Minorities

In Russia, TrialWatch secured a key decision from the UN on the persecution of Crimean Tatar religious minorities. Server Mustafayev, a 32-year-old Crimean human rights defender, was prosecuted and convicted before a military court for membership in a terrorist organization: the charges were based on his involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic political group that is banned in Russia but operates legally in Ukraine.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, with the TrialWatch Fairness Report finding that his trial was riddled with irregularities and that the authorities improperly applied Russian law to occupied Crimea.

TrialWatch and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher challenged Mustafayev’s conviction before the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which urged Russia to immediately release Mustafayev.

In Indonesia, TrialWatch reporting helped secure the acquittal of a Catholic woman unfairly targeted by the State. Suzethe Margaret, who had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was charged with blasphemy after she ‘heard voices’ telling her that her husband was getting married at a mosque and, under this delusion, entered the mosque with her shoes on and with her dog—conduct prohibited by Islam.

The report on the case found that the blasphemy law was applied in a discriminatory manner: in particular, the authorities brought charges in the wake of calls from hardline groups that Ms. Margaret be punished and “[d]espite overwhelming evidence that Ms. Margaret’s diagnosed psychosocial disability was the cause of the incident.”

International pressure, including TrialWatch monitoring and reporting, contributed to her acquittal and the upholding of this decision on appeal, meaning that she did not have to serve jail time.

The presence of a monitor in the courtroom during the trial of 33-year-old indigenous land rights advocate Abelino Chub in Guatemala likely contributed to his acquittal after two years in detention, according to Chub’s lawyer. He was charged with aggravated usurpation and arson for allegedly burning trees and fields on a plantation run by a large banana and palm company. TrialWatch monitored the criminal proceedings against Chub in 2019 through its partners, the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights, and gave the proceedings an F: TrialWatch’s lowest grade.

The TrialWatch Fairness Report found that “Chub’s unjustified pretrial detention constituted a gross violation of human rights and there are indicia that his prosecution was motivated by improper considerations.”