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The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) and seven partner Helsinki Committees released a report concerning Places of Detention in Serbia on January 24, 2006. Monitoring mission on places of detention in the Republic of Serbia was conducted on 30 and 31 May 2005. (02-FEB-06)
 

On 29 January, 300 demonstrators gathered outside the Russian Defence Ministry in Moscow to show their anger after a group of drunken servicemen was torturing a 19-year-old soldier for several hours. The proceedings have been instituted against Major General Aleksey Sidorov, the head of the Chelyabinsk Tank Training College. (02-FEB-06).
 

A leading Danish newspaper has apologised for the offence caused by its controversial publication of a series of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that provoked protests across the Middle East, while defending its right to commission and print them in the first place. Rohan Jayasekera reports. (01-FEB-06)
 

New charges have been pressed against Mr. Ruslan Bashirli, chairman of the Youth Movement “Yeni Fikir”, who is currently in preliminary detention, reports the International Secretariat of World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT). -We are gravely concerned by the general climate of harassment against members of the youth organisation Yeni Fikir, reads the statement of OMCT. (31-JAN-06)
 

ARTICLE 19 and three other media organisations have issued an open letter to the President of FYR Macedonia regarding the government’s recent draft law on Access to Information. The letter draws attention to the many gaps in the legislation, and calls for an immediate redrafting of the law. ARTICLE 19 reports. (26-JAN-06)
 

As part of HRH´s general ambition to keep expanding its network and increase its regional competence, Project Manager for Africa Niels Jacob Harbitz, right, has applied and been selected for another UNDP/IJ/DJE organised study tour, this time to Somaliland, late March. Harbitz took part on a similar tour of Republic of the Sudan, including visits to Darfur and the Nuba Mountains, last year. (01-FEB-06)
 

Representatives of Russian human rights organizations are calling on all NGOs and concerned individuals to express their support. Please add your signatures – as individuals or organizations – and send this appeal on for others to sign. (01-FEB-06)
 

The Rafto Human Rights House will host an international conference on North Korean Human rights and refugees in Bergen in May. -Our partner, says Sverre Wilhelmsen, right, the coordinator for the conference, -is Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human rights, a South Korean NGO, who has launched annual conferences on the subject since 1999. The previous conferences have been held in Seoul (three times), Tokyo, Prague and Warsaw. (31-JAN-06)
 

-Why doesn’t the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child apply to Northern Republic of Uganda, Mette Newth, right, a board member of HRH asked in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet yesterday. –The children are beaten into becoming unrecognisable monsters, capable of committing acts of violence your fantasy comes short of imagining. (31-JAN-06)