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Even though we have had differences with South-Ossetia for a long time, we had reached a stage were our peoples did not have much differences any more. We interacted; we traded and crossed the borders back and forth. However, the differences were never solved on a political level, and for the authorities, only war was the solution, the Georgian Ombudsman Sozar Subari said at yesterday’s seminar held by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, where some 40 participants were present discussing the situation in Georgia after the war.

Chungdak Koren, leader of the Norwegian Tibet Committee, has been awarded Norwegian PEN’s Ossietsky Prize for her efforts to give a voice to Tibetans in Norway. Koren was vital in the establishment of the Norwegian Tibet Committee in 1989. She has also helped set up the radio station Voice of Tibet, where she remains a board member.

The Global Forum is a week-long event consisting of membership meetings, open conference sessions and festival events, all dedicated to exploring and celebrating free expression.

The first human rights film festival in Norway that will show the best and most thought-provoking flims about human rights and human wrongs.

Reporters Without Borders and its partner organisation, the Burma Media Association, have obtained a copy of a directive which the military government’s censorship office recently sent to the Burmese media spelling out 10 rules for editors and the sanctions they will incur for not respecting them.

A Tehran appellate court upholds the 11-year prison sentence imposed on journalist Mohammad Sadegh Kabovand for creating a human rights organization in Iran’s Kurdish northwest.

A cross-political parliamentarian delegation from the Norwegian Parliament led by Vice-President, Olav Gunnar Ballo, right (of the Socialist Left Party), will visit Tibet between 10 and 18 November. ”The purpose of the visit is to increase knowledge of the political, economic and social conditions in Tibet” said Mr Olav Gunner Ballo. The delegation aims to have a broad dialogue, including issues related to human rights, during their meetings with local representatives.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is organising a nation-wide hearing regarding the Norwegian Roma policy. The hearing will focus on the human rights violations within the Roma community from the 1900s until the present day. It will aim at contributing to a policy that improves the integration of the Roma community in the Norwegian society and further develops the community’s cultural identity.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s advisor Aage Borchgrevink, right, is currently in Tblisi to investigate alleged occurences of war crimes and crimes against humanity during and after the armed conflict in August. According to a statement published in Tblisi last Friday, ethnic cleansing continues in the de-facto border region between Georgia and South Ossetia.