Assassinations of human rights defenders, investigative journalists, activist lawyers and critical opinion makers have not been seriously investigated in a number of critical cases. These flagrant examples have come to symbolise the phenomenon of impunity, which encourages further murders and has a chilling effect on public debate, says Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, in his latest Human Rights Comment published today.

There has been an escalation of such politically-motivated killings during the past decade. The individual tragedies of the victims’ deaths have been compounded by suspicions of cover-ups in their aftermath. (more...)