News Nov 1, 2017 Defector: Information, not force, can bring change in North Korea The highest-level North Korean defector in two decades says America should bring change peacefully by challenging the totalitarian regime’s grip on information rather than resorting to military action.
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.
News Oct 31, 2017 Cambodia Is Becoming ‘Openly Authoritarian’ in Its Crackdown on Opposition The leader of Cambodia’s political opposition sits in solitary confinement in Correctional Center 3, a maximum-security prison near the Vietnamese border.
News Oct 31, 2017 HRF in the News — September and October highlights Every month, through publications, interviews, and coverage, we help put a bigger spotlight on some of the world’s most effective and important dissidents, and we promote ideas on how best to challenge corruption and repression.
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 UN finds Syrian regime responsible for gas attack on rebel-held town Medical staff at Damascus Countryside specialised hospital hold placards condemning a suspected chemical weapons attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun.
News Oct 27, 2017 ‘Baffled’ by Rohingya Stance, U.N. Official Scolds Aung San Suu Kyi The United Nations investigator of human rights abuses in Myanmar expressed deep disappointment Thursday at what she described as an indifferent response by the country’s Nobel laureate leader to the violence raging against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
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 26, 2017 HRF Condemns Kenya’s Election Rerun After Kenya’s Supreme Court overturned the August election, we hoped against hope that the rule of law had returned to Kenya.
News Oct 26, 2017 Parliament awards Sakharov Prize 2017 to Democratic Opposition in Venezuela “The Prize is for all Venezuelans in the world,” said Parliament President Antonio Tajani while awarding the prize. The President noted that the human rights situation in Venezuela was deteriorating and called for a “return to free elections with the participation of all so that the Venezuelan people can decide their future”.
News Oct 26, 2017 BBC appeals to UN over Iran’s crackdown on journalists The BBC’s director general has accused Iran of “unprecedented collective punishment” as the corporation appealed to the UN over crackdowns on Iranian employees of its London-based Persian service.
News Oct 26, 2017 Bahraini Appeals Court Confirms Dissolution of Wa’ad 26 October 2017 – Bahrain’s High Court of Appeals has today confirmed the asset seizure and dissolution of Wa’ad (also known as the National Democratic Action Society), the country’s largest secular, leftist opposition group.
News Oct 26, 2017 Analysis: The Political Impasse Over Syria’s Disappeared AFTER BEING TORTURED in a Syrian detention center, journalist and human rights activist Mazen Darwish was left for dead.
News Oct 25, 2017 After Four Years in Egypt Jail, Ibrahim Halawa is Home Arrested in August 2013 along with hundreds more, Ibrahim went on trial for an alleged role in violence during protests in Cairo—charges he, witnesses, and his lawyers, all denied. He is finally returning home after being acquitted.
News Oct 25, 2017 In China, a CreditKarma that factors in your political views… For now, technically, participating in China’s Citizen Scores is voluntary. But by 2020 it will be mandatory. The behaviour of every single citizen and legal person (which includes every company or other entity)in China will be rated and ranked, whether they like it or not.
News Oct 24, 2017 Myanmar Rohingya crisis: US withdraws military assistance The state department said it had also dropped travel waivers for Myanmar military officials, and was considering economic sanctions.
News Oct 24, 2017 Kenya’s top court to hear petition to postpone election Kenya’s Supreme Court plans to hear last-minute arguments that Thursday’s presidential election should be postponed because a free and fair vote cannot be guaranteed.
News Oct 24, 2017 Hong Kong Protest Leaders Are Freed on Bail to Pursue Appeal HONG KONG — The Hong Kong democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law were released from prison Tuesday after the city’s highest court granted them bail to appeal sentences for what their supporters called political prosecution by the government.
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.
News Oct 20, 2025 Cuban Dissidents in Electoral Challenge as Castro Era Nears End Under Cuba’s one-party system, civic associations of individuals whose will to participate in the political life is legitimate from the standpoint of a democratic society, are considered and treated as illegal, and criminalized by the government with the official labels of “worms,” “scum,” “mercenaries,” “terrorists,” and “counter-revolutionaries.”
