Human Rights Watch

A breakdown of the events that are changing the free expression landscape in Asia and the Pacific.

But they do. And they pay a harrowing price for it.

Attackers hit Igor Kalyapin, head of independent Russian human rights group Committee for the Prevention of Torture, as he was leaving his hotel in Grozny. He was there to meet with journalists and discuss an earlier attack on human rights defenders and the media.

Statistics released this week by the Afghanistan Journalists Center report an alarming 85% increase in incidents of “violence, threats, intimidation, and insults” against journalists over the past year.

Since his detention, many human rights groups have campaigned for his release. On 21 April 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and called for his release, yet the Syrian authorities refuse to free him.

Since January, numerous government officials have demeaned and threatened Indonesia’s LGBT population. President Joko Widodo, who secured his election victory on a platform of promoting economic development and human rights, has yet to publicly speak out against discriminatory statements.

Three academics who signed a peace petition in January 2016 have been jailed by an Istanbul court on suspicion of “making terrorist propaganda.” At least 30 other academics have been dismissed and 27 suspended by their universities pending investigation.

On February 25, 2016, a juvenile minor offenses court in Minya governorate sentenced three Christian children to five years in prison and ordered the fourth placed in a juvenile facility for imitating Islamic prayer and the act of beheading in a 32-second video that their teacher filmed.