Issue 4 · July 29, 2026 · Libera Mondo Newsletter

Germany deports Uyghur asylum seeker to China

Germany deported a 21-year-old Uyghur asylum seeker to China on July 21, and he was detained and questioned on arrival in Beijing the next morning, his mother told the Associated Press. Arafat Adil held Chinese and Turkish passports; his family had left China for Turkey in 2017. Germany's Interior Ministry said there is no blanket suspension of deportations of Uyghurs to China, though its guiding principle is that Uyghurs from China should generally receive protection. Germany returned another Uyghur woman to China in November, which officials attributed to a bureaucratic error.

Papuans killed by rebels and soldiers

Fighters of the West Papua National Liberation Army killed three Indigenous Papuans on the Trans Papua Highway in Yahukimo regency, Papua Highlands, on July 20 and 21, the Jakarta Post reported. A spokesman for the group said the three had been executed as Indonesian military intelligence agents. Indigenous Papuans have also been driven out by the security forces: Human Rights Monitor documented an Indonesian military operation across three districts of Intan Jaya from mid-May into late July in which five civilians were killed, about a dozen houses and a church were burned, and more than 2,000 people fled into the forest and into Sugapa town. Papua's National Human Rights Commission office recorded at least seven major violent incidents there over the same period.

More than 500 Rohingya feared drowned

More than 500 Rohingya are feared dead after two boats sank or disappeared off Myanmar's coast in late June and early July, Amnesty International reported on July 16. The vessels had left Rakhine State carrying people fleeing conflict and persecution; some had traveled from the refugee camps in Bangladesh. Amnesty's Myanmar researcher, Joe Freeman, said people "do not risk their lives at sea unless the alternatives are even more unbearable." The organization documented forced recruitment and kidnapping for ransom in the Bangladesh camps, and forced labor imposed by the Arakan Army in Rakhine, and said conditions there are not viable for safe and dignified returns. The Rohingya remain excluded from Myanmar's citizenship law nine years after the mass displacement of 2017.

Iran executes five political prisoners in six days

Iran executed five political prisoners between July 16 and 22, all of them detained during protests in January, Iran Human Rights Monitor reported on July 22. It named the five — Mohammad Amini Dehaqani, Aref Khoshkar, Erfan Esfandiari, Gol-Mohammad Mohammadi, and Mehdi Khanki — and said about 165 people are under sentence of death in Iran, at least 45 of them protesters. The group described intensified pressure on Baluch, Kurdish, and Baha'i prisoners, including forced confessions taken in Zahedan Central Prison. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network separately recorded executions at Tabriz on July 17, Ilam on July 22, and Orumiyeh on July 25, and reported that five Kurdish political prisoners from Bukan remain at risk of death sentences.

Abducted Nigerian villagers dying in captivity

At least eight of the 48 people abducted from two villages in southern Kaduna State, Nigeria, have died in captivity, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported on July 28; a released captive reported five further deaths. Attackers that CSW identified as armed Fulani militia killed seven people and seized 37 worshippers from Easter Sunday services at two churches in Ariko on April 5; eleven more were taken from Awon village on April 20. The captors demanded 300 million naira, about £165,000, and 23 motorcycles, and have held the remainder in the open for more than three months. On July 26, an attack on the Naridon community killed at least 30 people, eight of them children.