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Norwegian SLUG handed over 3000 signatures demanding a moratorium on Pakistan’s debt after the unprecedented floods. Norway brought this message to the Paris Club creditors, but unforunately the international community did not want to consider this option.

Authorities arrested the dissident in 2008 after he helped organize deliveries of aid to Cyclone Nargis survivors and then gave interviews to foreign media in which he criticized the government’s response to the deadly disaster. The regime sentenced Zargana to 59 years in prison. His sentence was then reduced to 35 years. On October 12, 2011, Zargana was released from Myitkyina Prison in Kachin State, northern Myanmar, as part of a widespread general amnesty

Free expression defenders are celebrating Thursday’s decision by a military court to drop charges against a Tunisian policeman who blew the whistle on a still-active core of officers from the country’s pre-revolution days – some of them alleged torturers, others linked to Tunisia’s long notorious internet surveillance squads.

On September 29, Kazakhstan government passed new laws which tighten government control over religious communities. According to the law, every religious community will have to register with the government. Moreover, a special permit by local and central government will be required to build any new house of worship. According to various NGOs, such law will have negative implications on civil society.

It is said there are reforms going on in Burma after the election last year. At the same time there are still around 2000 political prisoners in Burmese jails and the level of conflict in ethnic areas have escalated.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee regrets the decision of the National Security Council of the Serbian Parliament to ban Belgrade Pride 2011. The statement made by the Serbian president Boris Tadić that “This way the citizens and members of the LGBT population are protected” is a clear indicator that the rights of sexual and gender minorities are still not being taken seriously by Serbian authorities.

FRITT ORD FOUNDATION and BORGEN PRODUCTION AS
Invite the public to a seminar at Saga Kino (Saga Cinema), Oslo
Thursday, 6 October 2011, 10.00–12.30

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee invites you to the seminar: Five years after Anna Politkovskaya’s death- The legacy of Anna

As world leaders gathering in New York for United Nations General Assembly, one of the most controversial political figures, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, once again attracted attention by his populist statements in the General Assembly. However the president said nothing about continuing violations of human rights by his own regime. Iran remains to be one of the worst places in the Middle East with regard to women’s, rights, freedom of expression and other fundamental human rights set in the Universal Human Rights Declaration