Mrinalini Shinde wrote a post in Polymic of 17 August about the human rights situation in Saoudi Arabia in good polemic style under the title: “Starting a Human Rights Association in This Country? Prepare to Face Jail Time”. She is an undergraduate student of law at National Law School of India University, interested in gender and sustainability issues. .. She has volunteered with the Human Right Law Network, and has conducted research in family laws, and gender justice. see: Mrinalini Shinde.
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), draw attention to the following situation in Malaysia.
On 15 August 2013 the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa [HRLHA] called for reversal of the sentencing of 21 Oromo students by theFederal High Court of Ethiopia on 7th August.
On 29 June 2012 (yes a year ago) AI published a short video on the Internal Criminal Court, which for some reason I had missed, so here is the link to the video which is a simple but clear assessment of 10 years ICC, it’s successes, it’s failures and the challenges it still faces in bringing to justice those accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On 13 August 2013 the United Nations added its voice to the many to call for his immediate release of Adilur Rahman Khan, the director of Odhikar, a well-known human rights organization in the country. He was arrested at his home in the capital, Dhaka, on 10 August by plainclothes officers reportedly acting without a warrant, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR]. “We are calling on the Government of Bangladesh to guarantee the physical and psychological integrity of Mr. Khan, whose arrest might be linked to his work as human rights defender,” OHCHR spokesperson Liz Throssell told reporters in Geneva. She said Mr. Khan is reported to have been arrested under section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and
section 57 of the Information and Communication Technology Act, accused of publishing false information about violence by Government forces during demonstrations in May by the Islamist movement, Hefazat-e-Islami. Odhikar reported that 61 people had died during these protests, challenging the Government’s version of events, noted Ms. Throssell.She said that the day after his arrest, Mr. Khan was denied bail and ordered to be held on remand for five days. “He was allegedly denied access to a lawyer before his court hearing,” she added.
Business Week reports on 14 August that rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province murdered a human-rights investigator who criticized their movement for committing abuses against civilians. Armed men from the secessionist Kata Katanga group [whose name means “cut out Katanga” in the Swahili language] forced their way into the victim’s house on 7 August before killing him, according to Scott Campbell, the director of the UN’s joint human-rights office in Congo. The UN mission, known as Monusco, wouldn’t release the victim’s name or organization for security reasons, Campbell said. “Monusco is gravely concerned by the arbitrary execution” of the activist, it said in a separate e-mailed statement that also called on Congolese authorities to protect human-rights defenders and their families. Almost 370,000 people have been displaced in the province as of July, mainly because of the violence, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
13 NGOs have signed an open letter concerning the situation in Bahrain in the light of the upcoming mass demonstration on 14 August. As it is short and to the point here is the full text copied from the FIDH website: Read the rest of this entry »
For those who think that the phenomenon of forced psychiatric treatment of human rights defenders has disappeared with the end of the cold war, here are two reminders from Front Line that this is unfortunately still continuing:
On 6 August 2013, human rights defender Mr Mohammed Saleh El-Bejadi was released from detention in which he had been kept since his arrest during a peaceful protest in the area of Buraidah, on 21 March 2011. Mohammed El-Bejadi is Read the rest of this entry »
Ms. Ragia Omran, a leading Egyptian human rights lawyer and women’s rights activist, was announced -on 2 July 2013 – as the winner of the 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, now in its 30th year. The award recognizes her extraordinary work, and initiates a partnership to support her efforts to advance the women’s rights, the rule of law, and democracy in Egypt through human rights legal advocacy. Read the rest of this entry »
Three of the Sentenced Oromo Students
Mohammed El-Bejadi
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 