Posts Tagged ‘prosecutors office’

Cambodian MEA Laureate 2012 Luon Sovath charged with incitement

November 5, 2014
 
cambodia-luon-sovath-award-oct-2012.jpg

(Luon Sovath after receiving the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in Geneva on 2 October 2012; left myself.  AFP)
 On 4 November Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports that two outspoken critics of Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen are called to court this month on vague charges of “incitement to commit a crime,” but the defendants say they have done nothing illegal. It concerns the human rights defender and monk Luon Sovath (MEA Laureate 2012) and dissident Sourn Serey Ratha (based in the USA). They received summons dated 22 October (!) signed by Phnom Penh Municipal Court deputy prosecutor Meas Chanpeseth accusing then of “incitement to commit crimes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and abroad” in 2011, under Penal Code article 495, but the summonses, which ordered the two men to appear in court together in the capital on 25 November, do not specify what crimes they had incited or how their cases were linked.

[Under the Penal Code, incitement is vaguely defined in article 495 as directly provoking the commission of a crime or an act that creates “serious turmoil in society” through public speech, writings or drawings, or audio-visual telecommunication. Luon Sovath faces up to five years in prison if convicted, while Sourn Serey Ratha faces a total maximum punishment of 15 years.]

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Posted in awards, films, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, Luan Sovath, MEA | 1 Comment »
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the Crimea and Foreign Agents: a T-shirt tells it all

April 1, 2014

As a result of the annexation of the Crimea, the Russian Procurator-General has found himself in a legal conundrum. The local NGO “Crimea Human Rights Centre” [CHRC] had for years militated in favour of the rights of the Russian speaking majority and insisted on the right to self-determination already in 2005 as the only way to secure their rights.

As the NGO receives funding from abroad (mostly from the Russian government but also from a rich businessman in Abkhazia), it had been forced on 2 February 2014 to register under the new Ukrainian “Foreign Agents law” [see my earlier post: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/ukraine-follows-russias-example-again-human-rights-defenders-labeled-as-foreign-agents/].

As a result, the members of the CHRC had even been forced to wear T-shirts with the text: “Foreign Agent”. With the integration of the Crimea, several staff members had stopped wearing the hated T-shirts but a certain, Aleksey Baburinko, one of the few Ukrainian human rights defenders left in the Crimea, lodged a complaint saying the CHRC still fell under the law on Foreign Agents, “either the Ukrainian or the Russian version”.

Today, 1 April 2014, the local Prosecutor’s office in Sebastopol issued a statement that wearing the T-shirts was no longer necessary but that the issue of registration would be referred to the new Russian Minister for Crimean Affairs, Oleg Savelyev, who has just been appointed.

Via http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/1april2014

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Civil proceedings against ‘Memorial’ under Russia’s Foreign Agents Law continue

November 17, 2013

On 11 November the Prosecutor’s Office brought a civil lawsuit against Memorial before the Leninsky District Court of St Petersburg after administrative charges against the same organisation ‘ for failing to register as a ‘foreign agent‘ were dismissed by the same court. The Prosecutor’s Office initiated the civil suit on the basis that its failure to register as a ‘foreign agent’ would violate the interests ‘of an undefined group of persons’. Frontline Defenders follows this and other cases in which the ‘foreign agent’ harassment of NGOs in Russia continues. The details of the case are illuminating, including the involvement of a preposterous ‘expert“: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Front Line, Human Rights Defenders | 2 Comments »
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PBI demand guarantees of security for human rights defenders in Mexico

April 12, 2013

During the night of April 3rd, the offices of the Mexican Committee for the Integral Defense of Human Rights Gobixha (Código DH) were forcibly entered. Personnel noticed the entry when they arrived at the office at 8:20am and found the door unlocked and the padlock partially open. They found the computer was turned on and that someone had gone through the records kept at the desk, taking several of them. It is also probable that they went through digital documents found on the computer. These events were denounced before SEGOB, the Special Prosecutors Office for Crimes of Social Significance of the Attorney Generals Office and the Federal Police. In Oaxaca in recent months a climate of intimidation and harassment of community defenders, to whom Peace Brigades International (PBI) provide accompaniment, has been generated. Some of these defenders have also recently been detained. PBI demand that the state and federal government of Mexico secure conditions for the work of human rights defenders!

via Codigo-DH: We demand guarantees of security for human rights defenders: PBI.

 

Posted in human rights, Human Rights Defenders | Leave a Comment »
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