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More trade with Burma will not help the people with the current regime, says democracy activist Khin Ohmar. – The only thing that can make the situation better in Burma is that the sanctions become more effective, says Ohmar to Ethical Trade Initiative Norway (ETI-Norway).

A Chinese court in the western region of Xinjiang has given a Uyghur journalist and website manager 15 years in jail for “endangering state security” by speaking to foreign journalists, his employer said on 23 July. Uighurbiz.net, where Gheyret Niyaz worked as an administrator, posted a notice saying he had been sentenced at a hearing, quoting his wife who was in the court.

“What makes the imprisonment, torture and the punishment of 15 years for Karma Samdrup stand out of a tendency, is <...> that he was not a human rights activist in the classic sense,” – stated Norwegian Tibet Committee. Samdrup and his brothers were trying to protect Tibetan rivers providing water to more than 300 million people in the People´s Republic of China.

The report “Broken Promises: Freedom of Religion or Belief issues in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan”, prepared by five human rights organizations, was launched during a side event at the Organization’s for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Conference on Tolerance in Astana on 30 June.

Organisation Freedom House released “Worst of the Worst 2010: The World’s Most Repressive Societies”, its annual report identifying the world’s twenty most flagrant human rights abusers. In these twenty countries, which include North Korea, Burma (Republic of the Union of Myanmar), Republic of Belarus, Turkmenistan, Republic of Uzbekistan and Tibet, citizens’ most basic rights are denied and any attempts to oppose these regimes often result in torture, imprisonment and sometimes death.

The Azerbaijani authorities ignore pressure from the international community. Most recently, few days after the visit to Republic of Azerbaijan of United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the editor Eynulla Fatullaeyv has been sentenced to 2,5 years imprisonment despite appeals from the United Nations and the Council of Europe.

Yurii Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeev are charged with “inciting hatred or enmity” and “denigration of human dignity” for organizing a contemporary art exhibition at the Sakharov Museum in Moscow in 2007 and are facing three years’ imprisonment.

The NGO coalition of Freedom House, Global Witness, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the Eurasian Democracy Initiative is organising a lunch time event in the vicinity of the OSCE PA meeting in Oslo this Thursday.

Norwegian Helsinki Committee presents new report “Broken promises: freedom of religion or belief issues in the Republic of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan”. The report details freedom of religion or belief issues and presents recommendations in order to bring the countries in line with relevant international human rights standards.