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The chairman of the Union Democratic Party (UDP) in Burma has quit his post in protest at lack of reform of pre-election conditions. Despite that the party is not going to withdraw from the upcoming elections. Experts criticize the election process very much and say it is clearly designed to guarantee a pre-determined outcome.

Timur Tskhovrebov, a civil rights activist in South Ossetia was attacked on July 24, 2010, allegedly by supporters of the de facto president of the breakaway region of Georgia, after he signed a joint appeal to negotiators in Geneva to prioritise the needs of the local population. Tskhovrebov was hospitalized with multiple injuries.

A court in northwest the People´s Republic of China has rejected an appeal from a Tibetan environmentalist Karma Samdrup who was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of grave robbing and dealing in looted antiquities, his lawyer said on 2 August 2010.

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.