Remembering the coup in Chile and clashes in Haiti: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

Chas Gerretsen, who took a well-known photograph of Augusto Pinochet a week after the military coup in Chile in 1973, in front of political posters featuring his famous image of the dictator. He was at the opening of Rewind, Reimagine, Report, at Santiago’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights, this week. The exhibition features pictures taken by the Dutch-born photographer during the end of Salvador Allende’s doomed government and the first months of the military dictatorship.

People restoring a mural honouring the deposed Chilean president Salvador Allende, and thousands of people executed and ‘disappeared’ by the military regime, on the perimeter wall of the 3 and 4 Álamos, a former detention, torture and extermination centre of the military dictatorship in Santiago. This year marks 50 years since Pinochet’s coup toppled Allende.

Residents of Carrefour-Feuilles in Haiti appeal for help from the military at an army base in the capital, Port-au-Prince, after they were forced to flee from their homes when members of the Gran Ravin gang took over their neighbourhood. The authorities have been largely powerless to prevent clashes between heavily armed gangs and a foreign peacekeeping force has been mooted.

Residents flee their homes to escape clashes between armed gangs in Carrefour-Feuilles, Haiti, on 15 August.

Police officers look out over the Bibby Stockholm barge at Portland port. The first asylum seekers to be housed on the barge arrived on 7 August, as the UK government seeks to relocate the migrants from hotels. The Home Office says the vessel in southern England can accommodate up to 500 people and rejected criticism that the facility was unsafe. Days after moving in, however, the first residents were evacuated from the ship after lethal legionella bacteria were found onboard.

A line of people on Dungeness beach, Kent, who were rescued from the Channel by RNLI lifeboats on 16 August. More than 100,000 migrants have crossed from France on small boats since 2018. Last week, six people died when their boat sank in the Channel.

Teachers, students and union leaders in Miami protest against a new history curriculum that requires schools to teach pupils aged 11 to 14 of the supposed benefits of slavery and that enslaved people ‘developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit’.

Women on the seventh annual ‘March of the Daisies’ in Brasília on 16 August. The Marcha das Margaridas has been celebrated since 2000 as a tribute to Margarita Alves, a union leader and human rights activist who was murdered in 1983. The women demanded ‘sustainable development with justice, autonomy, equality and freedom’.

Women of the Meira Paibis [Women Torch Bearers], a group representing the Meitei ethnic group, stage a torch-lit demonstration in Imphal calling for peace to be restored in Manipur state, following ethnic violence in the north-eastern Indian state.

Displaced villagers call for the withdrawal of security forces and access to their homes in Gwaltabi. Many of their homes were burned down during ethnic violence in Yaingangpokpi, in Manipur’s Imphal East district, on 16 August.

Afghan women drawing in an art studio in Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan. Figurines of Sufi dancers can be seen on the wall behind them. Women and girls have been banned from secondary schools and universities since the Taliban seized power two years ago.

Afghan women demand their right to education and work at a protest in Balkh, near Mazar-i-Sharif, Holding placards reading: ‘A Muslim can’t go against women’s education and work’, the protesters demanded that the Taliban government guarantee women’s rights in accordance with Islamic teachings.

A kite is flown at Primrose Hill, London, during an event to mark the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Making and flying kites is a tradition in Afghan culture but banned by the Taliban regime along with many other hobbies.

Police and residents amid debris outside a church near Faisalabad, Pakistan, after it was attacked by a Muslim mob, claiming that Christians had desecrated the Koran. Police were drafted in to guard the Christian neighbourhood after hundreds of Muslims rampaged through the streets, setting fire to churches and ransacking homes.

Police and soldiers detain two men supporting a notorious gang leader, Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macías, in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Authorities had moved the leader of Los Choneros to a maximum-security prison after the assassination of a presidential candidate who had denounced threats from the criminal boss.

Verónica Sarauz, widow of the assassinated former Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, wears a bullet-proof vest as she waits to attend a press conference in Quito. Her late husband, a prominent critic of corruption and organised crime, was assassinated during a campaign event in the city on 9 August.

A water supply for immigrants near a rural Texas highway. The South Texas Human Rights Center keeps more than 100 barrels filled with water as a life-saving measure for people crossing into the US illegally in sweltering heat.

A woman sprays an anti-Beijing slogan that reads: ‘Release human rights lawyer Gao Zhi Sheng’ in Brick Lane, east London. The wall became the scene of a political graffiti war after a group of artists displayed Chinese Communist party propaganda in red Chinese characters, which prompted counter-slogans immediately afterwards. The local council tried to calm the situation by erasing all of the slogans.

Bobo Yip, a pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong, being taken away by police after she was arrested for alleged collusion with foreign forces and incitement to riot. The charges relate to a now-disbanded fund for pro-democracy protesters.

Girls from Colombia’s Indigenous communities at a ceremony during a meeting in Bogotá to mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on 9 August.

Sudanese soldiers in eastern Gadaref state near the border with Ethiopia. Fighting since April between the forces of rival Sudanese generals has killed at least 3,900 people, according to conservative estimates.

Chadians at the border in Adre use their carts to transport the belongings of Sudanese refugees who have fled the conflict in the Darfur region.

A woman is hugged after being released from prison in Yangon last week. The Myanmar military regime declared an amnesty for more than 7,500 detainees to mark Full Moon Day of Waso, a major Buddhist holiday. Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi received pardons for five out of 19 charges, reducing her 33-year sentence by six years.

A picture of the Irish singer and human rights activist Sinéad O’Connor seen inside her hearse, as it passed crowds of mourners in Bray, Ireland, during her funeral procession. The musician, who was much criticised after speaking out about abuses in the Catholic church, died in London in July, aged 56.