Latest

Human Rights activists and political prisoners in six Moroccan prisons went on a 48 hour long hunger strike on January 31. They do this to protest against the inhumane treatment they are submitted to by the Moroccan penitentiary administration and police. A press release from the activists states that the inmates are subjected to torture and threat of assassination. (06-FEB-06)
 

The Rafto Human Rights House will host an international conference on North Korean Human rights and refugees in Bergen in May. -Our partner, says Sverre Wilhelmsen, right, the coordinator for the conference, -is Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human rights, a South Korean NGO, who has launched annual conferences on the subject since 1999. The previous conferences have been held in Seoul (three times), Tokyo, Prague and Warsaw. (31-JAN-06)
 

6 January Rebiya Kadeer, the Uyghur business woman, human rights activist and former prisoner of conscience, was involved in a mysterious traffic accident close to her home in washington DC in which her car was rammed twice by heavy utility truck. The 2004 Rafto laureate managed to get out of her vehicle when the driver in the truck seemed to be preparing for a third hit. After a week in hospital, she is now slowly recovering.  (26-JAN-2006)
 

Ruzi Mamat and and Aysham Kerim were released on December 14th , and allowed to return home after having been imprisoned since May 11th. Rafto Laureate Rebyia Kadeer had to leave behind several family members and a number of  employees when she was released and allowed to settle in the United States. She said that her guards threatend her; that if she was to associate with Uyghur exiles her children ‘would be finished’. (28-DEC-2005)

In an article published on December 11, 2005, Korea Times reports that more than 1.200 North Koreans defected to South Korea in the first 11 months of the year to flee the poverty-stricken communist country. The source of information was the Unification Ministry. (16-DEC-2005)
 

Former President Kim Dae-jung has stressed human rights conditions in North Korea could be improved through economic cooperation and cultural exchanges on a gradual basis, warning that any forcible and arbitrary outside move to change the human rights situation in the North would not be successful. Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Rafto Prize for human rights in 2000. (16-DEC-2005)
 

On December 9 three members of the Burmese organisation «Assistance Association for Political Prisoners» (AAPP) released the report “The Darkness We See: Torture in Burma’s Interrogation Centers and Prisons” at a press conference in the Rafto House, Bergen. Cho Cho, Kyaw Maung and Kaythi Aye Bergen told their own stories of political imprisonment. 82 year old Mr. Bjørn Simonnæs was also invited to draw a historic line between his own experiences as a prisoner of war during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Norway 60 years ago to the systematic torture of political prisoners in Burma today.  (16-DEC-2005)

Chinese authorities have jailed the chief editor of the Kashgar Literature Journal for publishing a fable they regard as a veiled indictment of China’s heavy-handed rule in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Radio Free Asia (RFA) has learned. The author of the story is already serving a 10-year jail term for inciting separatism. (10-NOV-05)
 

Lidia Yusupova (right), Rafto Laureate of 2005, gave strong characteristics to the way the Russian Federation have dealt with the Chechen Republic during the last decade. At the award ceremony on November 6th in Bergen, she challenged the democracies of Western Europe to take a different approach towards the Russian Federation regarding the countries politics in the Chechen Republic. (07-NOV-05)