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A Uyghur journalist working for an official Chinese radio service has been sentenced to life in prison following a secret trial conducted earlier this year. Memetjan Abdulla, an editor for the Uyghur service of the People´s Republic of China National Radio, was sentenced in April in a closed trial in Urumqi, capital of China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

East and Horn of Africa is the most dangerous region in the world for journalists. Out of 145 reporters, editors, and photojournalists held behind bars on 1 December 2010, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 25 are imprisoned in this region. 17 of them are jailed in State of Eritrea.

While Republic of Belarus prepares for a presidential election on 19 December, Gennady Grushevoy, the 1999 Rafto Prize laureate from Republic of Belarus, and the Rafto Foundation organised a youth festival in Minsk in the beginning of December 2010.

The embassy will be handed over tens of thousands of signatures on the protest letter to Liu Xiaobo, collected in Norway and internationally.

The banners for the demonstration will call “Free Liu Xiaobo!” and “Free all Prisoners of conscience in China”.

The procession will start with speeches at Youngstorget and end in front of the Grand Hotel, where a picture of Liu Xiaobo will be projected throughout the hotel front in the absence of the Nobel Peace Prize winner on the balcony.

There will also be held torchlight processions in Trondheim and Kristiansand.

Three decades ago the People´s Republic of China changed it policy: opened itself to the international trade and invited world community to cooperate. Since then its economy is growing impressively. Unfortunately there has been not much progress in political reforms. The question is: can the recent situation continue?

Romania needs a moral awakening, the 1989 Rafto laureate Doina Cornea tells Norwegian activists. Doina Cornea (81) was awarded the Rafto Prize in 1989 for her work as a dissident during the communist regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu. Today she sadly speaks about youth’s moral decay, corruption and dirty politics in her country.

Moroccan security forces repeatedly beat and abused people they detained following disturbances on November 8, 2010, in the Western Sahara capital city of El-Ayoun. Security forces also directly attacked civilians.

The entire world applauded when Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s pro-democracy opposition and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, was freed on 13 November. Her release means that Chinese political dissident Liu Xiaobo is now the only winner of this prestigious award to remain in detention.