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Belgrade Pride 2010 began on 10 October in beautiful weather with a call for tolerance. The violence that erupted outside the venue of the march proved that tolerance is yet to be achieved. The Pride organized almost ten years after the last same event in Belgrade. It brings hope and can become a turning point for future dialogue in Serbia.

The exiled Turkmen human rights defender Farid Tuhbatullin has received reliable information that an order to remove him quietly has been issued in his home country, Turkmenistan. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee takes this threat seriously and urges in a letter to Austrian authorities that they ensure the safety of Tuhbatullin and his family.

Between 14 and 16 September 2010, as part of the “Strategic Litigation in the South Caucasus” project supported by the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, a group of twenty four lawyers from Republic of Azerbaijan visited the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. Among participants of the study visit was an Republic of Azerbaijan lawyer being at time an intern of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.

As Communist Party elders call for free speech in the People´s Republic of China, the government’s strict control of online content is supported by a finely tuned infrastructure of laws and censors. ‘Filter words’, ‘undesirable information’, self-censorship, state propaganda and a system of licenses is a daily norm for Chinese news websites.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is currently undergoing the process of integration into the European Union (EU). All member states of the EU, as well potential member states, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, are obliged to harmonize their national legislation fully with the EU law, which is particularly related to EU directives. However, the law on prohibition of discrimination in BIH is not responding to these standards.

Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and Norwegian Burma Committee have the pleasure of inviting you to a seminar with Mary Callahan: The 2010 Election in Burma/Myanmar in Historical Perspective.

Education in rural environments

During a conference on Strengthening Human Rights in the Russian Federation organized by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in cooperation with Amnesty International Norway in Oslo last month, a resolution on establishing the Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center was adopted by a group of nine leading Russian and international human rights organizations.

The constitution of Georgia has been amended twice since the Rose Revolution. In 2004, the amendment maximally satisfied the President’s ambitions and gave him near indefinite powers regarding legislative issues. In the second amendment, in 2010, more power is concentrated under the Prime Minister.

Chinese government attempts to block the news by blacking out domestic and foreign media coverage of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement awarding jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. His wife, Liu Xia, as reports Amnesty Inernational, has been cut off from the rest of the world.

Foodfirst Information and Action Network – FIAN – is co-hosting two seminars today, both as part of the annual Blue October campaign, bringing together some 20 Norwegian NGOs all concerned with the right to water and sanitation.

A complaint concerning the unfair trial and subsequent degrading treatment of Yevgeniy Zhovtis, one of Kazakhstan’s leading human rights defenders, was filed to the UN Human Rights Committee this week. Zhovtis received the 2010 Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s Sakharov Freedom Award.