On 8 July 2016, the court ruled against 8 women human rights defenders from the Frente de Mujeres Defensoras de la Pachamama (Women's Front for the Defence of Mother Earth) in a complaint they submitted after being beaten and arbitrarily detained by police during a peaceful demonstration against a mining project in Río Blanco on 20 October 2015.
On 22 December 2015, the Second Intermediate People's Court of Beijing handed down a three year sentence to human rights defender and lawyer Mr Pu Zhiqiang, suspended for three years. He was found guilty of "inciting ethnic hatred" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". The guilty verdict means that Pu Zhiqiang is now prohibited from further practising law.
On 25 March 2016, journalist and human rights defender Mr Faisal Mohamed Salih was prevented from traveling from Khartoum International Airport to London by the NISS.
On 14 April 2016, human rights defender Mr Haris Ibrahim was sentenced to eight months imprisonment by the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court for allegedly giving a seditious speech in 2013.
On 8 April 2016, the Tharawaddy court dismissed the cases of 69 student human rights defenders and their supporters, who had been on trial since the police crackdown on peaceful student protests in 2015.
Human rights defender Souad Al- Shammary was arrested on 28 October 2014, while attending an interrogation session at the Bureau of Investigation in Jeddah.
She was detained for “further questioning” and subsequently transferred to the women’s section at the General Prison of Briman, in Jeddah. She was interrogated as a result of tweets that she sent over in 2013, after a number of clergy filed a complaint against her. The authorities in Saudi Arabia considered that those tweets incited women to oppose the guardianship system.
On 5 June 2015, human rights lawyers Tang Tianhao and Ma Lianshun were released from administrative detention in Qing'an country, Heilongjiang Province. Fellow lawyer You Feizhu was released on the evening of 4 June.
The three lawyers, along with lawyer Ge Yongxi, were detained in Qing'an between 28 May and 1 June following attempts to meet with their clients, who were in police custody.
On 16 October 2016, human rights defender Ding Jiaxi was released after serving out a 3.5 year prison sentence. On 18 April 2014, Ding and fellow human rights defender Zhao Changqing were sentenced to 3.5 years and 2.5 years' imprisonment respectively, while Messrs Li Wei and Zhang Baocheng were both given prison sentences of 2 years.
The four human rights defenders were convicted of “illegal assembly” over their role in small-scale demonstrations associated with the New Citizens Movement.
On 26 October 2017, Su Changlan (苏昌兰) was released from the Nanhai Detention Centre, Guangdong, after serving a three-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power”. Su Changlan had been detained in the Nanhai Detention Centre since 27 October 2014.
On 22 April 2016, the Commission of Investigation on Abuse of Authority (CIAA) ordered the arrest of human rights defender Mr Kanak Mani Dixit and placed him in detention in Gaushala Police Circle jail, Katmandu, Bagmati Zone. The human rights defender was released on 2 May 2016.
On 11 April 2016, Mr Liu Xinglian was released from custody in Wuhan No.2 Detention Centre due to ill-health. He had been arrested on 19 June 2015 on charges of 'inciting subversion of state power' by police in Wuhan city, Hubei province.
Mina Thabet was arrested in his home in Cairo on 19 May early morning by plain-clothed police and transferred to an unknown location.
Mina was released on bail of 10 000 LE on 19 June 2016.
