Amnesty International said war crimes and illegal refugee returns marred 2015 human rights.
It said on Wednesday during the Amnesty Annual Review of human rights around the world in London that many governments were brazenly breaking international law by doing so.
Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s Secretary General, said more than 30 countries illegally forced refugees to return to places where they would be in danger last year.
He said “the rights of the refugees were in jeopardy; they were being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world.’”
He added that short-term national self-interest and draconian security crackdowns led to an “unprecedented assault on human rights” in 2015.
The Secretary general noted that war crimes or other violations of the “laws of war” were committed by governments or armed groups in at least 19 countries.
Shetty said one of the most egregious examples of countries turning their backs on asylum seekers took place when human traffickers left thousands of people from Myanmar and Bangladesh adrift on the open seas without food and water.
He added that hundreds were thought to have died from thirst and hunger as countries in the region played “ping-pong in the sea” with the asylum seekers.
The Amnesty scribe said that in Europe, Hungary was strongly criticised for sealing its borders to keep out thousands of desperate refugees and obstructing collective regional attempts to help them.
“More than one million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year, many fleeing war zones.
“With the exception of Germany, the response to the crisis had been woeful,” he said. (Reuters/NAN)