Human Rights | WPN World People News

Bahrain should immediately release the head of the country’s leading political opposition group having failed to present any evidence that justifies his detention. Sheikh Ali Salman, the secretary general of Al Wifaq, a legally recognized political society, has been in detention since his arrest on December 29, 2014, and has been charged with various criminal offenses, which include the promotion of violence and defamation of a “statutory body.”

OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatović at the conference on shaping policies to advance media freedom on the Internet, Vienna, 14 February 2013.

“Ukraine needs Europe and Europe needs to support Ukraine,” said Anne Brasseur, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), speaking at the end of a two-day working visit to Kyiv (15-16 January 2015) together with leaders of the Assembly’s political groups.

Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson addresses special event commemorating 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda.

Dramatic evidence presented at the trial in Chad of 21 former security agents confirms that torture was systematic during the Hissène Habré dictatorship, from 1982 to 1990, Human Rights Watch said on January 16.

Nabeel Rajab on the day of his release from detention on bail, on November 2, 2014 in Manama, Bahrain. A court is expected to rule on his case on January 20, 2015, and he could face up to 6 years in prison.

The European Parliament hopes that diplomatic dispute between Italy and India over the prosecution of two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen in 2012 during anti-piracy operations will soon be settled, under Italian jurisdiction and/or through international arbitration, it says in a resolution voted on Thursday. Members also called for the marines to be repatriated, as their detention without charge is a "serious breach of human rights".

Journalism after Charlie.

A prominent human rights lawyer in Tajikistan was sentenced on January 13, 2015, to nine years in prison following a politically motivated trial, Human Rights Watch said on January 14. The case against the lawyer, Shukhrat Kudratov, struck a blow to freedom of expression and the independence of the legal profession in Tajikistan.

An Egyptian minor offenses court on January 10, 2015, sentenced a student accused of writing Facebook posts that insulted Islam to three years in prison. The sentence, one of several handed down on blasphemy charges in recent years, came amid a coordinated government crackdown on perceived atheists.