6 January 2012 - The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has learned that former Allameh Tabatabaee faculty member and head of Volunteer Actors Institute Sohrab Razzaghi has been tried in absentia and sentenced to 20 years in prison and €550,000 ($760,705) in fines.
On 9 November 2011, local authorities in Benguela suddenly withdrew their support and disrupted an arts and culture event organised by the NGO OMUNGA that was scheduled to start the following day.
International human rights organisations urge the Council of the Republic, the upper chamber of the Belarusian Parliament, to quash recent legislative amendments that impose limitations on freedom of assembly and association and severely restrict the work of Belarusian civil society groups, especially those working on human rights or related issues.
Two hundred civil societies have demanded that ASEAN establish a regional human rights body at par with international human rights standards. In an open letter addressed to ASEAN’s High Level Panel and Secretary General today, civil societies urged that the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the ASEAN human rights body to include two vital elements for an effective human rights body - the mandates to carry out human rights protection and the provision for independent human rights experts to be appointed to run the body.
The recent killings of Oscar Kamau King'ara and John Paul Oulu in the context of a general climate of impunity have prompted a joint statement by the representatives of Kenyan civil society. The statement issued today in Nairobi states "Kenya civil society in its various formations across the country has assessed the state of the nation in the wake of the brutal broad-day light gunning down of our members Oscar Kamau King’ara and John Paul Oulu (GPO) by people believed to be police officers on a mission to assassinate the two on Thursday March 5, 2009 on State house road near the university of Nairobi Halls of residence. We condemn the cynical and brutal assassination of our brothers and vow to take all the necessary steps to ensure their killers are brought to justice. We also condemn the barbaric murder of an innocent university student, Godwin Ogato Gisairo, the same night by a police officer".
Human Rights Watch reported that Repressive New Legislation Should Be Amended or Scrapped in Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s government should immediately abandon plans to impose strict government controls and draconian criminal penalties on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said on July 1st. The two groups called on donor governments, whose behind-the-scenes efforts to see the bill reformed appear to have failed, to speak out publicly against the de facto criminalization of most of the human rights, rule of law and peace-building work currently being carried out in Ethiopia.
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