Human Rights | WPN World People News

Public criticism and peaceful opposition to the government remain effectively banned in Egypt, Human Rights Watch said on Jan 12 in its World Report 2017. Security forces routinely tortured detainees and forcibly disappeared hundreds of people during 2016.

For the past four years, the Kremlin has sought to stigmatize criticism or alternative views of government policy as disloyal, foreign-sponsored, or even traitorous. It is part of a sweeping crackdown to silence critical voices that has included new legal restrictions on the internet, on freedom of expression, on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and on other fundamental freedoms.

Saudi authorities have arrested two independent human rights advocates, most likely because of their peaceful activities, Human Rights Watch said on Jan 10. The arrests of Essam Koshak, 45, and Ahmed al-Musheikhis, 46, are the latest in Saudi Arabia’s ongoing repression campaign against peaceful activists, reformers, journalists, and writers. Saudi authorities also recently banned Jamal Khashoggi, one of the country’s most prominent journalists, from publishing any of his writings in the country.

The Pakistani government should urgently investigate the apparent abductions of four activists who campaign for human rights and religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said on Jan 10. The four men, Salman Haider, a well-known poet and academic, and bloggers Waqas Goraya, Aasim Saeed, and Ahmad Raza Naseer, went missing or were taken away from different cities between January 4 and January 7, 2017.

Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran Asma Jahangir.

The United Nations on 6 January announced that it plans to strengthen its approach to preventing and responding to sexual exploitation and abuse by creating a high-level task force that will develop a “clear, game-changing strategy” to achieve “visible and measurable further improvement.”

The government of President Yahya Jammeh, defeated in Gambia’s December presidential election, has arbitrarily arrested opposition sympathizers and closed three independent radio stations in the past week, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said on Jan 05. Jammeh is required under Gambia’s Constitution to cede power to President-elect Adama Barrow by January 19, 2017.

January 8 celebrations planned for the 33rd birthday of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un only spotlight the daily reality of terrible human rights abuses North Koreans face, Human Rights Watch said on Jan 05. The annual celebrations are filled with obligatory songs, dances, and praise for the Kim family’s notoriously brutal rule.

Some senior Israeli officials have been encouraging Israeli soldiers and police to kill Palestinians they suspect of attacking Israelis even when they are no longer a threat, Human Rights Watch said in an analysis of those statements. Other Israeli officials have failed to repudiate the calls for excessive use of force on Jan 02.

In barely a month since the beginning of December, WFP has delivered food or cash to more than a million Nigerians in conflict-affected zones in the Northeast. This means that over half of those in need of urgent humanitarian assistance have now been reached.