Iñaki Rivera Beiras
Dr. Iñaki Rivera Beiras is a human rights defender and director of the Observatory of the Penal System and Human Rights (OSPDH) and the System of Registration and Communication of Institutional Violence (SIRECOVI). OSPDH seeks to uphold and defend the human rights of prisoners and victims of institutional violence through research, education and observation of the culture of the criminal justice system. Through SIRECOVI, the human rights defender has enabled victims of ill-treatment and torture to register and make public the abuse to which they have been subjected.
Freedom of peaceful assembly is constitutionally guaranteed and generally respected in Spain. However, human rights defenders faced disproportionate restrictions of this right in connection to the referendum on Catalonian independence in October 2017, which was declared unconstitutional and met with excessive use of force and blanket bans on the use of public spaces for assemblies by the authorities.
