Human Rights Watch

“Policing demonstrations can be difficult, but beating people certainly isn’t acceptable crowd control,” said Lydia Gall, Balkans and Eastern Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “And beating a journalist covering a protest is not just unlawful, but an indefensible attack on press freedom.”

Kuwait’s Court of Cassation on June 12, 2015, upheld a six-year sentence for blogger Saleh al-Saeed for tweets criticizing Saudi Arabia.

Fred Bauma and Yves Makwambala were arrested at a workshop organized to launch “Filimbi,” a platform to encourage Congolese youth to peacefully and responsibly perform their civic duties

“The sentence against al-Sabbagh’s killer would serve justice but past convictions of police have been reversed on appeal, meaning there has been zero accountability for killing protesters,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director.

In a May 19, 2015 editorial, Grozny Inform, which is closely linked to the republic’s leadership, intoned that Elena Milashina could meet the same fate as Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist murdered in 2006.

The harassment and intimidation of the nongovernmental organisations Haki Africa and Muslims for Human Rights, is connected to their legitimate human rights work, Humans Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Civil Society Organizations Reference Group, and National Civil Society Congress say.

“Until the government acknowledges its actions and provides redress to the many victims [of the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen] and their families, there is no safeguard that future protests won’t provoke a similar reaction.”

The new USA Freedom Act imposes long overdue limits on the scope of records collection and new measures to increase transparency and oversight of surveillance by the National Security Agency.