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´The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Warsaw, Poland) strongly objects to the detention of the human rights defender Ms. Umida Niyazova. This is an example of the inadmissible practice carried out for some time now by Uzbek authorities, which consists in prosecuting individuals benefiting from the Helsinki Foundation’s educational programs´. (12-FEB-07)

Thursday February 15, Rafto Human Rights Award laureate from 2002 Sidi Mohammed Daddach, right, visits the Human Rights House in Oslo. Daddach, who was released in 2001, was the longest serving human rights activist in Moroccan prisons ever, with the major part of his sentence, 14 of the total 24 years, served on death row. He was released after sustained pressure from Western Saharan and international human rights groups. Read the full invitation to the meeting, in Norwegian, below. (12-FEB-07)
  

Following pressure from the Rafto Foundation and 30 other Norwegian human rights organisations, among them the Human Rights House Foundation, Sidi Mohammed Daddach had his passport back late last year. The passport had been confiscated since 2003. Below is the letter that did the trick, addressed to the Moroccan Minister of the Interior. (12-FEB-07)
 

The Karen Women´s Organization (KWO) today launches its report State of Terror, which documents in detail the terrible treatment suffered by women in the Kren state at the hands of the Burmese army. Among other things, the report documents the army´s systematic use of rape as a weapon of ethnic discrimination, suppression, and ultimately, war. The Norwegian Burma Committee supports the KWO, and stresses that the situation in the Karen state has gone from bad to worse in the last year. (12-FEB-07)
 

Uyghur political prisoner Ismail Semed was executed on the morning of February 8 in Urumchi, the provincial capital of East Turkistan (also known as Xinjiang Province) in northwest the People´s Republic of China. Semed, who was 37 years old at the time of hisexecution, was sentenced to death in October 2005 on charges of “attempting to split the motherland” and other charges relating to the alleged possession of firearms and explosives. 
(10-FEB-07)

In March fourteen regions of Russian Federation are holding local legislative elections. However, in a several regions two of the opposition liberal parties – Union of Right Forces and Yabloko (Apple) – have been barred from fielding candidates. The leaders of the said parties have already filed a suit against officials’ actions because as they claim the Elections Commission’s rejection is unfounded. Moreover, they believe the party in power has been controlling activities of elections commissions, wishing to liquidate possible rivals in the upcoming elections. (10-FEB-07)
 

In the Algerian hammada, a hot and harsh region of the Sahara, more than half the Sahrawi people have been waiting for 31 years to go home. In this first article of many that will appear on the Oslo and Bergen subpages in the next weeks, www.humanrightshouse.org will focus on the human rights situation in Western Sahara. The occasion of this focus are the visits to Oslo and Bergen by two key human rights defenders from the region; Sidi Mohammed Daddach and Aminatou Haidar. (10-FEB-07) 
 

Different actors have called for a boycott of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing because the People´s Republic of China violates fundamental human rights. Others claim that since the Olympics is full of politics anyway; the political aspects of the Games can be made use of through presence and possible dialogue. In any way, the coming Olympics is a good occasion to discuss sports role in reconciliation work. (09-FEB-07) 
 

Interaction Council, the association of former presidents and heads of governments all over the world, following long standing preparations with counsellors from different circles, on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Charter on Human Rights, proposed the Universal Charter on Human Responsibilities in 1998. In remembrance of the Universal Charter on Human Responsibilities, excerpts from the said address by Helmut Schmidt (right), former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and honourable chair of the InterAction Council, published on 3 October 1997 are contained herewith. (07-FEB-07)
 

Great number of in absentia trials, as well as re-trials, indictments lacking in clarity, unstandardized practice of holding in custody and inadequate support to witnesses and victims, remain to be the most important shortcomings of war crime trials conducted before Croatian courts, stands in the Monitoring Report of the War Crime Trials for 2006, presented today by the Centre for Peace, Non-violence and Human Rights, Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Documenta and Civic Committee for Human Rights. (01-FEB-07)
 

On Sunday, 25 youth activists were detained in Minsk by the police. Two of them, Aleh Korban and Dzmitry Fedaryk, were suspected of organizing or participating in activities of an unregistered public organization. They may be sentenced to two years in prison. Human rights defenders fear a new wave of political repression. (06-FEB-07)
 

The case of private Roman Rudakovhe is the latest notorious incident of brutal treatment in the army. After severe beatings by his unit, the soldier underwent ten operations, his small intestine was ablated. Military officials denied the fact of violence and ascribed Rudakov’s severe condition to allegedly latent congenital blood disease.