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The Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw dismissed the complaint of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights against the Central Anti-corruption Bureau’s decision refusing disclosure of information on surveillance and PRISM programme.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights has yet another time informed the Ministry of the Interior about the practice of expelling foreigners before the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw can hear their appeal against a decision declining them refugee status.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights has filed access to public information motions with the Internal Security Agency and the Central Anti-corruption Bureau, requesting the agencies to disclose whether they operationally use Remote Control System (RCS) software.

In March 2014, an Azerbaijani court sentenced the politician Ilgar Mammadov and the journalist Tofig Yagublu. The former has received a prison sentence of seven years, while the latter has been sentenced to five years and six months in prison. The charges filed against Mr Mammadov and Mr Yagublu were based on provisions of Azerbaijan’s Penal Code prohibiting the causing of riots.

Responding to the pre-trial detention of the civic journalist Paweł M. the HFHR has sent a letter to the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Zielona Góra. In summer 2012 the man posed as the Cabinet’s staff member to expose the head judge of the Gdańsk’s Circuit Court, who expressed a willingness to cave in to the apparent political pressure in the case of the former boss of Amber Gold accused of orchestrating the notorious financial fraud scheme.

Honorata Kaczmarek made an application to the European Court of Human Rights arguing, among other things, that her right to privacy had been violated. The case involves the publication of Ms Kaczmarek’s personal data during a notorious press conference.

In response to the HFHR’s application for the disclosure of information on the inquiry into CIA secret prisons in Poland, the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Cracow revealed that it moved the Prosecutor General to extend the inquiry until 11 June 2014.

In March 2013, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the protection of human rights defenders. It establishes principles and standards for States to create an enabling environment for human rights defenders. One year after its adoption, the Human Rights House Network calls upon States to implement this resolution.

In many parts of the Balkans, Caucasus and Eastern Europe human rights defenders face threats and violence, slander and intimidations, and are the targets of new laws restricting their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, and simply to work to defend human rights.