News Jan 8, 2018 Hungary fines main opposition party over billboards (Reuters) – Hungary’s State Audit Office (ASZ) has fined the main, nationalist opposition party Jobbik 331.66 million forints ($1.29 million) for an anti-government billboard campaign funded by a wealthy adversary of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
News Jan 5, 2018 Kyrgyz Opposition Politician Jailed For Corruption (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) – A court in Bishkek has sentenced Kyrgyz opposition politician Kanatbek Isaev to 12 years in prison on corruption charges.
Press Release Jan 4, 2018 UNWGAD Affirms HRF Petition on Detention of 18 Turkmen NEW YORK (January 4, 2018) — Last Friday, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) published a decision calling for the immediate release of 18 Turkmen individuals who were arrested for exercising their freedom of association in the fall of 2016.
News Dec 19, 2017 Uzbekistan Forces State Workers to Subscribe to State-Run Newspapers (Radio Free Europe) – In Uzbekistan, where media has remained tightly controlled by the government even decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union, public-sector workers say they still don’t have the freedom to choose whether to subscribe to state-run newspapers.
News Dec 7, 2017 Hungary’s Jobbik party says fine risks making it insolvent (Reuters) –Hungary’s main opposition party would be unable to compete at an election next April if state auditors impose a heavy fine in a campaign finance case, a vice chairman for the nationalist Jobbik party told Reuters on Thursday.
News Dec 5, 2017 Russia names Radio Free Europe and Voice of America ‘foreign agents’ (The Washington Post) – Russia on Tuesday named Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and seven affiliated news services as foreign agents, and the Russian parliament prepared to ban the organizations from attending its sessions.
Press Release Nov 28, 2017 On Giving Tuesday, support freedom and democracy And this year has given us much cause for hope. Saudi Arabia finally granted women the right to drive, after years of tireless work by campaigners like Havel Prize laureate Manal al-Sharif.
Publication Nov 27, 2017 Oil, Instagram and the Plunder of Equatorial Guinea On Oct. 27, a Paris criminal court convicted Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the vice president of Equatorial Guinea and son of its president, of money laundering and embezzlement of more…
News Nov 22, 2017 UN court sentences Ratko Mladic to life in prison over Bosnia genocide (Los Angeles Times) – Mladic, 75, was found guilty of commanding forces responsible for crimes including the worst atrocities of the war — the deadly three-year siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern enclave of Srebrenica, which was Europe’s worst mass killing since World War II.
News Nov 21, 2017 Sweden stops some new aid for Cambodia in protest over crackdown (Reuters) – Sweden said on Tuesday it was stopping new aid for Cambodia, except in education and research, and would no longer support a reform programme after the main opposition party was outlawed by the Supreme Court at the government’s request.
News Nov 20, 2017 Turkish ban on LGBTI events in capital condemned as ‘discriminatory’ (The Guardian) – Rights groups have condemned as illegal and discriminatory a ban on LGBTI events in the Turkish capital one week after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described empowering gay people as being “against the values of our nation”.
News Nov 17, 2017 Russia vetoes UN resolution on chemical weapons probe in Syria (CNN) – Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Thursday that would have renewed a mandate for the independent group investigating chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
News Nov 13, 2017 We’re Not Done Yet, Hague Court Tells Burundi’s Leaders When Burundi became the first country to withdraw from the International Criminal Court less than two weeks ago, its leaders thought they had successfully avoided an inquiry into egregious crimes…
News Nov 8, 2017 Art of dissent: Protesting Russia’s Putin with Pussy Riot Their goal is for people to experience the brutality and oppression of Putin’s Russia. The play will be featured at the Saatchi Gallery in London’s Chelsea neighborhood from November 14 to December 24.
News Nov 3, 2017 Jailed Belarusian Opposition Leader Statkevich Gets Additional 10 Days In Prison (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty) – Incarcerated Belarusian opposition leader and former presidential candidate Mikalay Statkevich had his arrest prolonged to 10 more days, his wife says.
News Oct 31, 2017 Putin Critic Who Fought Pro-Russia Rebels Shot Dead in Ukraine KIEV, Ukraine — A prominent couple who were fierce critics of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and who narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in June was attacked again on Monday.
Press Release Oct 30, 2017 HRF to Spain and U.S.: Bring Venezuelan Dictatorship Cronies to Justice The four individuals were detained last Thursday in Madrid, Spain’s capital, during a joint operation carried out by the Civil Guard and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI).
News Oct 30, 2017 Latest on Turkmenistan’s Delusional Dictator Turkmenistan’s dictatorial president has already turned his hand to DJing, weights training, writing books and equestrianism, and can now add top-level golfing ability to his enviable skills – at least according to state television.
News Oct 27, 2017 Son of Equatorial Guinea’s president is convicted of corruption in France Teodorin Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president, has been given a three-year suspended jail term by a French court for plundering public money from his oil-rich but impoverished west African state to fund a jet-set lifestyle in Paris.
News Oct 23, 2025 Russian radio journalist stabbed in neck at her Moscow office Tatyana Felgenhauer, the deputy editor of Ekho Moskvy radio station, was attacked on Monday lunchtime at the station’s studios in central Moscow.
