Source: IFEX
(Human Rights Watch/IFEX) - Beirut, April 3, 2012 - Police beat close to
30 demonstrators at a police station this week, two of whom fainted
from the ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said today after interviewing
six witnesses to the March 31, 2012 arrests, including two detainees
who were later freed. Military prosecutors charged 13 of them with
crimes related to their exercise of freedom of speech to criticize the
authorities, but no inquiry into ill-treatment has been announced, Human
Rights Watch said.
“Jordan's response to demonstrations looks more and more
repressive,” said Christoph Wilcke, senior Middle East researcher at
Human Rights Watch. “Its security forces violently break up peaceful
protests and then continue to beat and insult detainees in custody.”
On the afternoon of March 31, a crowd of demonstrators that the
police estimated at 100 but participants said numbered several hundred
gathered at the 4th Circle, a busy intersection in Amman, across from
the prime minister's office. They were protesting the continued
detention of seven activists from Tafila that were arrested in mid-March
at a protest in that southern town and charged with insulting King
Abdullah, among other charges.
Gendarmerie and Public Security police forces warned the March 31
demonstrators not to cross “red lines,” six participants at the
demonstration told Human Rights Watch. The police warning came after
some had begun to chant, “If the people are scorned, the regime will
fall,” and, “Oh [King] Abdullah, oh Abdullah, a Jordanian will not be
scorned.”
Two of the demonstrators told Human Rights Watch that the group
chanting the slogans warning of the government's downfall did not belong
to the main group of protestors.
Shortly after the chants and the police warnings, the security
forces violently dispersed the crowd, beating many with truncheons, and
arrested about 30 people, the witnesses said. One video posted on
YouTube and featuring footage by JordanDays.tv, an online venture
providing footage from important events, captures a security official
running to attack a demonstrator though there appeared to be no threat
to the official.
The police took those arrested in large vans to the Central Amman
Police station, beating and insulting them on the way, two of the
detainees who were later released told Human Rights Watch. At the
entrance, and again inside, policemen continued to kick, punch, and beat
with truncheons those arrested, the two men said. The relative of a
third demonstrator who went to the Central Amman Police station to look
for him told Human Rights Watch that he saw a policeman beating one of
the detainees at the entrance.
Inside a communal cell, 'Imad 'Ayasra, a middle-aged demonstrator
who suffers from advanced rheumatism and can only move slowly, fainted
from blows to his shoulder sustained during the arrest and from
continued beating once in custody, one person who was with him in the
cell told Human Rights Watch. Guards called a doctor only five hours
later, the witness said. Two witnesses said that when Abdullah Mahadin, a
youth movement leader also arrested that day, refused guards' orders to
strip naked, guards beat him, smacking his head into the wall for about
10 minutes until he, too, fainted.
Authorities transferred 13 of those arrested to Muwaqqar prison and
freed the rest. The next day, the 13 were charged at the
military-dominated State Security Court with “insulting the king” (lèse
majesté), “unlawful gathering,” and “subverting the system of government
in the kingdom or inciting to resist it.” These are the same charges
leveled against the detained Tafila protesters, and at least the fourth
time since 2012 began that reform advocates have been charged with
crimes relating to their exercise of freedom of speech to criticize the
authorities.
A March 31 Public Security Directorate statement claimed that
security forces dispersed the demonstration after repeated warnings
because the crowd had blocked traffic, used distasteful language that
hurt the feelings of passers-by, left a mark on public morals, and
insulted security forces. Four activists present at the demonstration
denied to Human Rights Watch that the protest blocked traffic.
“Peacefully opposing one's system of government or calling for its
replacement is protected speech,” Wilcke said. “It is high time Jordan
reformed its penal code and abolished all articles criminalizing
peaceful speech and assembly.”
As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, Jordan has a duty to protect citizens' rights to call peacefully
for a change of the system of government, Human Rights Watch said. In
2011, Jordan amended its Law of Public Gatherings by dropping the
requirement of prior permission to hold demonstrations. In 2012,
however, State Security Court military prosecutors have begun to crack
down on demonstrators by using a penal code article criminalizing
gatherings of seven people or more who intend to commit a crime. Under
the king's 2011 initiative to revise the constitution, parliamentary
proposals to abolish the State Security Court's jurisdiction over
civilians did not garner the necessary support of the elected members of
parliament.
Human Rights Watch called on Prime Minister Dr. 'Awn al-Khasawna to:
•Ensure that all charges that concern the exercise of freedom of
speech, particularly peaceful political discussion, are immediately
dropped against the 13 activists arrested at the 4th circle as well as
the seven activists arrested in Tafila earlier, and that those charged
with these offenses alone are released;
•Set up an independent, impartial, and public inquiry into
complaints of ill-treatment at the hands of the Gendarmerie and the
Public Security forces, and ensure that any security official implicated
in any ill-treatment is held accountable after fair proceedings. Any
officer against whom there is credible evidence of having committed
torture or ill-treatment should be suspended from duty during the
investigation;
•Overhaul the penal code to bring it in line with Jordan's
international human rights obligations, including abolition of articles
149, 150, 157, and 188 to 199, which criminalize peaceful speech and
assembly; and
•Abolish the State Security Court.