Tag Archives: rights

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | United Nations war crimes investigators on Tuesday said they were investigating fresh reports that chemical weapons were being used in rebel-held zones in war-ravaged Syria. The UN Commission of Inquiry on the human rights situation in Syria voiced alarm that it had received “multiple reports …

Tunis, Tunisia | AFP | Human Rights Watch called on Morocco Tuesday to urgently reexamine the sentencing of an activist to five years in prison based on a confession that it said may have been coerced. El Mortada Iamrachen, a 31-year-old member of a protest movement in Morocco’s neglected northern …

Sao Paulo, Brazil | AFP | A Brazilian judge has suspended export of live animals for slaughter, citing concerns that they are transported in cruel conditions. Exports can only restart when guarantees of adequate treatment are provided, Judge Djalma Moreira Gomes in Sao Paulo wrote in his late Friday decision, published …

Banjul, Gambia | AFP | Gambian police arrested a university lecturer and kept him in overnight detention for questioning the president’s ability to maintain national security in a newspaper interview, he told AFP on Thursday. Campaigners said the arrest was a worrying echo of restrictions on freedom of speech under the …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Kenya’s interior minister said Wednesday that opposition leader Raila Odinga’s mock inauguration as “people’s president” was an effort to overthrow the government, with media outlets shut down for their complicity in the event. Odinga, 73, held a swearing-in ceremony in Nairobi on Tuesday with the …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Rights groups on Wednesday criticised the Kenya government’s move to block live coverage of a mock inauguration by the opposition as a “violation” of the public’s right to information. Three of the country’s main private television channels had their live feeds cut or blocked, while …

Abuja, Nigeria | AFP | Nigerian air raids aimed at stopping herdsmen-farmer clashes killed at least 35 people in December, Amnesty International said Tuesday, describing the government’s response as “unlawful”. In a new report, the rights monitor said that on December 4, Nigerian air force planes fired “warning” rockets on villages …

Palestinian Territories | AFP | Police blocked dozens of women from attending a football match Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in what activists said they hoped would have been the first such permission under Hamas’s rule. Authorities in the Palestinian enclave run by Islamist movement Hamas told the women they …

Jerusalem, Undefined | AFP |  Israeli Holocaust survivors are pleading with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel his plan to forcefully expel tens of thousands of African migrants, citing their own experiences as outcasts. “We, who know precisely what it’s like to be refugees, to be homeless and bereft of …

Manila, Philippines | AFP | Philippine journalists took to the streets Friday in support of a news website facing state-enforced closure, accusing President Rodrigo Duterte of trampling on press freedom. The government withdrew the corporate registration of the Rappler website this week and has summoned its chief executive to answer …