Category: Human rights

Vietnam convicts 7 activists in one week

     

Vietnam’s Communist authorities should immediately free prominent bloggers and activists imprisoned for exercising their rights, Human Rights Watch said today: During the last week of March 2016, Vietnam convicted seven… Read more »

Critical open letter highlights ‘paranoia’ within China’s ruling party

     

A series of extraordinary outbursts of public criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping in recent weeks has raised the question of whether his crackdown on dissent is backfiring, the Washington… Read more »

Let Cubans decide

     

  Members of the Christian Liberation (MCL) and the project Movement Cuba Decides delivered Thursday to the National Assembly over 10,000 signatures of citizens requesting a plebiscite for Cubans to decide on the… Read more »

Obama carpets ‘stone-faced’ Castro

     

Cuba’s Communist regime should tolerate dissent, criticism and even protests, President Barack Obama told its leaders, in a powerful speech, televised across the island, in which he outlined the benefits… Read more »

Egypt’s civil society crackdown: rights defenders at risk of prosecution

     

Fourteen global human rights groups today urged Egypt to halt a renewed crackdown on civil society and rights defenders. The demand came as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced a cabinet… Read more »

Cubama: a ‘new day’ or a ‘slap in the face’ for U.S.-Cuba relations

     

Change is coming to Cuba, President Barack Obama told his Cuban counterpart today, after  Raul Castro called on the U.S. to lift longstanding trade and other restrictions as part of… Read more »

Cubama: what President Obama should say about Cuba

     

  Cuba has released four dissidents and put them on a plane to the U.S. just days before President Barack Obama’s historic trip to the island as part of the rapprochement with President… Read more »

Renewed confrontation in Georgia?

     

  European Union membership “is a historical choice” for Georgia, according to Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze (above). “We are not a country which just decides to join blocs,” he told… Read more »

Vietnam’s ‘Lady Gaga’ joins dissident gatecrashers running for parliament

     

  Vietnam’s constitution pays lip service to democratic principles, but the country of 93m people is a repressive one-party state. In it, ordinary folk have little say over who their… Read more »