51 Victims of human rights abuses

The 108 Martyrs of World War II, known also as the 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs, were Roman Catholics from Poland killed during World War II by Nazi Germany.

Ruhal Ahmed is a British citizen who was detained without trial for over two years by the United States government, beginning in Afghanistan in 2001, and then in the United States Guantánamo Bay detention camp, Cuba. His Internment Serial Number was 110. Ahmed was returned to the United Kingdom in March 2004, where he was released the next day without charges.

Aì Qīng, born Jiǎng Zhènghán and styled Jiǎng Hǎichéng, is regarded by some as one of the finest modern Chinese poets. He was known under his pen names Línbì, Kè'ā and Éjiā.

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. Ai grew up in the far north-west of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, for "economic crimes". He was detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.

Hoda Ali is a nurse and human rights activist defending the rights of girls through working and campaigning to end female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom.

Du'a Khalil Aswad was a 17-year-old Iraqi girl of the Yazidi faith who was stoned to death in northern Iraq in early April 2007, the victim of an honor killing. It is believed that she was killed around 7 April 2007, but the incident did not come to light until video of the stoning, apparently recorded on multiple cell phones, appeared on the Internet. The rumor that the stoning was connected to her alleged conversion to Islam prompted reprisals against Yazidis by Sunnis, including the 2007 Mosul massacre.

Abdul Basir was a citizen of Afghanistan who died while in the custody of Afghanistan's intelligence service the National Directorate of Security (NDS).

Alla Nikolayevna Bayanova was a Russian Romance singer sometimes compared with Édith Piaf for her simple yet dramatic style of performance.

Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio is a Colombian politician, former senator and anti-corruption activist, especially opposing political corruption.

Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian-born citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina who was held in military custody in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba beginning in January 2002. Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), a U.S. Supreme Court decision that Guantanamo detainees and other foreign nationals have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. federal courts.

Bhai Mati Das, along with his younger brother Bhai Sati Das, was a martyr of early Sikh history. Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Dayala, and Bhai Sati Das were executed at a kotwali (police-station) in the Chandni Chowk area of Delhi, under the express orders of Emperor Aurangzeb just before the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur. Bhai Mati Das was executed by being bound between two pillars and cut in two.

Dilawar, also known as Dilawar of Yakubi, was an Afghan taxi driver who was tortured to death by US army soldiers at the Bagram Collection Point, a US military detention center in Afghanistan.

Ding Zilin is a retired professor of philosophy and the leader of the political pressure group Tiananmen Mothers.

The stoning of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was a public execution carried out by the Al-Shabaab militant group on October 27, 2008 in the southern port town of Kismayo, Somalia. Initial reports stated that the victim, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was a 23-year-old woman found guilty of adultery. However, Duhulow's father and aunt stated that she was 13 years old, under the age of marriage eligibility, and that she was arrested and stoned to death after trying to report that she had been raped. The execution took place in a public stadium attended by about 1,000 bystanders, several of whom attempted to intervene but were shot by the militants.

The Duplessis Orphans were 20,000 Canadian children who were wrongly certified as mentally ill by the provincial government of Quebec and confined to psychiatric institutions in the 1940s and 1950s. The children were deliberately miscertified in order to misappropriate additional subsidies from the federal government. They are named for Maurice Duplessis, who served as Premier of Quebec for five non-consecutive terms between 1936 and 1959. The controversies associated with Duplessis, and particularly the corruption and abuse concerning the Duplessis orphans, have led to the popular historic conception of his term as Premier as La Grande Noirceur by its critics.

Hilda Eisen was a Polish-American businessperson, philanthropist, and Holocaust survivor.

Wieland Förster is a German sculptor, artist and writer. A recurring theme of his work is victimhood, reflecting his own youthful experiences during the incineration of Dresden in February 1945 and of the Soviet justice system between 1946 and 1950.

Karl Wilhelm Fricke is a German political journalist and author. He has produced several of the standard works on resistance and state repression in the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990). In 1955 he became one of several hundred kidnap victims of the East German Ministry for State Security, captured in West Berlin and taken to the east where for nearly five years he was held in state detention.

Mamdouh Habib is an Egyptian and Australian citizen with dual nationality, best known for having been held for more than three years by the United States as an enemy combatant, by both the CIA and military authorities. He was sent by extraordinary rendition from Pakistan to Egypt after arrest. He was held the longest at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as an enemy combatant. Finally released without charges in January 2005, Habib struggled to have his account of his experiences believed, as he alleged he had been tortured by the CIA, Egyptians, and US military, at times with Australian intelligence officers present. For some time, each of the governments denied his allegations, but they have gradually been confirmed.

Aminatou Ali Ahmed Haidar, sometimes known as Aminetou, Aminatu or Aminetu, is a Sahrawi human rights activist and an advocate of the independence of Western Sahara. She is often called the "Sahrawi Gandhi" or "Sahrawi Pasionaria" for her nonviolent protests. She is the president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA). She was imprisoned from 1987 to 1991 and from 2005 to 2006 on charges related to her independence advocacy. In 2009, she attracted international attention when she staged a hunger strike in Lanzarote Airport after being denied re-entry into Moroccan Western Sahara. Haidar has won several international human rights awards for her work, including the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, 2009 Civil Courage Prize and 2019 Right Livelihood Award.

The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were war crimes involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family by United States Army soldiers on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by Americans included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza Al-Janabi. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.

Loujain al-Hathloul is a Saudi women's rights activist, a social media figure, and a political prisoner. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia. Al-Hathloul has been arrested and released on several occasions for defying the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia and was arrested in May 2018, with several prominent women's rights activists, on the charge of "attempting to destabilise the kingdom" after being effectively kidnapped in the United Arab Emirates. As of October 2018, her husband, Saudi stand-up comedian Fahad al-Butairi, had also been forcefully returned from Jordan to the Kingdom and was under arrest.

Suzanne Hiltermann-Souloumiac, née Hiltermann, alias Touty, was a member of the Dutch-Paris network during the French Resistance. Captured by the Nazi she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. After the liberation Suzanne Hiltermann moved to China in the 1960s. She came back to France and retired in Ardèche next to Chambon-sur-Lignon. To reward her fight for freedom and for the saving of many allied pilots during the Second World War, President Harry S. Truman gave her the Medal of Freedom (1946).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, author, scholar and former politician. She received international attention as a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, actively opposing forced marriage, honor violence, child marriage and female genital mutilation. She has founded an organisation for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali works for the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

Samira Ibrahim is an Egyptian activist who came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution.

Manadel al-Jamadi was a suspected terrorist who was tortured to death in United States custody during Central Intelligence Agency interrogation at Abu Ghraib Prison on 4 November 2003. His name became known in 2004 when the Abu Ghraib scandal made news; his corpse packed in ice was the background for widely reprinted photographs of grinning U.S. Army specialists Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner each offering a "thumbs-up" gesture. Al-Jamadi had been a suspect in a bomb attack that killed 12 people in a Baghdad Red Cross facility.

Assita Kanko is a Belgian journalist, human rights activist and politician who was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2019 representing the New Flemish Alliance.

Murat Kurnaz is a Turkish citizen and legal resident of Germany who was held in extrajudicial detention by the United States at its military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan and in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba beginning in December 2001. He was allegedly tortured in both places. By early 2002, intelligence officials of the United States and Germany had concluded that accusations against Kurnaz were groundless.

Lê Công Định is a Vietnamese lawyer who sat on the defence of many high-profile human rights cases in Vietnam. He was critical of bauxite mining in the central highlands of Vietnam., and was arrested by the Vietnamese government on June 13, 2009 on charges of "national security", though the arrest was met by the international community with strong objections. Lê Công Định is one of Amnesty International's prisoners of conscience.

Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, politician and diplomat during the presidency of Salvador Allende. A refugee from the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Letelier accepted several academic positions in Washington, D.C. following his exile from Chile. In 1976, agents of Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the Pinochet regime's secret police, assassinated Letelier in Washington via the use of a car bomb. These agents had been working in collaboration with members of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, a U.S.-sponsored anti-Castro militant group.

Banaz Mahmod was a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurdish woman from Mitcham, South London. She was murdered on the orders of her family in a so-called honour killing because she ended a violent and abusive forced marriage and started a relationship with someone of her own choosing. Her father, uncle and three cousins were later convicted of her murder.

Mohammad Maleki is an Iranian academic and pro-democracy nationalist-religious activist and former president of the University of Tehran.

Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who lives in Germany. In 2014, she was kidnapped from her hometown Kocho and held by the Islamic State for three months.

Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s generation. Moving from a youthful affiliation to the fascist Iron Guard, which he later came to regret, the author became a disciple of modernist doyen Eugen Lovinescu, and, by 1943, rallied the entire Sibiu Circle to the cause of anti-fascism. He was also one of the few openly homosexual intellectuals in Romania to have come out before the 1990s—an experience which, like his political commitments, is recorded in his controversial autobiographical writings.

Dr. Nguyen Quoc Quan is a Vietnamese-born American mathematics researcher and human rights activist and a member of the leadership committee of the organization Viet Tan. He has been detained since April 17, 2012 after arriving at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. On April 28, 2012, Vietnam's state media reported the pro-democracy activist has been arrested and accused of organizing "terrorism" activities. Previously, Dr Quan was arrested in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam on a trip on November 17, 2007 for preparing pro-democracy flyers. During that first trip, he brought in a Vietnamese translation of the book From Dictatorship to Democracy about nonviolent resistance. He stood trial in Vietnam on May 13, 2008 on charges of "terrorism" and was sentenced to 6 months in prison. He was eventually released on May 17, 2008 and returned to his home in Elk Grove, California to his wife and two teenage sons. In 2012, he was re-arrested on another trip to Vietnam, and held in prison for 9 months. Following intense US pressure, he was deported on January 30, 2013.

Núrayn-i-Nayyirayn are two brothers who were followers of Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, a global religion of Persian origin. They were beheaded in 1879 as a result of being Baháʼís. Numerous letters and tablets were written in their honour by Baháʼu'lláh, who gave them the titles which they are commonly known as: the King of Martyrs and the Beloved of Martyrs.

Dr OSB Placid Olofsson was a Hungarian Benedictine monk, priest, teacher and Gulag victim.

The "Five Eyes" (FVEY) refers to an alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence. In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they are intentionally spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on spying.

Larry Payne was a sixteen-year old African American teenager who was killed following a march in support of the Memphis Sanitation Strike on Thursday, March 28, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the only fatality on that day although the New Pittsburgh Courier reported 60 injured and 276 arrested.

Gul Rahman was an Afghan man, suspected by the United States of being a militant, who was a victim of torture. He died in a secret CIA prison, or black site, located in northern Kabul, Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. He had been captured October 29, 2002.

Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian writer, television producer, environmental activist, and winner of the Right Livelihood Award for "exemplary courage in striving non-violently for civil, economic and environmental rights" and the Goldman Environmental Prize. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and which has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping. Initially as spokesperson, and then as president, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the multinational petroleum industry, especially the Royal Dutch Shell company. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government, which he viewed as reluctant to enforce environmental regulations on the foreign petroleum companies operating in the area.

Urairat Soimee was a Thai activist and a victim of human trafficking in Japan.

Ali Salem Tamek is a Sahrawi independence activist and trade unionist.

Ma Thida is a Burmese surgeon, writer, human rights activist and former prisoner of conscience. She has published under the pseudonym Suragamika which means "brave traveler". In Myanmar, Thida is best known as a leading intellectual, whose books deal with the country's political situation. She has worked as an editor at a Burmese monthly youth magazine and a weekly newspaper. She has been a surgeon at Muslim Free Hospital, which provides free services to the poor.

The Valle del Cauca Deputies hostage crisis refers to the kidnapping of 12 Deputies of the Valle del Cauca Department, Colombia, on April 12, 2002 by members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to pressure a prisoner exchange between them and the government and to negotiate the demilitarization of the municipalities of Florida and Pradera to initiate peace dialogues.

Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Janek Wiśniewski is a fictional name given to a real person, Zbigniew Eugeniusz Godlewski, shot dead by security forces during the Polish 1970 protests in the city of Gdynia. The event was popularized across the country in the poem and song, known by the name of Ballad of Janek Wiśniewski.

Zhou Xuan, also romanized as Chow Hsuan, was an iconic Chinese singer and film actress. By the 1940s, she had become one of China's Seven Great Singing Stars. She was the best known of the seven, nicknamed the "Golden Voice", and had a concurrent movie career until 1954. She recorded more than 200 songs and appeared in over 40 films in her career.

Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian national currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF).

Worood Zuhair born Worood Mahdi is an Iraqi women's rights activist who lives in Germany.