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BAGHDAD, April 27, 2024 (AFP) – A gunman on a motorbike shot dead a well-known Iraqi social media influencer known as Om Fahad outside her Baghad home on Friday, Iraqi security officials told AFP. An unidentified attacker shot Om Fahad in her car in the Zayouna district, a security official said, requesting anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to the media. Another security source said the attacker appeared to have pretended to be […]
GENEVA, Dec 18, 2023 (AFP) – A United Nations rights expert said Monday that the “enforced disappearance” of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was alarming, demanding that Moscow immediately release him. The Kremlin critic’s lawyers have been prevented from meeting him since December 6, and he did not appear for a scheduled court hearing last Friday. “I am greatly concerned that the Russian authorities will not disclose Mr. Navalny’s whereabouts and well-being for such a […]
MANILA, Oct 25, 2023 (AFP) – Five Myanmar nationals asked the Philippines on Wednesday to investigate alleged war crimes committed by 10 serving or former members of Myanmar’s military against the mainly Chin minority. Filipino lawyers representing the Myanmar nationals told reporters they lodged the “landmark” criminal complaint against junta chief Min Aung Hlaing and nine others at the Department of Justice in Manila. They asked prosecutors to open an investigation into alleged war crimes […]
By Xinqi SU and Holmes CHAN HONG KONG, Oct 25, 2023 (AFP) – Hong Kong leader John Lee used his policy address on Wednesday to sound the alarm on the threat of “soft resistance” — a vague term used by Chinese politicians to signal a new chapter in their crackdown against dissent. The phrase has no clear definition nor is it included in the city’s laws, but this week it appeared in a guilty verdict […]
By Stuart WILLIAMS PARIS, Oct 3, 2023 (AFP) – An Iranian girl aged 16 has been left in a coma and is being treated in hospital under heavy security after an assault on the Tehran subway, a rights group said on Tuesday, blaming the Islamic republic’s notorious morality police. The Kurdish-focused rights group Hengaw said the teenager, named as Armita Garawand, had been badly injured in a confrontation on the Tehran metro with female police […]
(UN GENEVA, Switzerland) The UN Human Rights Office spokesperson, Jeremy Laurence, has voiced deep concerns regarding the arrest, detention, and sentencing of environmental human rights defenders in Vietnam. Laurence stressed that these concerns encompass both the charges they face and the fairness of their trials. During a recent press briefing, Laurence said, “Yesterday, Hoang Thi Minh Hong became the fifth of six environmental human rights defenders arrested from 2021 to 2023 to be sentenced. She […]
By Xinqi SU HONG KONG, Sept 29, 2023 (AFP) – Hong Kong unionist Joe Wong had applied for permission to hold a Labour Day march, but cancelled his request to police in an abrupt U-turn after he briefly went missing. He cannot reveal what led to the change of heart, a result of a confidentiality clause in a sweeping national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 to quell dissent. Three years after […]
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sept 26, 2023 (AFP) – Myanmar’s military escalated its use of mass killings, air and artillery strikes in the past year as it struggles to crush resistance to its coup, the UN’s rights office said on Tuesday. The military’s ousting of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 sparked a huge backlash and it is now battling opponents across swaths of the country. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights […]
By Rebecca BAILEY A Chinese journalist who popularised the country’s stalled #MeToo movement and a labour activist were due to face trial Friday, with supporters voicing concerns for their health after two years in detention. Sophia Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing were arrested on 19 September 2021, under the broad charge of “inciting subversion of state power” — but their trial in the southern city of Guangzhou was only announced this week, according to their […]
GENEVA, Aug 29, 2023 (AFP) – Hundreds of thousands of people are being coerced in Southeast Asia by criminal gangs into carrying out online scams, often under the threat of torture, the United Nations said Tuesday. Many have been trafficked into working in online criminality and face serious violations such as torture or sexual violence, the UN said in a report. “People who are coerced into working in these scamming operations endure inhumane treatment while […]
LONDON, Aug 22, 2023 (AFP) – A heightened fear for their safety, increased worry for their families, and a desperate search for international support — this is what dominates everyday life for two activists in Britain who are among Hong Kong’s most wanted. Last month, Hong Kong police announced bounties of HK$1 million ($128,000) on eight democratic activists living abroad, encouraging the public to pass on information that could lead to their arrest. Former legislator […]
LONDON, Aug 21, 2023 (AFP) – Saudi border guards fired “like rain” on Ethiopian migrants trying to cross into the Gulf kingdom from Yemen, killing hundreds since last year, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday. The allegations, described as “unfounded” by a Saudi government source, point to a significant escalation of abuses along the perilous route from the Horn of Africa to Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians live and work. […]
