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The Human Rights House Foundation, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the Rafto Foundation have appealed to the Crown Prince of Norway not to participate at the Caspian Oil and Gas Exhibition in Baku 6-7 June. The three organizations fear that the visit can be misused by the Azerbaijani authorities. Read the full letter, in Norwegian, below.

Bakhtiyar Hajiyev is a 29 year old Harvard-graduate who organized the Facebook-event “Great Peoples Day” on March 11, calling people to join the Facebook-group and to protest the government. Officially, he was convicted for evading military service. On 4 May another youth activist Jabbar Savalan was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment for using Facebook to call for a “Day of Rage”.

The Moscow Helsinki Group, the oldest human rights organization in Russia, celebrates its 35 years’ anniversary today. Ludmila Alexeyeva, who has been a part of the organization since its first day and who is now at its head, says that the main organisation’s purpose is to force the authorities to observe the Constitution and human rights and to respect citizens’ dignity.

Shot clandestinely over a 2-year period by best-selling novelist and filmmaker, Robert H. Lieberman, this film provides a rare look at the second-most isolated country on the planet. It lifts the curtain to expose the everyday life in a country that has been held in the iron grip of a brutal military regime for 48 years.

The International Partnership Group for Azerbaijan (IPGA) condemns the 4 May 2011 conviction of youth activist Jabbar Savalan, who was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment on politically motivated charges of drug possession.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) has announced its annual report and made a statement on democratic setbacks in Azerbaijan, Belarus and Russia. The new report focuses on 2010 events in Belarus, Russia, Central Asia and Caucasus countries and development of human rights internationally.

In February 1989, Iranian authorities issued international fatwa – a death sentence – against Salman Rushdie for having authored the novel ‘Satanic Verses’. In Norway as in many other countries, mobilisation for freedom of expression and a heated debate followed on where to draw the line between what some experienced as blasphemy and others saw as legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.

According to a new study by Freedom House, cyber attacks, politically motivated censorship, and government control over internet infrastructure are among the diverse and growing threats to internet freedom. The study ranks all post-Soviet countries except Estonia as partly free or not free. Ethiopia is not free, Kenya is partly free. None of the Balkan countries were analysed.

On the International Day of Peasants’ Struggle, April 17th, international NGO Fighting Hunger with Human Rights (FIAN) joins millions of peasants in demanding the European Union respect their right to adequate food in the regulation of the seed trade.