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The case pending before the District Court in Rzeszów concerns the legality of surrendering the wanted M.D. to the Republic of Turkey. The individual is a Turkish Kurd. In 1996 he was sentenced to harsh life imprisonment by the State Security Court in Izmir. Further, upon the abolishment of the State Security Courts, his sentence was changed to a term of imprisonment which was subsequently upheld by the Turkish Supreme Court.

Norwegian PEN, Human Rights House Foundation and Norwegian Helsinki Committee invite you to the conference “Action on Belarus!”

The dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on torture at the Human Rights Council once again underlined that States have an obligation to combat torture and to take concrete acts to prevent ill-treatment and torture. , the Human Rights House Foundation expresses its concerns about torture in Armenia and Belarus.

Human rights defenders work to promote and protect rights of all – their work should be promoted and they should to enjoy protection in their work. However, throughout the world, they face harsh repression and often work in an unfavourable environment.

Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus have to rehabilitate all persons arbitrarily detained and to review and address systemic factors within their legal systems and State apparatus’ which underlie this human rights abuse; States need to stop using arbitrary detention as a repression tool.

Józef Głuchowski sued two bank establishments in Warsaw alleging that his personal interests had been infringed upon as the banks had denied him access to toilet facilities. The last hearing ended with the settlement between the claimant and one of the banks. By the settlement, the bank agreed, among other things, to make its toilets available to customers.

Since Fidel Castro, long time Cuban leader, stepped down as president in 2008, his younger brother Raúl Castro assumed the office. Since then Cuba, previously embracing old soviet-style economic and political policies, has begun to change. Whilst it would be naïve to state that Cuba is moving toward democratic and open society, the reforms undertaken by R. Castro are having a real impact on Cuban population.

The High Level Group of Experts of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) estimates that between 50 and 80 million ha of land in poor and developing countries have been negotiated, acquired or leased by international investors. Large-scale land transactions are undermining food security, livelihoods and the environment of local populations. This wildly spreading global phenomenon has been the reason why there have been so many reports of human rights violations in rural areas recently, especially with regards to land rights.

The laws adopted by the Government of Georgia quite often cause discontent among citizens but the Law on Political Unions of Citizens has caused particularly serious discontent within Georgian civil society. Civic organizations initiated a campaign under the name “It Affects You” against the new provision in the law; very soon a record number of over 200 organizations joined the campaign in Georgia. Despite harsh civic protest, the government put the new law into practice and a new, specially designed service office within the State Audit Company [Chamber of Control] took action against opposition political parties and citizens somehow affiliated with them.

Four independent Belarusian journalists have not been allowed to leave Belarus since beginning of March 2012. Authorities offer official explanations that the journalists are debtors in bankruptcy cases or interested parties in relation to debtors.

On 14 March it became known that President Aliaksandr Lukashenka refused to pardon Dzmitry Kanavalau and Uladzislau Kavaliou (right) who had been sentenced to death for the terrorist attack in Minsk metro. On 17 March Kavaliou’s relatives received a letter from the Supreme Court informing that his execution was carried out.

International and Azerbaijani NGOs condemn the blackmail and continued harassment of one of the few independent investigative journalists working in Azerbaijan, Khadija Ismayilova.