Human Rights Watch

Prosecutors are seeking to shut down the organisation over alleged repeated violations of Russia’s legislation on “foreign agents”.

Human Rights Watch calls for the urgent release of activist and former lawyer Zhang Zhan in China after her family said she is in desperate need of medical care. Zhang was imprisoned for her independent reporting in Wuhan during the coronavirus outbreak.

A court sentenced the head of Viasna’s Homieĺ office Leanid Sudalenka and Viasna’s volunteer Tatsiana Lasitsa to three and two-and-a-half years in prison, respectively. Another five Viasna members are currently behind bars on politically motivated criminal charges.

The arrest of Rwandan journalist Théoneste Nsengimana and nine opposition party officials points to an intensified crackdown by government on dissent.

In separate incidents in Kashmir in October 2021, unidentified gunmen shot and killed seven people, four of them from the Hindu and Sikh minority communities.

“The Belarusian Helsinki Committee has a long record defending a wide range of human rights. The lawsuit is blatant retaliation for the group’s work and is another piece of the effort to annihilate the human rights movement in Belarus.” – HRW

Facial recognition has a wide range of uses in Moscow, from monitoring public transportation payments to traffic monitoring and a school pass system. More than 5,000 cameras with facial recognition software already operate in other regions of Russia.

In recent weeks, three parliament members have been imprisoned for speech offenses, and at least 50 Tunisians have been placed under arbitrary house arrests, including former officials, a judge, and three lawmakers.