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– The situation for human rights defenders in Tunisia is extremely difficult. They are being monitored around the clock and are constantly being harassed by the authorities, says Carl Morten Iversen, Secretary General of the Norwegian PEN, who returned from Tunisia yesterday. (20-JAN-05)
 

– The situation for human rights defenders in Tunisia is extremely difficult. They are being monitored around the clock and are constantly being harassed by the authorities, says Carl Morten Iversen, Secretary General of the Norwegian PEN, who returned from Tunisia yesterday. (20-JAN-05)
 

US and Russian presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin will discuss the Upper Garabagh conflict in Bratislava, Slovakia in February, along with other issues, says US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Elizabeth Jones. The two presidents will call for stepping up activity in resolving conflicts in the former Soviet Union countries, including the Garabagh problem, she said. (19-JAN-2005)

Iran’s judiciary has retreated from its threat to arrest the human rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi. In a rare acknowledgement of mistake, a spokesman for the judiciary referred to the summons quite simply as an error. First, it had not stated a reason, second, the Revolutionary court, before which she was requested to appear would not be the right one. (20-JAN-05)
  

Random House, among the biggest publishing houses in the US, has announced that it will publish Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi´s memoirs. Although there had been an embargo under a Treasury Department regulation on publishing books from nations embargoes by the US, a lawsuit filed late last year resulted in a revision to permit publications of books by individuals from those nations. (20-JAN-05)
 

Yesterday, Uganda´s constitutional court began hearing an unprecedented legal challenge to capital punishment from the country´s more than 400 death row inmates. -While this is surely important, I fear that Ugandan authorities may welcome this opportunity to draw attention away from far bigger human rights problems, especially in the north, says Niels Jacob Harbitz, HRH´s Project Manager for Central and East Africa. (20-JAN-05) 
 

Moscow court´s finding that Kommersant, Russia´s leading independent business daily, must pay millions in damages for a July article that described long lines of customers withdrawing money at a major bank. (18-JAN-05)
 

A member of staff at the Grozny branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Said-Khussein Deniyev, has been found in the Chechen Republic after going missing last Thursday. (18-JAN-05)
 
 

The jury of the Olof Palme Prize has awarded three Russian human rights activists in 2004 . The Prize will be given to the head of Helsinki Group in Moscow, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, the president of the Human Rights Institute, Sergei Kovalyov, and the reporter of the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Anna Politkovskaya. (18-JAN-05)