A newly released report, Cruel Britannia contains detailed accounts from victims and their families of 5 UK citizens of Pakistani origin who were tortured by Pakistani security agencies in Pakistan. The report, published by Human Rights Watch, found no evidence of UK officials being directly involved in the torture, however they did find evidence of [...]

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A 29 year old woman was stoned to death on the 17th November after being convicted of adultery by an Islamic court in the Al-Shabab controlled village of El-Bon 45km west of Wajid district in Bakool region.
The village judge Sheikh Ibrahim Sheikh Abdurrahman verified that the woman pledged that she was guilty of committing adultery.
“This [...]

Tags: Somalia

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Last week Aminatou Haidar, the 42-year old Sahrawi human rights campaigner, was arrested and expelled by Morocco. She visited the US last month to receive the Civil Courage Award from the Train Foundation and was also awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. On her return to El Ayoun airport in Western Sahara she [...]

Tags: Morocco, Western Sahara

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Claims that British military personnel committed sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi civilians are being investigated by the Ministry of Defence.
Lawyers acting for former Iraqi detainees are calling for a full public inquiry into 33 abuse claims made during British military involvement in Iraq, among the allegations is that two soldiers raped a 16-year-old boy [...]

Tags: Iraq, Torture, UK

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A report published today on International Tolerance Day by OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) concludes that hate crimes continue to be a serious problem in many OSCE participating States.
The report finds there were numerous instances of intimidation, threats, vandalism, assault, arson and murder during 2008 however the lack of reliable data [...]

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Amnesty International, Human Rights First, and Human Rights Watch have called on the US to end arbitrary detention in Afghanistan and to fully align US detention practices with international law.
The organizations noted that the US has made some recent changes in its detention policy in Afghanistan. These include providing detainees with “notice of the basis [...]

Tags: Afghanistan, USA

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Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, described the sentencing on the 11th November 2009 of two Azerbaijani bloggers to prison terms on charges of alleged hooliganism and infliction of light bodily injuries as political.
“These new imprisonments cement Azerbaijan’s image as the pre-eminent jailer of journalists in the OSCE region. Five journalists [...]

Tags: Azerbaijan, OSCE

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Fleeing countries like Sri Lanka and Myanmar, refugees are risking their lives on a new smugglers route through Asia in search of a better life.

Tags: Australia, Burma, Malaysia, Myanmar, Refugees, Sri Lanka, UNHCR

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Since 2003, large numbers of Chinese citizens have been held incommunicado for days or months in secret, unlawful detention facilities known as “black jails” by state agents who violate detainees’ rights with impunity.
The Human Rights Watch report, “An Alleyway in Hell,” documents how government officials, security forces, and their agents routinely abduct people off the [...]

Tags: China

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Iraq’s central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government should protect besieged minorities in the disputed territories of Nineveh province.
Human Rights Watch documented attacks by Sunni Arab extremist groups targeting Yazidis, Shabaks, and Assyrian Christians, and intimidation by Kurdish forces against minority political and civic associations resisting Kurdish efforts to incorporate the area into the autonomous [...]

Tags: Irag

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