic media, need to be thoroughly investigated.
Now to key countries and themes, I'll start with Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. After four years of extensive research and analysis, Amnesty International released a report earlier this month that documents how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes inside Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as displaced refugees in other countries.
Our 274 pages of research and analysis detail how Israel's appalling treatment of Palestinians meets the definition of apartheid, which is a crime against humanity under international law as defined in the Rome Statute and apartheid convention. Decades of deliberate, unequal treatment have left Palestinians marginalized, impoverished and in a state of constant fear and insecurity. As we speak, Palestinians are being forced out of their homes, separated from their families, and confined to checkpoints and walls.
This report joins a large body of reporting from Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations that have arrived at the same legal conclusion. It is an important wake-up call. The scale and the seriousness of the violations documented make it clear that the international community and Canada need to urgently change their approach. It is increasingly unsustainable for Canada to avoid grappling with these concurring conclusions. Apartheid is a crime against humanity, and Canada has an obligation to act under international law.
The other situation I'd like to highlight is Ethiopia and the conflict in Tigray that broke out in 2020 and has since spread to other regions of Ethiopia. We reported on the TPLF, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, attack on Nifas Mewcha in the Amhara region in mid-August 2021. Survivors described being raped at gunpoint, robbed and subjected to physical and verbal assaults by TPLF fighters, who also destroyed and looted medical facilities. Of the 16 women Amnesty International interviewed, 14 said they were gang raped. The scale and the brutality of the sexual violence faced by women and girls is staggering, and the acts they described as being committed by those TPLF fighters and by all parties in the conflict amount to war crimes and, potentially, crimes against humanity.
I'd also like to quickly bring your attention to Guatemala. Over the past years, remarkable efforts were made to bring those responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide to justice. These are now being undone systematically by the Guatemalan government effort to weaken the rule of law and persecute anti-corruption officials, in particular. We're also seeing legislation to restrict civic space, and we invite the committee to carefully monitor this space.
Still in the Americas region, we are equally concerned about the deteriorating human rights crisis in Nicaragua, and alarming rates of femicide and gender-based violence across the Americas, which have only increased during the pandemic.
Lastly, I'd like to raise the safety of human rights defenders at risk. We continue to press Canada to create the means for defenders under threat to be able to get out quickly when they need to.
Thank you for your time and attention. I hope I haven't gone over my five minutes.