Human Rights | WPN World People News

Chinsisi Jafali, a 14-year-old with albinism in Malawi.

Uzbek authorities should ensure a fair appeals process for a student sentenced to three years in prison for sharing a link to an Islamic devotional song, Human Rights Watch said on June 14, 2023.

India’s arbitrary internet shutdowns disproportionately hurt communities living with poverty that depend on the government’s social protection measures for food and livelihoods, Human Rights Watch and Internet Freedom Foundation said in a report released on June 13, 2023. Since 2018, India has shut down the internet more than any other country in the world, undermining the government’s flagship “Digital India” program, which has made regular internet access vital for delivering key public services.

Kampala, Uganda's capital.

Local authorities and Amhara forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have continued to forcibly expel Tigrayans as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Western Tigray Zone since the November 2, 2022, truce agreement, Human Rights Watch said on June 01, 2023. The Ethiopian government should suspend, investigate, and appropriately prosecute commanders and officials implicated in serious rights abuses in Western Tigray.

Nearly two months since a series of nationwide protests began, Kenyan authorities have failed to take sufficient action to hold police officers and their commanders to account for killings and attacks on protesters and other people, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Kenya said on May 31, 2023.

Brazil’s Congress should reject a draft bill that would impose an arbitrary cutoff date curtailing the right of Indigenous peoples to their traditional land. Brazil’s lower house is expected to vote in the coming days on Bill 490/2007, which would prevent Indigenous communities from obtaining title of their lands if they were not physically present on them on October 5, 1988, the day Brazil’s current Constitution was adopted.

Police violently dispersed peaceful protesters in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on May 20, 2023, arresting dozens of people and seriously injuring at least 30, Human Rights Watch said on May 29, 2023. The police said they have opened an investigation into the violence against the protesters and announced that they had arrested three policemen for beating a child.

The Egyptian authorities have widely deployed a videoconference system since 2022 to remotely conduct pretrial detention hearings and permanently avoid bringing detainees to court in person, Human Rights Watch said on May 26, 2023. The system is inherently abusive as it undermines detainees’ right to be brought physically before a judge to assess the legality and conditions of detention, the well-being of detainees, and for the detainees to be able to speak to the judge directly and to their lawyers in private.

Japan’s system of “hostage justice” denies criminal suspects the rights to due process and a fair trial, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on May 25, 2023.