Amnesty International

Amnesty International is accusing Chinese authorities of creating a "dystopian hellscape on a staggering scale" over the repression of Uyghur Muslims in north-western province of Xinjiang.

The human rights group says it amounts to crimes against humanity.

Amnesty International has just released a 160-page report, 'Like We Were Enemies in a War': China's Mass Internment, Torture, and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is visiting both countries this week in an historic act he says is aimed at reflecting the depth of his government's commitment to the region.

It's the first bilateral visit of an Australian leader to either country.

But Amnesty International said it is a chance for Vanuatu and Fiji to raise the "regional humanitarian crisis triggered by Australia's indefinite detention of refugees and people seeking asylum".

In a report, it said "cynical deals" with Libya consigned thousands to the risk of drowning, rape and torture.

It said the EU was turning a blind eye to abuses in Libyan detention centres, and was mostly leaving it up to sea rescue charities to save migrants.

More than 2000 people have died in 2017 trying to get to Europe, it said.

The EU has so far made no public comments on Amnesty's report.

It comes as interior ministers from the 28-member bloc are meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, to discuss the migrant crisis.

Jope Koroisavou walked through downtown Suva yesterday carrying banners with the name of six victims tortured by the country's security forces.

Mr Koroisavou spent the night in police custody and he is due to be questioned again this morning according to his lawyer Aman Ravindra-Singh.

Mr Ravindra-Singh says Mr Koroisavou has yet to be formally charged but questioning indicates he is likely to be charged with sedition.

Amnesty's regional director James Gomez said instead of cracking down on peaceful protest the Fijian authorities should be cracking down on torture.

The Fiji Office of Director of Public Prosecutions charged the newspaper with sedition after earlier accusing it and its senior staff of inciting communal antagonism over a newspaper article.

The case relates to an article published in the vernacular iTaukei newspaper Nai Lalakai on April 27 last year.

Amnesty's Pacific Researcher Kate Schuetze said the charges were very serious and should be dropped.

Ms Schuetze said it showed there was still suppression of freedom of expression in Fiji.

Loghman Sawari, who is 21, fled to Fiji from Papua New Guinea's Manus Island.

He and his lawyer were on their way to meet with Immigration in Suva on Friday to seek asylum when he was stopped by police and put on a plane back to PNG.

Amnesty's Pacific Researcher, Kate Schuetze, said Fiji had failed an important test at a time when it's making a bid for a seat on the UN's Human Rights Council.

"The Fijian authorities gave assurances that he would not be arrested before he had that interview."

"We are already in an age where incredible amounts of people's personal data is online and that is rapidly increasing," says Joe Westby, a technology researcher for the human rights group.

Snapchat and Skype were much lower down the list and Westby warns that "there won't be any privacy in the future".

Part of the research looked at how open companies are to requests for data from governments.

RNZI reports Peter Fa'afiu is being celebrated as the first chair of Pasifika descent working for the human rights organisation.

He said that rather than focussing on his ethnicity he would like to get on with the job and make a difference.

A statement Tuesday said the two incidents on Aug. 2 and 3 occurred as the peacekeepers were carrying out an operation in the capital, Bangui.

Amnesty International said a spokesperson for the U.N. peacekeeping mission told the human rights organization that it has opened an internal investigation into the alleged rape and killings. The spokesperson also told the group that the Bangui operation was carried out by police peacekeepers from Rwanda and Cameroon.

Amnesty International further says Israeli forces carried out disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks, killing at least 135 civilians over those four days.

It says the military failed to independently probe the incident and called on the International Criminal Court to investigate.

Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced the report — one of several the London-based group has released on the Gaza war — as "fundamentally flawed."