in Romania. A proposal to amend the Lithuanian Constitution to this effect passed the first of two required votes in Parliament in June, just days after 3,000 people joined a “March for Equality” to celebrate the 2016 Baltic Pride in the capital, Vilnius. Progress on women’s rights was also fitful. Violence against women remained pervasive, despite increasingly strong legislative protections. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Latvia signed the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women (Istanbul Convention). It was ratified in Romania and Belgium. In a sharply regressive move, however, the Polish government announced its intention to withdraw from the Convention, only one year after its ratification, and despite an estimated up to one million women victims per year in the country. The ruling party also restricted sexual and reproductive rights. Following a general women’s strike on 3 October, the Polish Parliament rejected a bill proposing a near total ban on abortion and criminalization of women and girls who obtained an abortion and anyone assisting or encouraging them to have an abortion. In Ireland, calls to overhaul highly restrictive abortion legislation gained increasing momentum, while the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on Ireland to decriminalize abortion. Abortion remained criminalized in all circumstances in Malta. FREEDOMS OF EXPRESSION, ASSOCIATION AND PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY The repression of dissent, critical opinion and political opposition remained the norm across the former Soviet Union. It remained particularly acute, but not noticeably worse than in previous years, in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus. There was a marked deterioration in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, while Russia and Azerbaijan saw the deepening of a long-standing downward trend. Pro-Russian media came under ever greater attack in Ukraine, while pro-Ukrainian and Tatar voices were severely repressed in Crimea and within Russia. Freedom of Amnesty International Report 2016/17 expression was aggressively restricted in Turkey in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt. The Balkans remained a dangerous place for investigative journalists, dozens of whom faced prosecution and beatings for exposing abuses, while within the EU, Poland, Hungary and Croatia muzzled public broadcasters. Russia continued to tighten the noose on NGOs, using defamatory media campaigns and the “Foreign Agents Law” to target the most critical. Dozens of independent NGOs receiving foreign funding were added to the list of “foreign agents” bringing the total number to 146, of which 35 had closed down permanently. Prosecutors also brought the first criminal case for “systematic evasion of duties imposed by the law” against Valentina Cherevatenko, the founder and Chair of the Women of the Don Union. The freedom of peaceful assembly also continued to be tightly controlled. Kazakhstan also used criminal law provisions targeting NGO leaders for the first time. Dozens of “organizers” and hundreds of participants in protests in April and May against the new land code were detained. There was an increase in prosecutions for posts on social media in violation of the right to freedom of expression, while several prominent journalists were convicted on charges of “knowingly disseminating false information” and embezzlement. In January, changes to the Law on Communications came into force requiring internet users to install a “national security certificate” which allowed authorities to scan communications and to block access to content which the authorities judged to be illegal. Tajikistan saw a significant crackdown in the wake of the targeting of the banned opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, 14 of whose leading members were sentenced to long prison terms on terrorism charges in secret trials. In August, the government issued a five-year decree giving it the right to “regulate and control” the content of all television and radio networks through the State Broadcasting Committee. Human rights defenders came under tight 45