Amnesty International called Feb. 28 for the immediate release of both Israeli and foreign civilians held hostage by Hamas, and of all Palestinians arbitrarily detained by Israel. The organization said that the release of hostages and prisoners should not be conditional upon the result of the next phase of ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel. There are at least 59 hostages remaining in Gaza, the majority of whom are Israelis. Meanwhile, there are more than 4,000 Palestinians held in detention in Israel without charge or trial, which Amnesty called a violation of international law.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Feb. 28 urged that the call by imprisoned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan for an end to the organization's decades-long insurgency against Türkiye must serve as a catalyst to end the systematic misuse of terrorism charges against government critics in the country.

Öcalan founded the PKK in 1978, and the party waged an insurgency against Türkiye for four decades, with approximately 40,000 killed in the conflict. The PKK has been declared a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US and EU. Öcalan has been imprisoned on the island of Imrali since his capture in February 1999 for violating the controversial Article 125 of Türkiye’s Penal Code. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002. 

An eight-year-old Venezuelan girl died and 20 survivors were rescued by Panamanian authorities from a Feb. 21 shipwreck during a journey from Panama's northern port of Llano Carti to the Colombian border.

The revised deal for US access to Ukraine's mineral wealth (with no security guarantees for Kyiv) collapsed in the unseemly Oval Office donnybrook, and European leaders now convene their own summit—faced with the prospect of supporting Ukraine without the US. But Hungary and Slovakia represent an authoritarian bloc that supports Ukraine's betrayal—and Romania could be next to defect to this Russia-aligned bloc. In Europe and America alike, elements of the "tankie" pseudo-left no longer even bother to hide their convergence with MAGA. In Episode 267 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a clean break at both the international and grassroots levels. Europe must realize that the Atlantic alliance is effectively dead, and there are no prospects of reviving it while Trump is in the White House; whether or not the rumors are true that he was recruited as a KGB agent in the '80s, he is on Putin's side. And progressives must repudiate pseudo-left misleaders who shill for Trump and and spread lies for Putin, and seek a new leadership that mobilizes to oppose them.

After detaining them in squalid short-term holding facilities for more than a decade, Thailand deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers to China on Feb. 27. Human rights groups had been urging the Thai government for over a month to halt any plans to deport the group—though senior officials denied there were any such plans. The removals were carried out in a pre-dawn operation using trucks with blacked-out windows, flanked by police. The Chinese embassy in Bangkok described the men as "illegal immigrants" and said they would "return to normal life." But rights groups, as well as relatives of the asylum seekers living abroad, worry that the group will remain detained in China—or be sentenced to death. China has previously labelled anyone seeking asylum abroad as a "terrorist." The UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, said the deportations were "a clear violation of the principle of non-refoulement" and international law.

Amnesty International on Feb. 19 called on the Egyptian government to release dozens of arbitrarily detained currently awaiting “unlawful” prosecution. The charges brought against them include disseminating false news, and involvement in anti-government protests.

The Malian Armed Forces command has refuted accusations that soldiers were responsible for an attack that took place on Feb. 17, in which 24 civilians including women and children were killed. The armed forces denied any involvement in the massacre, which is said to have occurred in Tilemsi commune, Gao region. Press reports indicate a caravan of vehicles carrying migrants across the desert was targeted in the attack, which was carried out jointly with Russian mercenaries.

The Taliban announced on Feb. 20 that Afghanistan will no longer recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), stating that the country's 2003 accession to the Rome Statute is declared to be legally void after ICC prosecutor Karim Khan sought arrest warrants for Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and the Chief Justice of Afghanistan Abdul Hakim Haqqani last month.