surveillance, while independent media outlets and journalists faced intimidation and harassment by police and the security services. The authorities continued to order internet service providers to block access to certain news or social media sites, while a new decree required internet providers and telecommunications operators to channel their services through a new single communications centre under the stateowned company Tajiktelecom. Azerbaijan continued to repress opposition activists, human rights NGOs and independent media. Twelve prisoners of conscience were released, but 14 remained in jail at the end of the year, including Ilgar Mammadov, whose sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in November despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling requiring his release. Amnesty International was denied entry to the country, bringing Azerbaijan in line with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Public protests remained severely restricted; the few that took place were dispersed by police with excessive force and political activists were arrested for organizing them. The media in Ukraine remained generally free, but a number of media outlets perceived as supporting pro-Russian or proseparatist views and those particularly critical of the authorities faced harassment. Independent journalists were unable to work in Crimea, where the occupying Russian authorities continued to severely restrict the rights to freedom of expression, of association and of peaceful assembly. Crimean Tatars faced particular repression. The respect for freedom of expression deteriorated sharply in Turkey, especially after the declaration of a state of emergency in the wake of the failed coup attempt in July. There were 118 journalists remanded in pre-trial detention and 184 media outlets were arbitrarily and permanently closed down under executive decrees. Internet censorship increased and 375 NGOs, including women’s rights groups, lawyers associations and humanitarian organizations were shut by executive decree in November. 46 IMPUNITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY Torture and other ill-treatment was widespread throughout the former Soviet Union; nominal improvements in law continued to be made in a few countries, but impunity remained the norm. The prospect of accountability for the large-scale abuses by law enforcement officials during the Euromaydan protests in 2013-14, the Gezi park protests in 2013 and the ethnic clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 receded in Ukraine, remained remote in Turkey and dwindled to vanishing in Kyrgyzstan. In the EU, accountability for complicity in the US-led rendition programme remained distant, despite ongoing proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights. By the end of the year, not a single person had been found criminally liable for their involvement in the unlawful detention and torture and other ill-treatment of terrorism suspects in Poland, Lithuania or Romania. Having made notable progress in the eradication of torture in places of detention over the last decade, there was an alarming spike in the number of reported cases in the wake of the failed coup attempt in Turkey. With thousands of people detained in official and unofficial police detention, reports of severe beatings, sexual assault, threats of rape and rape were consistently but implausibly denied by the Turkish authorities. DEATH PENALTY Towards the end of the year, Turkey’s President Recip Tayyip Erdoğan promised to put the reintroduction of the death penalty before Parliament, in defiance of widespread international condemnation and Turkey’s obligations as a Council of Europe member state. Belarus, Europe’s last remaining executing state, executed four people in the course of the year, despite the government making – not for the first time – some encouraging noises about its imminent abolition. In Kazakhstan, one man was sentenced to death on terrorism-related charges. Amnesty International Report 2016/17