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ARTICLE 19 welcomes the draft UN Resolution on the Safety of Journalists and adoption of a new resolution on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. The organisation also asks UN HRC to reject the draft resolution on “traditional values” as it may silence dissent and violate people’s human rights.

Four Somali journalists were killed last week within 24 hours. On 20 September three journalists were killed and at least four injured in a suicide bomb attack in a Mogadishu café. The next day the fourth journalist was shot by gunmen just hours after he had reported on the explosion in the café.

36 journalists and media workers with pro-Kurdish media have been held behind bars since 20 December 2011 in Turkey. The first series of court hearings in Istanbul ended on 12 September. The journalists will remain behind bars for at least two more months. They are accused of propaganda of terrorism, which is an umbrella term in Turkey providing authorities with an opportunity to prosecute journalists, publishers, academics, activists, and demonstrators.

On 4 September Iran released two Azerbaijani journalists and poets Farid Huseyn and Shahriyar Hajizade who had been detained arbitrarily in Iran in May for alleged espionage. Free speech organisations welcome the decision and emphasize the absurdity of the charges brought against the journalists.

Freelance journalist Faramaz Novruzoglu has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison in reprisal for his coverage of alleged government corruption.

Article 19 has recently provided the reviews of the access to information legislation and the civil law regime concerning defamation in Kazakhstan. The organisation’s overall assessment of the Draft Law on Access to Information is positive, though several problems have been identified. The legislation regarding defamation, however, despite some positive elements, fails to provide safeguards for free expression, organisation states.

Four months ago, a reporter for the weekly Uralskaya Nedelya was attempted murder victim. This week another opposition journalist suffered attempt on his life in the Kazakh capital Astana. The situation in the country is worrying as dissident journalists can expect censorship, arrest, intimidation and attacks.

Illegal, inhuman and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, blind politicians, eager consumers and countless women and children.

A year ago Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialiatski, chairman of the Minsk-based “Viasna” human rights center and the vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), was jailed on politically motivated charges. Belarusian and international NGOs demand to release him immediately and unconditionally, and to drop all charges against him.