Freedom House

The detention of the Zone 9 bloggers in 2014 became an international cause célèbre, and the release of the last of them in October was greeted with euphoria. But the regime’s crackdown on dissent continues unabated.

One of the most touted takeaways from Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to the U.S. was an agreement on the contentious issue of cyberattacks – and especially cyberespionage – against American targets.

Internet freedom around the world declined for the fifth consecutive year in 2015 as more governments censored information of public interest while also expanding surveillance and cracking down on privacy tools, according to Freedom House’s “Freedom on the Net 2015” report.

The plight of Bao Zhuoxuan, the 16-year old son of human rights lawyer Wang Yu and legal activist Bao Longjun, shows China doing its utmost to pressure human rights defenders by targeting entire households with punitive measures.

“The laws would ignore recommendations made in June by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of assembly and association, when he called on Kazakhstan’s government to reduce, not increase, its regulation of civic groups.”

Angolan human rights activist José Marcos Mavungo was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of rebellion for his alleged role in planning an anti-government protest that did not even take place.

For the past five days, nearly 60,000 people have gathered in Chişinău’s National Square (Piaţa Marii Adunări Naţionale, or PMAN) to protest against pervasive corruption, demand the return of $1 billion in assets that were recently stolen from Moldova’s banking system, and call for the resignation of several senior officials, including President Nicolae Timofti.

“It is the height of hypocrisy for the court in Mauritania to reaffirm these sentences against anti-slavery activists the same week that the government strengthened its laws against slavery.”