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Tuesday 7 August Norwegian PEN, the Norwegian Journalists Associations and Amnesty International Norway held a press conference at the Human Rights House in Oslo. This marked the launching of Norwegian NGOs the People´s Republic of China campaign that will use the one-year countdown untill the Beijing Olympics to focus on how human rights situation in the People´s Republic of China will have to improve. (08-AUG-07)
  

The two election observers that the Norwegian Council for the Rights of the Kurds (RKR) has sent to the south-eastern parts of Republic of Turkey report on the one hand that the elections, particularly in rural areas, were seriously rigged, on the other that despite the seemingly organised campaigns to prevent people from voting for the independent Kurdish candidates, the election result still gave the Kurds a 24-strong group of MPs. (08-AUG-07)
 

Tibet will not be represented at the 2008 Olympic games like other nations. The opening ceremonies will take place in Beijing on 8 August and the Tibetans, as a nation will remain barred from participating. To put pressure on the Chinese authorities the Norwegian Tibet Committee has joined the international campaign “Team Tibet” which will be officially launched on 4 August with stands all over the world. (31-JUL-07)
  

International PEN, the worldwide association of writers, staged its 73rd Congress in Dakar, Senegal from 4 – 11 July, with more than 200 writers from over 70 countries gathered to celebrate world literature and particularly African literature. The Norwegian auther Eugene Schoulgin was elected as the new international secretary. (12-JUL-07)

The 10th regional school for human rights organized by Helsinki Committees in the Balkans and Norwegian Helsinki Committee was held from 28th June till 5th July 2007. This school was different than the previous schools, because it was a ´school on wheels´. During the period 30 young people, aged 17-25, from Republic of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and FYR Macedonia visited concentration camps and memorial centres in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republic of Croatia. (10-JULY-07)
 

A new course called Human Rights, intercultural understanding and conflict management will this Autumn be available at Høgskolen i Buskerud. Generally it draws upon the the Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s experience in human rights education and specifically upon the book “Bygg broer, ikke murer” meaning build bridges- not fences, that was published this spring. (28-JUN-07)
 

The Human Rights House Foundation is immensely pleased to announce that Nasha Niva, the last independent Belarusian language weekly, has been awarded the Freedom of Expression Foundation / Zeit Stiftung´s joint Free Press of Eastern Europe Award. Nasha Niva´s editor Andrej Dynko, right, well known to the Human Rights House Network, is in Norway to receive the award on behalf of his newspaper. (21-JUNE-07)
   

The Baku-based news agency Turan has been awarded the independent media institution the Freedom of Expression Foundation / Zeit Stiftung´s Free Press of Eastern Europe Award. Turan´s director Mehman Aliyev, right, is in Oslo to receive the prize. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the Human Rights House Foundation jointly nominated Turan. Read our full nomination below. (21-JUNE-07)
 

To mark Aung San Suu Kyi´s 62nd birthday, Burmese women were joined by numerous sympathisers this afternoon in a one-hour long demonstration outside the Norwegian parliament, demanding the release of Suu Kyi and the approximately 1100 other political refugees in Burma (Republic of the Union of Myanmar). Displaying pictures of some of the prisoners, the demonstration also featured a release of 150 gas-filled balloons, symbolically foreboding the release of the political prisoners. See more pictures below. (19-JUNE-07)