Human Rights | WPN World People News

On July 19, 2017, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) civil rights organization, hailed Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo for signing into law House Bill (HB) 5277 — a measure protecting LGBTQ youth in the state from the harmful and discredited practice of so-called “conversion therapy.”

Lebanese authorities should conduct an independent, thorough, and transparent investigation into the deaths of Syrians in military custody and allegations of torture and ill-treatment in detention, Human Rights Watch said on July 20, 2017. On July 4, 2017, the Lebanese military issued a statement saying four Syrians died in its custody following mass raids in Arsal, a restricted access area in northeast Lebanon where many Syrian refugees live. On July 14, Human Rights Watch received credible reports that a fifth Syrian detainee had also died in custody.

The Iranian government should immediately halt all executions for drug-related offenses while parliament debates amendments to reform the country’s drug law, Human Rights Watch said on July 20, 2017. Parliament is expected to vote in two weeks on an amendment to the drug law that would drastically increase the bar for a mandatory death penalty sentence.

The Department of Homeland Security should not expand expedited removal from the United States for asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said on Jul 19. Plans to expand the program from its current limit of people caught within 100 miles of the border who arrived within a 14-day period to a nationwide dragnet for anyone who cannot prove they have been in the country for more than 90 days were reported on July 17, 2017, by the Washington Post based on a 13-page internal agency memo.

International observers have discovered an execution site in west Mosul, Human Rights Watch said on Jul 19. That report, combined with new statements about executions in and around Mosul’s Old City and persistent documentation about Iraqi forces extrajudicially killing men fleeing Mosul in the final phase of the battle against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), are an urgent call to action by the Iraqi government.

The agency investigating the fatal police shooting of an Australian woman in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says one of the officers was startled by a loud noise just moments before his partner fired the deadly shot.

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, today denounced the murder of Edwin Rivera Paz, the Honduran journalist who was killed in the town Acayucan, in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

The wife of a Princeton University graduate student sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage in Iran said Tuesday that he had been "unjustly imprisoned'' and called for his immediate release.

Tajik authorities have detained, interrogated, and threatened relatives of 10 peaceful opposition activists who took part in a conference in Germany on July 9, 2017, in retaliation for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee said on Jul 18.