JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
Amnesty International is
accusing Russia of committing war crimes in
the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
The human rights organization
will soon release an in-depth report on the devastation caused by Russia’s
assault on the city on the Sea of Azov, Amnesty’s Secretary-General Agnes
Callamard said in a press conference in Johannesburg.
“The siege of Mariupol, the
denial of humanitarian evacuation and humanitarian escape for the population,
and the targeting of civilians, according to Amnesty International’s
investigation, amounts to war crimes,” said Callamard. “That is the reality of
Ukraine right now.”
Callamard said “the crisis in
Ukraine right now, the invasion ... is not just any kind of violation of
international law. It is an aggression. It is a violation of the U.N. charter
of the kind that we saw when the U.S. invaded Iraq.”
On other topics, Amnesty
released its annual report Tuesday, with Callamard noting that, amid the
pandemic, large corporations and wealthy countries had increased global
inequality in 2021.
“Noxious corporate greed and
brutal national selfishness, as well as neglect of health and public
infrastructure,” deepened existing global inequalities, Callamard said.
Vaccine inequity during the
pandemic has entrenched racial injustice, said the report. By the end of 2021,
only 8% of Africa’s population of 1.3 billion people had been vaccinated, far
short of the World Health Organization’s 40% vaccination target, it said.
“Despite efforts by some
governments ... international cooperation largely failed. High-income countries
stockpiled millions more doses than they could use, leaving some countries able
to vaccinate their entire populations three to five times over,” Amnesty’s
report said.
Amnesty estimated that some
major vaccines manufacturers — including BioNTech, Pfizer and Moderna — stood
to make profits of more than $130 billion by the end of 2022. It said wealthy
nations had largely failed to provide debt relief to poorer nations in order to
support their economic recovery from the pandemic.
“There was an opportunity to use the huge global investment and medical breakthroughs to improve the delivery of healthcare. However, governments around the world failed to show leadership,” said the report.
In Africa, millions of
civilians also suffered from armed conflicts in 2021, the report said.
Participants in Africa’s
conflicts — including ones in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic,
Congo, Ethiopia, and Mali — have committed war crimes and other serious
violations of international human rights law, according to the organization.
The report said 2021 also saw
continued attacks on journalists, activists and human rights defenders, with
some governments using COVID-19 regulations to suppress protests.
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