Emad Baghi: "An exceptionally brave man."
May 20, 2009
Iranian human rights activist Emad Baghi is the winner of this year’s prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.
Baghi founded the Society for the Defense of Prisoners' Rights and has been a “vigorous and outspoken” opponent of Iran’s death penalty.
His efforts include a scholarly examination of Islamic Shari’a law, in which he demonstrated the absence of any doctrinal requirement for maintaining capital punishment.
Baghi also conducted a census of death-row prisoners in Iran, including juvenile offenders, a database that has proven to be an important resource for human rights bodies worldwide.
The chairman of the jury of the Martin Ennals Award, Hans Thoolen, describes Baghi as "an exceptionally brave man defending human rights despite imprisonment and poor health."
Baghi has spent four years in prison over the past decade for his campaigning against the death penalty and other rights activities. Though free, he currently faces charges relating to his work for the defense of prisoners rights.
Baghi suffers from serious heart and kidney ailments.
The Martin Ennals Award, created in 1993, represents a collaboration of 10 of the world’s leading human rights organizations. Martin Ennals was a noted British rights activist and served as the third secretary-general of Amnesty International.
The awards ceremony will take place in Geneva in November.
Burned cars on the streets of Yerevan on March 2, 2008
May 20, 2009
A third witness in the case against six Armenian opposition leaders for their roles in postelection protests in Yerevan last year has retracted his testimony after saying he was tortured and his life threatened, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.
Henrik Artenian told the court on May 18 that he "signed that testimony out of fear" after an investigator told him "if you want to stay alive you must write what we tell you."
Artenian was among witnesses who signed testimonies saying that Miasnik Malkhasian, one of the arrested oppositionists, organized and led the opposition protesters who clashed with security forces on March 1, 2008.
Ten people died in the violence.
Artenian asked Malkhasian to forgive him and said the police have been harassing him with summons to reaffirm his testimony.
"I said no," he told the court. "I said I will tell the truth."
Separately, two witnesses reaffirmed their testimony against one of the opposition leaders on May 19. The court hearing was held behind closed doors.
May 20, 2009
Kyrgyzstan's Supreme Court has upheld verdicts against 32 people convicted of spreading ethnic and religious hatred, although it slightly reduced their sentences, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reports.
The defendants, from the southern Osh region, were accused of organizing a mass gathering in October in the town of Nookat to protest a government decision not to allow a religious celebration for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.
On November 27, the Osh Regional Court sentenced the defendants to prison terms ranging from nine to 20 years.
The Supreme Court reduced the sentences to between five and 17 years.
The defendants complained that they were severely beaten and tortured while in detention.
Public defenders Dmitry Kabak and
Aziza Abdyrasulova say many of those convicted -- the majority of whom are ethnic Uzbeks -- are uneducated and that two of them are women who were under 18 when they were arrested.
Additionally, most are not fluent in Kyrgyz or Russian, the two official languages in which all the court hearings were held.
May 19, 2009
Our colleagues over at RFE/RL's excellent
"Journalists In Trouble" page have posted a video interview with Turkmen correspondent Yovshan Annagurban that is worth checking out, if you haven't already seen it.
In the clip, Annagurban speaks about the time in 1997 when he was arrested and imprisoned in Ashgabat as he attempted to leave Turkmenistan to attend a journalism training course at RFE/RL in Prague.
He was eventually freed -- 13 days later.
But he tells the story much better than I do.
Watch for yourself.
(by Grant Podelco)
May 19, 2009
Some 100 protesters gathered in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg to demand the immediate release of a human rights activist, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.
Aleksei Sokolov, a member of the Public Monitoring Commission that deals with rights in the country's prison system, was charged with a robbery that took place five years ago in the town of Bogdanovichi, in Sverdlovsk Oblast.
He was arrested on May 13.
Protesters in front of the Russian presidential representative's building in Yekaterinburg held signs calling Sokolov's arrest "a sham."
Sokolov's wife, Gulya Sokolova, told RFE/RL that her husband's arrest is politically motivated and connected to his professional activities.
The protesters signed an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urging him to get involved in the case.
Georgia's human rights ombudsman, Sozar Subari
May 16, 2009
Ten days after the reported mutiny by members of a Georgian tank battalion at the Mukhrovani military base east of Tbilisi, the number of suspects detained or charged remains unclear, the daily "Rezonansi" says.
Initial reports said that 10 servicemen were detained and a further 50 were being questioned in connection with the incident.
On May 13, police arrested Nugzar Otanadze, whose brother Koba has been identified by the Interior Ministry as one of the masterminds behind the alleged revolt. Nugzar Otanadze was formally charged on May 14 with resisting arrest and remanded on May 15 in pre-trial detention for two months.
Georgia's human rights ombudsman, Sozar Subari, told journalists in Tbilisi on May 13 that five men detained in connection with the insurrection, including Nugzar Otanadze, have been beaten or tortured while in detention. He demanded an official investigation.
The Interior Ministry responded by saying that Nugzar Otanadze's injuries were sustained when he resisted arrest. It declined to comment on the condition of the other four men.
Also on May 13, the Georgian Interior Ministry raised from 50,000 laris ($30,000) to 200,000 laris ($121,000) the reward for information concerning Koba Otanadze's whereabouts.
Hundreds of Andijon refugees, like these women in Germany, have settled in Western Europe.
May 15, 2009
The leader of a group established by Uzbek refugees to focus attention on the 2005 Andijon massacre has accused Uzbek officials of the systematic use of detention, torture, and killing in an effort to silence witnesses of the bloodshed four years ago.
The leader of the group Andijon -- Justice and Resurrection, Nurillo Maqsudov, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that four of his relatives died in Uzbek jails last year. He said their bodies showed clear signs of torture when they were returned for burial.
Maqsudov was speaking in connection with a gathering in Dusseldorf, Germany, on May 13 to honor victims of the crackdown on the fourth anniversary of troops' firing on demonstrators.
Members of Maqsudov's group live in various Western countries, where they fled in the wake of the unrest.
They claim that Uzbek authorities vowed to release all their jailed relatives after the December 2007 presidential election that saw Islam Karimov maintain his longstanding grip on power if they would "keep their mouths shut."
Instead, refugees like Shamsiddin Atamatov, 33, say their relatives have been treated even more harshly.
He and other members of the group say that since Karimov and his government failed to keep their promise to release relatives in exchange of their silence, they now are ready to speak out about what happened in Andijon.
They also expressed their willingness to cooperate with independent international investigators if necessary.
The United Nations, United States, and European Union have all called unsuccessfully for officials in Tashkent to allow an international probe into the incident, in which eyewitnesses and rights group say hundreds of peaceful demonstrators were gunned down in central Andijon, in eastern Uzbekistan.