Media Jan 23, 2018 Sweden Wants Answers About Its Seized Citizen. China Isn’t Giving Any. BEIJING — China on Tuesday publicly rebuffed demands by Sweden for information on the fate of a Swedish citizen who was snatched off a train in China by plainclothes officers…
Media Jan 23, 2018 Chechnya’s Dictator, Recently Hit With US Sanctions, Blames NGOs (Gizmodo) – The leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was recently hit with US sanctions over human rights abuses such as his government’s torture and “purge” of…
Media Jan 22, 2018 Russian Court Closes Foundation of Kremlin Critic Aleksei Navalny A Moscow court on Monday ordered the closing of a foundation supporting the activities of Aleksei A. Navalny, the country’s leading opposition politician, moving quickly in a case filed only this month by the Justice Ministry.
Media Jan 17, 2018 Russian human rights group has offices torched after leader’s arrest (The Guardian) – Masked men have torched the offices of a prominent human rights organisation in Ingushetia in southern Russia, days after the head of its operations in neighbouring Chechnya…
News Jan 12, 2018 Azerbaijani Journalist Gets Six-Year Sentence (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) – A court in Azerbaijan has sentenced journalist Afqan Muxtarli to six years in prison after convicting him of smuggling and other crimes in a politically…
News Jan 11, 2018 Turkey’s top court rules that two jailed journalists be released (Reuters) – Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that jailed journalists Mehmet Altan and Sahin Alpay be released, saying their rights have been violated, broadcaster CNN Turk reported. There was…
News Jan 10, 2018 Rights Groups Condemn Chechnya Activist’s ‘Abduction’ (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) – Human rights groups in Russia and abroad are condemning the detention of a leading activist in Chechnya on a narcotics charge they contend was fabricated,…
News Jan 9, 2018 Turkmenistan dictator bans black cars because he likes white ones (Times of Malta) – Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedow, the dictator of the oppressive central Asian nation, has decided to ban black cars from the capital city Ashgabat.
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.
