Officials from the European Union and Turkmenistan have held a second round of human rights talks in Brussels, RFE/RL's Turkmen Service reports.

Gabriela Dlouha, the director of Human Rights and Transition Policy at the Czech Foreign Ministry, told RFE/RL's Turkmen Service that discussions this week focused on the functioning of a civil society, press freedom, and freedom of expression, religion, movement, association, and assembly.

Other topics included prison conditions, torture, and judiciary reform.

Dlouha, who headed the Czech delegation, said the EU gave the Turkmen officials a list of specific cases -- including political prisoners -- that the bloc would like the Turkmen government to resolve.

The EU officials met with representatives from Turkmen and international NGOs before meeting the Turkmen government officials.

The next regular human-rights talks are due to take place next summer under the Spanish EU Presidency.

The Czech EU Presidency ended on June 30, and Sweden is now the EU president.

Swedish officials have indicated they will continue to press human rights issues with Turkmenistan during their presidency.

Posted At: 03 July 12:14   0 comments

Activists from several Moldovan human rights groups have held a march in downtown Chisinau to protest police brutality which, they say, in many cases amounts to torture, RFE/RL's Moldovan Service reports.

Members of Amnesty International's Moldovan branch handed the Prosecutor-General's Office a petition with thousands of signatures calling for a thorough investigation of allegations of torture, especially after the contested elections on April 5 when hundreds of protesters were detained and many claimed to have been beaten by police.

A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor-General's Office told RFE/RL that in the last 10 weeks the office has received 70 complaints of postelection police brutality and six of them led to formal charges being made.

Vladimir Turcanu, a Communist Party member in charge of a government commission set up to look into election violence, told RFE/RL that police are "only human," and he claimed that in the April clashes 274 police were injured.

Moldovan human rights activists claim that some 600 people were detained by the police during the April protests, but the Interior Ministry says there were about 300.

Posted At: 03 July 12:05   0 comments

Armenian journalists are signing a petition urging the release of their Iranian colleagues who have been arrested in the ongoing crackdown that followed Iran's disputed presidential election, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.

The petition, which is posted on the Internet and has been signed by some 25 journalists thus far, declares: "We, the undersigned Armenian journalists and photographers, are deeply worried about the fate of dozens of our colleagues and comrades in Iran."

Taguhi Torosian, an independent journalist who initiated the petition drive, says, "The main purpose of those arrests [is] to keep [the journalists] from spreading truthful information."

According to the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders, 49 Iranian reporters and bloggers have been arrested by Iranian authorities since the start of massive opposition demonstrations against the alleged rigging of the June 12 vote.

Torosian claimed that the crackdown on the nonstate media in Iran sets a "dangerous precedent for Armenia, because not all is well with freedom of speech here."

The Armenian government also used lethal force to end massive street protests and arrested scores of opposition members following last year's presidential election. But unlike Iranian officials, the Armenian government refrained from jailing reporters.

The journalists' petition includes the statement: "We hope that our colleagues will be freed as soon as possible and be able to continue their activities freely and objectively" and wishes "strength and patience" to the families of those arrested.

Posted At: 02 July 14:10   0 comments

The third Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions has opened in the Kazakh capital, Astana, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev opened the congress, which includes religious leaders and academics from more than 60 countries. He said a new world order could not be built through force, only dialogue.

Israeli President Simon Peres was among the speakers at the congress, though one member of the Iranian delegation left the room before Peres began speaking.

The first two religious congresses took place in Kazakhstan in 2003 and 2006.

The Kazakh government has been sharply criticized for a new, more restrictive bill on religion -- already passed by the parliament -- that demands that all religious organizations operating in Kazakhstan reregister with authorities. The legislation is being held up by the country's Constitutional Council.

Kazakhstan has also come under pressure from international and local rights groups for its harsh treatment of many Muslim groups, including Salafis, many of whom have sought refuge in the Czech Republic because of the persecution they face in Kazakhstan.

Other nontraditional religious groups -- such as some Baptist groups and the Hare Krishna movement -- have had their property confiscated or destroyed in recent years.

The congress concludes on July 2.

Posted At: 02 July 12:12   1 comment

A member of the opposition movement Other Russia has died in prison after reportedly falling from a window, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

Prison officials say Rim Shaigalimov, 52, committed suicide, but his relatives think he was killed.

His wife, Lyudmila Shaigalimova, told RFE/RL that his death "must have been an order from above." She added that the officials “can assert what they will -- that it was an accident or whatever, but that’s a lie. He was killed."

Shaigalimova said she and her family saw his body at the mortuary. "It was absolutely clear that the death was caused by suffocation," she said.

She said no prison officials had time to meet with her or other family members to discuss his death.

Shaigalimov was serving a five-year sentence in Krasnoyarsk Krai for fighting with a police officer. He had been in prison for seven months.

Shaigalimov was one of the leading Other Russia activists in the central region of Krasnoyarsk, and had led or participated in more than 100 protests, including some in which he demonstrated alone.

Posted At: 30 June 16:48   1 comment

The Azerbaijani parliament has adopted a law on nongovernmental organizations, but eliminated several restrictive amendments that were opposed by NGO officials and international human rights groups, RFE/RL's Azerbaijan Service reports.

NGOs and international rights groups argued that the amendments would increase the government's control over civil society in Azerbaijan.

Some parliament deputies labeled the legislation as "progressive" while others expressed concern about the recent trend of changes viewed as undemocratic to the religion law and the mass media law.

The rejected proposals would have banned NGOs from receiving more than 50 percent of their funding from abroad; required all NGOs to register with the state; and prohibited the activities of foreign NGOs in Azerbaijan unless their activities were based on a "relevant international agreement."

About 100 people representing civil society groups began a protest on June 30 in front of the parliament building that was forcibly interrupted by plainclothes police, who destroyed the protesters’ signs.

Three NGO staffers were allowed to deliver a resolution expressing their opposition to the restrictive amendments to parliament.

Meanwhile, parliament also adopted amendments to the religion law which prohibit people educated in foreign countries from heading religious bodies, changes that were opposed by religious groups.

Posted At: 30 June 16:02   1 comment

The editor in chief of an independent newspaper in southern Russia has died from injuries he sustained in an attack in April.

Vyacheslav Yaroshenko of "Korruptsiya i Prestupnost" (Corruption and Crime) in the city of Rostov-on-Don was found unconscious at the entrance to his apartment building on April 30. He had severe head wounds and was hospitalized with skull and brain trauma.

Yaroshenko's deputy, Sergei Sleptsov, said Yaroshenko’s condition had deteriorated recently and that he did not survive emergency surgery.

Sleptsov had said that Rostov police did not investigate what happened to Yaroshenko in April but had nevertheless ruled out criminality.

Sleptsov says he believes Yaroshenko was attacked in retaliation for the newspaper's investigations into corruption allegations involving law-enforcement agencies in the city.

“I don’t have even the smallest doubt,” Sleptsov told the opposition news website kasparov.ru. “Our newspaper was published on eight pages; seven of them were allotted to corruption in the law-enforcement structures.”

The U.S.-based watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists is calling for an independent investigation into Yaroshenko's death.

“We call on Russian federal authorities to open an independent, thorough, and transparent investigation into the circumstances of the editor’s death," says CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, Nina Ognianova.

"The possibility that Yaroshenko may have been targeted because of his newspaper’s coverage of alleged corruption in Rostov law enforcement agencies calls for the assignment of outside, independent investigators to this case,” she said.
 
The CPJ says Russia is the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists after Iraq and Algeria and the ninth-worst for solving reporters' murders.

Last week, the group sent an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama ahead of his July 6 visit to Moscow, urging him to address unsolved murders of correspondents with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.

with Reuters

Posted At: 30 June 14:03   0 comments