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This week, policemen surrounded the premises of Radio Kalima, while its staff were threatened, detained and their equipment sabotaged. This is the latest development in the government’s continued policy of undermining freedom of expression through its harassment of journalists and human rights defenders.

HRHF has sent a statement to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, right, in which he is asked to repeal the new law on CSOs or, alternatively, amend all elements of it that are incompatible with international human rights law and standards including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The first case on domestic violence that B.a.B.e. has sent to the European Court for Human Rights has been solved positively. The Republic of Croatia is obliged to pay 40 000 Euros to the family, right, of the deceased, and 1 300 Euros of allowance for the expenses of the request and correspondence with the European court.

Somalia’s parliament, meeting in Djibouti, is expected to elect a new president on 30 January, to replace Abdullahi Yusuf, who resigned at the end of December, 2008, after prolonged differences with the prime minister.

The Ethiopian parliament has voted into law a controversial bill which bars any civil society organisation receiving more than 10 percent of its funding from foreign sources engaging in human rights issues.

-Sudan is in a state of high tension at the moment, and we face a dangerous month ahead…Parts of Darfur are again in flames, with the worst fighting in the region since the beginning of 2008.- Republic of the Sudan expert Alex de Waal, said.

Okot Odhiambo, the deputy to the Lord´s Resistance Army (LRA) chief, Joseph Kony, has offered to turn himself in after being wounded in clashes with Ugandan forces hunting down his rebel group in DR Congo.

“The arrest of Laurent Nkunda, right, should be followed by swift steps to prosecute him on charges that he committed war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Amnesty International said today. Any trial must be fair and exclude the death penalty. If states fail to do so, then the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to seek to prosecute him. Since 2004, the ICC Prosecutor has been investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity in the DRC, particularly in the Ituri region, and has sought and obtained arrest warrants.

According to the Transparency International BiH Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre 2008 annual report, the dramatic level of corruption in BiH has a huge influence on the flagrant breach of fundamental human rights in the country and on the drastic relativization of basic freedoms.

During its meeting between 16 March and 3 April 2009, the Human Rights Committee is scheduled to discuss its future examination of the second periodic report of the government of the Republic of Croatia on measures undertaken to give effect to the rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Today, 28 January, a memorial was held outside the Russian Embassy in Oslo for human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, who were brutally murdered in the center of Moscow on 19 January. In their appeals, human rights defenders and Norwegian politicians demanded the Russian Federation to take responsibility and lead a proper investigation into the murders.

Russian youth of service age have strong reasons to be unwilling to go to the Russian army, neither by conscription nor under contracts.