Human Rights Watch

Birthday celebrations planned on 8 January 2015 for North Korea’s dynastic supreme leader Kim Jong-Un contrast sharply with severe human rights violations throughout the country, Human Rights Watch said.

“Mexico is facing its worst human rights crisis in years, with security forces committing horrific abuses that are rarely punished,” said Daniel Wilkinson, Americas managing director at Human Rights Watch.

Oman’s security forces routinely harass, detain, and imprison rights defenders, social media users, and others critical of governmental policies, Human Rights Watch said.

The authorities should drop politically motivated charges against members of MASUM, an NGO based in Kolkata, India that has long reported on abuses by the police and Border Security Force.

The law, passed by parliament on December 18, 2014, and signed by the president on December 19, expands the search, seizure, and surveillance powers of the National Intelligence Service, curbs media and speech freedoms, and limits the rights of arrested and accused persons.

The Uzbek government has imprisoned thousands of people on politically motivated charges, including human rights and opposition activists, journalists, religious believers, artists, and other perceived critics.

Growing numbers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have been attacked and harassed across Russia in the lead-up and aftermath of the adoption of the federal anti-LGBT “propaganda” law in June 2013.

“If the US Senate can issue a detailed report on US government responsibility for CIA torture nearly a decade ago, surely the Indonesian parliament can do the same for one of the 20th century’s worst massacres,” says Human Rights Watch.