· March, 2013

Stories about Human Rights from March, 2013

‘Foreign Ideas’ as Extremism in Central Asia

[I]n former Soviet Central Asia there is little debate that the root problem [of extremist beliefs] is “foreign ideas,” defined so broadly as to become a target of opportunity for both every political purpose and every local policeman or official’s ambition. Any sign of dissent from state policies or ideology <...> can be enough to bring the wrath of the state, sometimes with great violence.

25 March 2013

Digital Freedom: Principles and Concepts

Advox

The Egyptian Institute for Freedom of Thought and Expression issued its first statement on digital freedom, a simplified research paper to propose definitions for digital rights and related principles which the paper summarised as: universal access, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to privacy, and the right to creativity, development and innovation.

25 March 2013

Protests and “Frozen Zones” in Brooklyn after murder of Kimani Gray

On Saturday, March 16, Kimani Gray, a 16-year-old African American boy, died at the hands of two New York City police officers. There have been riots in Brooklyn for four consecutive days and police have declared frozen zones in a neighborhood in this borough of New York. News of this event has spread through social networks due to lack of information in the mainstream media.

23 March 2013

Russian Nationalists Rally Behind Subway Shooter

RuNet Echo

After all, how can one not react with outrage upon learning that Alexandra Lotkova, a pretty, twenty-one year old college student, got three years in prison for using a non-lethal gun to protect herself from knife-wielding thugs, who had already stabbed one of her friends!

22 March 2013

Guinea-Bissau is Second Worst Democracy

The Democracy Index 2012 from The Economist Intelligence Unit, published on March 19, 2013, places Guinea-Bissau second to last in the ranking, just before North Korea. The same day a...

21 March 2013

Zimbabwe Police Arrest Top Human Rights Lawyer

One day after millions of Zimbabweans approved a new constitution that will bring about presidential and parliamentary elections later this year, prominent Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested after demanding a search warrant from police who were attempting to arrest her clients.

19 March 2013

Former Guatemalan Dictator On Trial

Rios Montt's lawyer and others believe that the trial is a “political lynching” […] It doesn't matter if the guerrilas were going to turn “Guatemala into another Cuba;” the rape, torture,...

19 March 2013

Today's Tibet, Tomorrow's Hong Kong?

An activist network in Hong Kong organized an assembly to express their solidarity with Tibetans on the 54th Anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day last Sunday March 10, 2013. Some participants who joined the meeting believed that Hong Kong people should learn from Tibet and avoid the history from recurring in Hong Kong.

19 March 2013

Video: Crisis Engenders Greek Documentary Boom

The 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival includes five crisis-themed Greek films in its lineup. As the Festival, and Greece at large, continues to labor under the mounting debt and austerity crisis, fiction and documentary filmmakers alike are increasingly focusing their work on its effects on society.

18 March 2013