2 Jun 2011 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Iranian activist, Haleh Sahabi, 56, died yesterday (1 June) after a scuffle with Iranian security personnel during her father’s funeral procession. Sahabi died in hospital after apparently suffering a heart attack. The regime tightly controls opposition funerals to ensure they do not become a catalyst for protests. Sahabi was a women’s rights activist, and government opponent like her father, Ezatollah Sahabi, 81, who founded one of Iran’s first independent papers, Iran-é-Farda. She was sentenced to a two year prison term for protesting during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s swearing-in ceremony in August 2009. Sahabi was released on furlough from jail to attend to her ailing father.
1 Jun 2011 | Index Index, minipost
A journalist who was imprisoned for 10 months for “publishing “information that discredits the state and economy” has vowed expose overcrowding in Burundi’s state prisons. Jean-Claude Kavumbagu is planning to draw on his experience of life behind bars in Mpimpa Prison to expose the issue of overcrowding. The editor of news site Net Press said: “My plan is to draw attention to this and get the authorities to put it right.” Kavumbagu was released from prison earlier this month after campaigns by human rights groups and pressure from Western governments.
1 Jun 2011 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, was summoned to a military court just hours before Bahrain was due to lift its emergency law. He is now missing. Rajab is president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR). Bahrain’s state of emergency was lifted today, introduced almost three months ago, the emergency law coincided with the arrival of over 1, 000 Saudi troops who were called to crush largely peaceful Shiite protests.
21 Apr 2011 | Index Index, minipost
A leading human rights lawyer who has been critical of the Chinese government returned home yesterday (19 April). Jiang Tianyong, disappeared on 19 February whilst visiting his brother in a Beijing suburb. Meanwhile, Liu Xiaoyuan, another rights lawyer who had disappeared last week, was also released. Liu suggested that his association with Ai Weiwei led to his detention.
