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The Ossietzky Prize; Norwegian PEN´s award for outstanding contributions to freedom of expression, will be awared Monday 19 December to Fakhra Salimi. This years laureate has been living in Norway since she was 20 – more than half her life – and has always represented a different voice in Norway´s otherwise rather homogenous and unisone public debate. (17-DEC-05)
 

Ethiopian leaders claim their country is going through a process of democratisation. But who is it for, that process, when opposition media get closed and their editors imprisoned? Elisabeth Eide, right, board member of HRH, author, freelance journalist and a lecturer and researcher in journalism at the Academy of Oslo reports from a recent visit to Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. (17-DEC-05)
 

The trial of Orhan Pamuk, right, the Turkish novelist due to go before a court on 16 December, has been delayed. The Instanbul judge presiding over the case said the prosecution could not go forth until it received approval from the ministry of justice. Photo of Pamuk: Matthias Zeininger. (16-DEC-05)
 

In an article published on December 11, 2005, Korea Times reports that more than 1.200 North Koreans defected to South Korea in the first 11 months of the year to flee the poverty-stricken communist country. The source of information was the Unification Ministry. (16-DEC-2005)
 

Former President Kim Dae-jung has stressed human rights conditions in North Korea could be improved through economic cooperation and cultural exchanges on a gradual basis, warning that any forcible and arbitrary outside move to change the human rights situation in the North would not be successful. Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Rafto Prize for human rights in 2000. (16-DEC-2005)
 

On December 9 three members of the Burmese organisation «Assistance Association for Political Prisoners» (AAPP) released the report “The Darkness We See: Torture in Burma’s Interrogation Centers and Prisons” at a press conference in the Rafto House, Bergen. Cho Cho, Kyaw Maung and Kaythi Aye Bergen told their own stories of political imprisonment. 82 year old Mr. Bjørn Simonnæs was also invited to draw a historic line between his own experiences as a prisoner of war during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Norway 60 years ago to the systematic torture of political prisoners in Burma today.  (16-DEC-2005)

Nansen Dialogue started its work in 1995, following a spontaneous idea of Inge Eidsvaag, tells Ingrid Vik, right, the network’s current Director. -Visiting Sarajevo, an Olympic city like Lillehammer – but under siege ten years after it hosted the Olympics – he came to the idea of organising courses in democracy, human rights and peaceful conflict resolution for participants from the former Yugoslavia with different backgrounds, in neutral surroundings at the Nansen Academy. (16-DEC-05)
 

The Human Rights House Foundation and the Swedish Helsinki Committee have urged the Nakhchivanian authorities in a letter to recall all charges against the secretary of the election commission, Nushabe Gafarly. Gafarly, arrested after refusing to sign protocols on the parliamentary elections, which were marked by numerous irregularities. After being pressured she eventually did sign the protocols. In spite of this she is being prosecuted now. Read the protest letter here. (16-DEC-05)
 

Selling ‘=Oslo,’ the still very new magazine whose revenue goes half-n-half to the vendors and back into production of more issues, has changed the lives of the vendors. It has given me a reason to get up, said vendor 018 Dagfrid Fosen, normally to be found outside the shopping mall CCVest, in honour of Vibeke Omberg, the initiator and editor, on the event of Omberg receiving the Norwegian Amnesty Award 2005 earlier this week. (16-NOV-05)