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The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is backing a legal challenge to charges brought against a US shopkeeper who accidently allowed a child to be given a copy of a comic book featuring images of artist Pablo Picasso in the nude. (13-JUNE-05)
 

On 25 May, David Mendes, Director of the independent human rights organisation Maos Livres in Angola, visited the Norwegian Human Rights House and spoke to an open lunch meeting about the human rights situation in his home country Angola. Access to justice is a major problem, and leads to gross miscarriages of justice.
 

The political situation in the Republic of Belarus is getting harder and harder. Now it reminds of the second half of 1920-ies, the beginning of repressions against Belarusian intellectuals in the Soviet Union. Now the state persecutes everyone who can’t be controlled or doesn’t prove to be loyal.(11-JUN-2005)

Recently the education boards of regional executive committees and heads of secondary and higher educational establishments have received the letter of the Ministry of Education #03-24/28, restricted publication “About non-admission of the attempts of involvement of pupils and students in lawless activity of political kind”, signed by the minister Aliaksandr Radzkou. This document confirmed the practice of political persecution of students that has existed for several years already.(11-JUN-2205)

The justice boards of local administrations continue liquidating branches of political parties and NGOs. The formal reason for it is that the juridical addresses of these branches are situated in residential premises. At the same time, the law on political parties and NGOs doesn’t demand from them to have juridical addresses. The authorities, in their turn, don’t provide the branches any possibility to register new juridical addresses, putting various obstacles to it. (11-JUN-2005)

Persecution of believers in the Republic of Belarus started long ago. The real reason for it is concurrence of other religious movements and directions to Russian Orthodox Church, which top-level Belarusian officials consider as a means that can serve promotion of their pro-Russian ideology. Most often religious persecution concerned representatives of non-traditional confessions, which were treated as sects. Now it also touches one of the oldest confessions in the Republic of Belarus, Catholics. (11-JUN-2005)

For the second consecutive year Warsaw authorities have refused to provide consent for the Equality Parade, meaning a peaceful demonstration of gays and lesbians, which was supposed to take place in Warsaw. Warsaw is buzzing with discussion about the legitimacy of this decision. The organizers announce that the demonstration will be held anyhow, as an expression of civil disobedience towards the authorities’ discriminating decision. (11-JUNE-05)

The number of homeless children and orphans in the Russian Federation reached 700 thousand by the end of 2002 (according to Russian Children’s Fund). This number is comparable to the number of orphans following the Second World War. (11-JUNE-05)
 

In the wake of the joint Human Rights House Foundation and Norwegian Helsinki Committee demonstrations a couple of weeks ago against the massacres in Andijan, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee is preparing a fact-finding mission to learn more about what really happened, and the context in which this ought best to be understood. Now, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has broken the news that human rights defenders are being particularly targeted. Read HRW?s full story below. (10-JUNE-05)