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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.

Freedom of expression organisations condemn two attacks on journalists in the Moscow region and call on Russian authorities to ensure protection for journalists. Both victims, Oleg Kashin and Anatoly Adamchuk, have covered a contentious highway project that would go through a forest in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. Kashin worked on a number of other sensitive subjects as well.

As Mexico celebrates the bicentennial of its independence and the centennial of its revolution, the reality is that we are seeing the most aggressive human rights violations against its population and against migrants who pass through its territory, said José Raúl Vera López, the 2010 Rafto Prize laureate, in his speech at the Rafto Symposium on 5 November.

Eight Norwegian nongovernmental human rights organisations, including Amnesty International Norway, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and Human Rights House Foundation, showed their support to a pro-democracy civil Russian movement “Strategy 31“ by organising a demonstration in Oslo.

Norwegian Mission to the East invites to an open seminar in Burma: Aftermath of the Burmese elections and the road map to democracy: What role for the ethnic nationalities?

A court in China’s western region of Xinjiang, which was rocked by ethnic violence in 2009, appears to be stalling an appeal hearing in the case of an ethnic Uyghur journalist handed a 15-year jail term, Radio Free Asia reports. Gheyret Niyaz a 51-year-old journalist and webmaster was accused of criticizing the Chinese authorities in 2009 and was given 15 years in jail.

On 31 October eight Norwegian organizations will show their solidarity with Russian pro-democracy NGOs by gathering in front of parliament and claiming democracy in Russia.