KAZAN, Russia -- The Supreme Court of Russia's Republic of Tatarstan has canceled a lower court ruling to fine sociologist Iskander Yasaveyev for holding a poster demanding the release of RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who has been held in Russian custody since October 18.

The court on March 20 sent the case back to the Vakhitov district court in Tatarstan's capital, Kazan, for retrial.

During a rally in December in support of all journalists currently held in Russian detention, Yasaveyev held a placard reading "Alsu Kurmasheva is a journalist, not a criminal."

For his actions, Yasaveyev was found guilty of violating regulations for holding public events and fined 15,000 rubles ($164). Yasaveyev appealed the ruling with the Supreme Court.

Kurmasheva -- a Prague-based veteran journalist with RFE/RL who holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship -- traveled to Russia in May last year for a family emergency.

She was temporarily detained while waiting for her return flight on June 2 at the airport in Kazan, where both of her passports were confiscated. She has not been able to leave Russia since as she awaited the return of her travel documents.

On October 11, a court in Kazan fined Kurmasheva 10,000 rubles ($109) for "failure to inform Russian officials about holding a second citizenship."

Kurmasheva was detained again on October 18 and this time charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

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The Investigative Committee said at the time that Kurmasheva was being charged under a section of the Criminal Code that refers to the registration of foreign agents who carry out "purposeful collection of information in the field of military, military-technical activities of Russia," which, if received by foreign sources, "can be used against the security of the country."

It gave no further details.

Many critics and rights group say the so-called foreign agent law is used by the Kremlin to crack down on any dissent.

On December 12, Tatar-Inform news agency in Tatarstan and the Baza Telegram channel, both linked to the government, said Kurmasheva was additionally accused of distributing "fake" news about Russia's armed forces, a charge that comes with a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.

Russia's detention of Kurmasheva, the second U.S. media member to be held by Moscow in 2024, triggered a wave of criticism from rights groups and politicians saying the move signals new level of wartime censorship.

Russia's leading human rights group Memorial has recognized Kurmasheva as a political prisoner.

Moscow has been accused of detaining Americans to use as bargaining chips to exchange for Russians jailed in the United States. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in March last year for allegedly spying, a charge he and the newspaper vehemently deny.

Russia refused to extend the visa for Spanish journalist Xavier Colas and ordered him to leave the country within 24 hours, the reporter's employer, the El Mundo newspaper, said on March 21. The newspaper quoted Colas, who has lived in Moscow for 12 years, as saying he had been officially warned of repercussions for covering rallies by Russian women demanding their husbands mobilized to the war in Ukraine return home. "We journalists go where we are allowed to be, but we will never allow anyone to tell us what to say and what not to say," Colas said. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.

A roadside bomb exploded near a security convoy in northwestern Pakistan on March 21, killing two soldiers and wounding 15 others, officials said. The attack happened in Dera Ismail Khan, a former stronghold of the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province bordering Afghanistan, said Inayat Ullah, head of the police bomb disposal unit in the region. No group immediately claimed responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on the TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, which has claimed previous attacks on security forces. The TTP is a separate group that has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Four people were killed and another 25 were wounded on March 21 in an explosion in the Afghan city of Kandahar, Taliban and hospital officials said. The blast occurred as people employed by the Taliban authorities gathered outside a local branch of New Kabul Bank waiting to collect their salaries, reports said. Kandahar has long been the stronghold of the Taliban and the hard-line group's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, lives in the city. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but several militant groups -- including Islamic State -- have staged attacks since the Taliban's return to power in 2022. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Azadi, click here.

The websites of Russian independent news outlet SOTA and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Memorial Center for Protection of Human Rights have been blocked by media-monitoring agency Roskomnadzor. SOTA and its affiliate SotaVision channel were blocked "for disseminating false information about the progress of the special military operation," Roskomnadzor was quoted as saying by RBC news agency, referring to the official designation of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Memorial said on Telegram that it was not known which government agency had decided to block it. Memorial won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 for its efforts in documenting human rights abuses. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here. To read the original story by Current Time, click here.

KYIV -- A massive wave of Russian missiles targeting Kyiv was largely repelled by the air-defense systems of the Ukrainian capital early on March 21, but several people were wounded by the falling debris while extensive damage was reported in parts of the capital.

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Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 10 people, including an 11-year-old girl, were wounded in two of the city's neighborhoods -- six in the Shevchenkivskiy district and two in Svyatoshynskiy district -- and two of them were hospitalized.

Debris from downed Russian missiles fell on residential buildings, businesses, a kindergarten, and vehicles in several areas of Kyiv, Klitschko said.

A transformer substation and several residential buildings caught fire, prompting evacuations, he said.

Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv administration, said two more people were wounded in the Brovariy and Vyshhorod districts of the capital, where at least 24 private houses were destroyed. Popko said the Russian attack lasted three hours, with the missiles approaching the capital simultaneously from different directions.

An air-raid alert was declared for the entire territory of Ukraine for the duration of the attack.

The Ukrainian military said Russia launched 31 missiles at the capital from 11 Tu-95MS strategic bombers that took off from the Russian cities of Volgodonsk and Engels.

"The enemy attacked [Kyiv] with two Iskander-M ballistic missiles as well as 29 Kh-101 cruise missiles," the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement. "All enemy missiles were shot down in Kyiv region," Commander Mykola Oleschuk said.

The latest wave of Russian attacks came a day after five people were killed as a result of Russian shelling of the eastern city of Kharkiv.

• RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
• Reuters
• AP

Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, early on March 21, injuring at least 10 people and damaging residential buildings and industrial facilities, city officials said.

Also on March 20, Ukrainian intelligence sources told RFE/RL that Ukrainian drones attacked a Russian air base that houses strategic bombers located near Engels in the Saratov region in an attack planned and executed by the Main Directorate of Ukraine's Military Intelligence.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said "targets had been hit" and the results of the attack were being assessed, without disclosing what targets and how many had allegedly been hit.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on March 21 that its air-defense systems shot down 10 Vampire rockets launched by Ukraine at the border region of Belgorod.

The region's largest sports and cultural facility, Belgorod Arena, was damaged in the attack, it said.

The claim could not be independently verified.

Ana Brnabic was voted in by lawmakers as the new speaker of the Serbian National Assembly after opposition parties left the chamber to protest against December elections that international observers characterized as "unfair." Brnabic stepped down as prime minister to take the new position, while Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic was chosen as acting prime minister until a new government is approved. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Aleksandar Vucic easily won the snap parliamentary vote, prompting angry protests in the streets and accusations of electoral fraud. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Bakan Service, click here.

U.S. relations with Pakistan will suffer if Islamabad does not probe irregularities in last month's election and rerun votes if needed, said Donald Lu, the top U.S. diplomat for South Asia. Lu told a House subcommittee on March 20 that the United States had "serious concerns" about the conduct of the February 8 election and ongoing media disruptions. Should the Election Commission find that these irregularities are substantiated, it should “rerun elections where there's been interference," Lu said. "It will be an impediment to our relationship if Pakistan does not have a democratic process that upholds its own constitution."

A 22-year-old Russian soldier has died after being shot at Russia’s military base in Armenia's northwestern city of Gyumri. The soldier, Roman Shaternikov, was transferred on March 20 from the military base’s Kamkhut training ground to a hospital in Gyumri. Armen Khachatrian, deputy director of the hospital, told RFE/RL that the Russian serviceman was dead on arrival. Military exercises are currently under way at the Kamkhut training ground. The circumstances of Shaternikov’s death are not clear. To read the full story by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, click here.

An open letter signed by more than two dozen Nobel Prize winners calls for the immediate release of political prisoners in Belarus. The letter, posted online on March 20 by opposition activist Dzmitry Bolkunets, was signed by four Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Dmitry Muratov of Russia and Oleksandra Matviychuk of Ukraine. It also bore the names of three Nobel Prize winners for literature, including Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, and 19 other Nobel laureates in various categories. "In recent decades, Europe has not seen a humanitarian catastrophe related to political repression on such a per capita scale as in Belarus," the letter said.

PODGORICA -- Montenegro has made the final decision to extradite Do Kwon, a South Korean entrepreneur known as the "Cryptocurrency King," to his home country.

The Appeals Court of Montenegro said on March 20 in a statement that it "rejected the appeal of Do Kwon's lawyers and upheld the decision of the Podgorica High Court" ordering his extradition to South Korea. It did not say when any transfer would be carried out.

Goran Rodic, a lawyer for Kwon, told RFE/RL that he and Kwon are satisfied with the decision and that it’s now up to Montenegro and South Korea to determine the date and conditions for the extradition.

Both South Korea and the United States had requested Kwon's extradition for his alleged role in the loss of investments worth more than $40 billion. Montenegro last month extradited his business partner, Hon Chang-joon, to South Korea. He was handed over on February 5 at the airport in Podgorica and flown back to his home country based on an international warrant issued by Interpol.

Kwon, 32, remained in custody in Montenegro while officials decided whether to extradite him to South Korea or the United States.

The two suspects were arrested at Podgorica airport on March 23, 2023, as they were trying to board a private plane to Dubai using fake Costa Rican passports. Kwon has nearly completed a four-month sentence for forging a passport.

TerraformLabs, a company founded and headed by Kwon, was behind TerraUSD, which collapsed in May last year, shaking the cryptocurrency market.

TerraUSD was designated as a stablecoin -- a currency pegged to stable assets like the dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices. However, around $40 billion in market value was erased for investors in TerraUSD and its sister currency, Luna, after the stablecoin plunged far below its $1 peg.

Kwon was subsequently charged in the United States for what the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) calls "orchestrating a multibillion-dollar crypto-asset securities fraud." Kwon's U.S. trial is scheduled to start on March 25.

Kwon has denied any wrongdoing.

With reporting by AP

A court in Bishkek on March 20 transferred to house arrest Kubanychbek Kadyrov, a member of a Kyrgyz group on trial for protesting a border deal with Uzbekistan. Two days earlier, the court released another member of the group, politician Bektur Asanov, to get back surgery in Turkey. Of 27 members of the group, nine are now in custody, while others were transferred to house arrest earlier. The group's members, including activists, journalists, and politicians, were arrested in 2022 after they protested the controversial deal that saw Kyrgyzstan hand over the territory of the Kempir-Abad water reservoir to Uzbekistan. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, click here.

An influential cleric and the representative of the country's supreme leader in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi has called those who didn't vote in recent elections "inconsequential," even though they comprised almost 60 percent of the electorate as turnout hit a record low.

Ahmad Alamolhoda, who serves as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representative in the city of Mashhad, a significant Shi'ite center, was quoted by the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as criticizing the 59 percent of voters who did not cast ballots in the elections for not adhering to the "orders and command" of Khamenei.

Senior leaders pleaded with Iranians to show up en masse at the polls as Iran's theocracy is scrambling to restore its legitimacy in the wake of the 2022 repression and amid deteriorating economic conditions.

However, voter apathy, along with general dissatisfaction over living standards and a clampdown on basic human rights in Iran, has been growing for years, while many prominent figures, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, called for a boycott of the elections, labeling them as superficial and predetermined.

"In Islam, a majority is not inherently acceptable," Alamolhoda said, adding that the "preferred majority" is one that is "devout and committed, as opposed to one that is rebellious and dissenting."

The March 1 elections for a new parliament, or Majlis, and a new Assembly of Experts, which elects Iran's supreme leader, were the first since the deadly nationwide protests erupted following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022. She was detained for an alleged violation of the Islamic dress code.

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Mostafa Tajzadeh, a prominent political activist currently incarcerated in Tehran's Evin prison, described the vote as a "historic failure" for the country's leaders that was directly attributable Khamenei, whose policies have sparked widespread public discontent with the Islamic republic.

Analysts and activists said the elections were “engineered” because only candidates vetted and approved by the Guardians Council were allowed to run. The council is made up of six clerics and six jurists who are all appointed directly and indirectly by Khamenei.

Official statistics released by the Ministry of Interior revealed that voter turnout exceeded 50 percent in only eight of the country's 31 provinces. In the Iranian capital of Tehran, the election faced a lukewarm reception from the public, with the Interior Ministry's statistics indicating that only about 26 percent of eligible voters participated.

Additionally, there were reports of a significant amount of invalid votes in Tehran and other major cities, although the Interior Ministry has withheld specific data related to the ballots.

In a display of dissent against the status quo, many Iranians deliberately spoiled their ballots as a form of anti-government protest.

Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda

The United States has imposed sanctions on two people and two companies it said have supported disinformation efforts directed by the Russian government. The U.S. Treasury Department said on March 20 that those designated had provided services “in connection with a foreign malign influence campaign, including attempting to impersonate legitimate media outlets.” The sanctions were imposed on the Moscow-based Social Design Agency and its founder, Ilya Gambashidze, and on the Russian-based Company Group Structura and its CEO and owner, Nikolai Tupikin. The sanctions freeze any assets they have in U.S. jurisdiction and generally bar Americans from dealing with them.

Kyrgyz activist Askat Jetigen has been sent to pretrial detention for at least two months while an investigation into his alleged calls for mass unrest continues. The decision by a Bishkek court on March 20 came just two days after Jetigen, who was initially detained over the weekend, was released from custody and ordered not leave the country. Jetigen is known for his criticism of the Kyrgyz government. His last video criticizing reforms by the Culture Ministry aired on March 15. Human rights groups have criticized the Kyrgyz government for using the charge "calls for mass unrest" as a tool to muzzle dissent. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, click here.

ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- A court in Almaty on March 20 extended until mid-February 2025 the detention of Karakalpak activist Aqylbek Muratov, who is wanted in Uzbekistan on charges that human rights activists say are groundless.

The court in Kazakhstan's largest city had previously ruled that Muratov, who was arrested last month at Tashkent's request on a charge of undermining constitutional order and other charges, must stay in detention for at least 40 days while a court decision on his possible extradition to Uzbekistan is pending. No further explanation was given.

Muratov is an Uzbek citizen who has legally resided in Almaty for 10 years. Kazakh officials in February granted his request for asylum seeker status, a move that defendants sometimes use to stave off possible extradition.

Muratov, who also goes by Muratbai, is known for his activities defending the rights of Karakalpaks living in Kazakhstan. He has also raised awareness among international audiences about the situation in his native Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan within Uzbekistan.

A lawyer for the Almaty-based Kazakh Bureau for Human Rights, Denis Dzhivaga, told RFE/RL earlier that his organization would provide Muratov with legal assistance.

According to Dzhivaga, Muratov's detention was similar to the arrests of other Karakalpak activists that took place in Kazakhstan following mass rallies in Karakalpakstan's capital, Nukus, in July 2022. Thousands of people protested Tashkent's plans to change the constitution in a way that would have undermined the republic's right to self-determination.

The protests were violently dispersed. Uzbek authorities said at the time that 21 people died during the protests, but the Austria-based Freedom for Eurasia human rights group said at least 70 people were killed during the unrest.

In January last year, an Uzbek court sentenced 22 Karakalpak activists to prison terms on charges that included undermining the constitutional order for taking part in the protests.

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In March 2023, another 39 Karakalpak activists accused of taking part in the protests in Nukus were convicted, with 28 of them sentenced to prison terms of between five years and 11 years. Eleven defendants were handed parole-like sentences.

The violence forced Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev to make a rare about-face and scrap the proposal to change the constitution.

Kazakh and international human rights organizations have called on Kazakhstan's authorities to release Muratov, saying that he may face arbitrary detention and an unfair trial if he is extradited to Uzbekistan.

Karakalpaks are a Central Asian Turkic-speaking people. Their region used to be an autonomous area within Kazakhstan before becoming autonomous within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1930 and then part of Uzbekistan in 1936.

A Russian documentary director was sentenced on March 20 to three years in prison by a court in St. Petersburg on a charge of distributing false information about the country's military. Vsevolod Korolyov was arrested in July 2022 after he posted two reports online about Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, namely about alleged atrocities committed by Russian troops against civilians in Ukrainian towns and cities. Korolyov admitted that he posted the materials in question, but pleaded not guilty. To read the original story by RFE/RL's North.Realities, click here.

Pakistan is set to force some 850,000 documented Afghan refugees back to their country next month if they don't leave voluntarily.

According to reports in Pakistani media, the expulsions, the latest in an ongoing campaign of forced deportations, are scheduled to begin on April 15.

The News, an English-language daily, reported that Afghans holding an Afghan Citizen Card (ACC), an ID card issued by the Pakistani government, will be first asked to voluntarily leave the country.

“Later, they will be arrested and deported,” the report said.

Islamabad is calling this the second phase of its move to force more than 3 million documented and undocumented Afghans out of the country. Since October, it has expelled more than 500,000 Afghans who lacked proper documentation to stay in Pakistan.

“This new step will force Afghans to face danger and fear," lawyer Muniza Kakar told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.

Kakar, a lawyer who has voluntarily represented Afghan refugees arrested in the Pakistani city of Karachi, says the campaign aims to expel more than 850,000 ACC-holding Afghans from the South Asian nation.

"When the expulsions begin, they will not discriminate between Afghans holding ACC cards and those holding valid visas,” she said.

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Afghans Pushed Out, Fenced In By Once-Accommodating Neighbors

Widespread abuses marred Pakistan's earlier expulsions. Afghans complained of police and other authorities pressuring them for bribes. Many said they were robbed or were expelled despite holding documents that proved that their stay in Pakistan was legal.

“Urgent action is needed to protect the lives and rights of refugees,” Muniza said.

She shared a government document on X, formerly Twitter, that asks the provincial authorities in the southern province of Sindh, where Karachi is the capital, to complete their respective “mapping and repatriation plans” by March 25.

"Unfortunately, the Pakistani government’s campaign against Afghan refugees has upended our lives," said Suraya Sadat. "When outside, we always fear being arrested."

Samira Hamidi, a campaigner for global human rights watchdog Amnesty International, questioned why Islamabad is going after Afghan refugees given the situation in Afghanistan.

“Most of these refugees fled Afghanistan fearing persecution of the Taliban,” she wrote on X. "Such mapping and any further decision will expose them to great risk.”

The new plan for exclusions comes after Afghanistan’s Taliban government shelled a Pakistani military installation on March 20. The Taliban said that the attacks were a retaliation for Pakistani air strikes that killed women and children in two southeastern Afghan provinces.

Pakistan said the attacks targeted members of the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, which Islamabad says is sheltering in Afghanistan. Islamabad blames the group for violent attacks on its security forces.

Two employees of an unofficial gay club in Russia have been sent to pretrial detention for two months on a charge of creating an extremist group. Local media identified the employees ordered detained by a court in the southwestern city of Orenburg on March 20 as Diana Kamilyanova and Aleksandr Klimov of the Pose bar. Police raided the bar on March 9, after which a pro-government group published the raid's materials, revealing that the bar's clientele was mainly gay. In November, Russia's Supreme Court ruled that LGBT activists should be designated as extremists. Convictions on extremism charges may lead to imprisonment for up to 10 years. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Idel.Realities, click here.

Baluch separatists claimed an attack on March 20 during which gunmen opened fire on the port authority complex in Pakistan's Arabian Sea city of Gwadar in Balochistan Province. Government officials told Pakistani television that "all eight militants" who participated in the attack had been killed. The separatist Baluch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying it targeted offices of military intelligence located in the complex. Gwadar is part of China's multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative. BLA separatists regularly launch attacks in Balochistan Province. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, click here.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the first $4.9 billion payment in financial aid has been made to Ukraine from a support fund set up to help Kyiv as it battles invading Russian forces. The fund, created at the start of the month, aims to help the country's public finances, including paying pensions and salaries and providing basic public services during the war. "This payment, in the form of a bridge financing, is crucial to help you maintain the functioning of the state in this very difficult moment," von der Leyen said.

The Politzek-Info rights group on March 19 published a document issued by the Russian Interior Ministry dated February 12, 2024, about the cancellation of the Russian citizenship of Aleksandr Somryakov, a Moldovan-born man who was sentenced to six years in prison in April 2023 for publishing online reports about Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Somryakov was found guilty of spreading "false" information about Russian military. In April 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill that allows the citizenship of naturalized Russians convicted of spreading false information about Russian military or discrediting Russian armed forces to be canceled. To read the original story by RFE/RL's North.Realities, click here.

ASTANA -- Kazakh officials have confirmed the conviction of a nephew of former President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who lost his influence on the country's political scene after deadly, unprecedented anti-government protests in January 2022.

The Astana City Court told RFE/RL on March 20 that Samat Abish was convicted of abuse of power and handed a suspended sentence of eight years in late February. It added that the former president's nephew was also barred from serving in public offices for 10 years.

The court's press service refused to give any further details, saying the trial materials were classified.

Kazakhstan's DAT newspaper was the first to report the conviction, quoting sources as saying Abish was found guilty and sentenced, while also being stripped of his rank of general and various state awards.

Interior Minister Erzhan Sadenov told journalists in Astana on March 20 that the 45-year-old Abish was currently under parole-like probation.

"He is barred from leaving the country and must stay at his registered residence only," Sadenov said, refusing to provide any other details.

Abish was dismissed as first deputy chief of the National Security Committee (KNB) following the January 2022 protests, which initially began in the southwestern town of Zhanaozen over a sudden fuel price hike. The protests quickly spread across the country as Kazakhs vented their anger over corruption, political stagnation, and widespread injustice.

Much of the protesters' focus was directed at Nazarbaev, who ruled Kazakhstan from 1989 until March 2019, when he handed over power to his then-ally, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev. However, Nazarbaev was widely believed to remain in control behind the scenes.

The protests were violently dispersed by police and military personnel, including troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization that Toqaev invited into the country, claiming that "20,000 extremists who were trained in terrorist camps abroad" attacked Almaty, the Central Asian country's largest city.

The authorities have provided no evidence to back Toqaev's claim about foreign terrorists.

Following the unrest that claimed at least 238 lives, including those of 19 law enforcement officers, Abish's direct boss, then the KNB chief and one of Nazarbaev's closest allies, Karim Masimov, and his three other deputies were arrested over their roles in the deadly events.

Masimov was later sentenced to 18 years in prison, while his deputies, Anuar Sadyqulov and Daulet Erghozhin, were sentenced to 16 years and 15 years. A court in Astana found all three men guilty of high treason, attempting to seize power by force, and abuse of office and power.

Another former deputy of Masimov, Marat Osipov, was sentenced to three years in prison on a charge of abuse of office at the same trial.

Abish is Nazarbaev's second nephew to be convicted following the deadly unrest.

Abish's older brother, Qairat Satybaldy, was arrested in March 2022 and later sentenced to six years in prison on corruption charges.

Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said on March 20 it has discovered a tunnel along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border that is purportedly being used for illegal border crossings and smuggling. The tunnel linking the two Central Asian countries was discovered in a private house in Kyrgyzstan's southern Jalal-Abad region. In recent years, the UKMK has found at least four similar tunnels in southern Kyrgyz districts. Last year, several people were handed prison terms in Uzbekistan for using the underground tunnels for crossing the border illegally and smuggling goods to and from Kyrgyzstan. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, click here.

Iranian political prisoner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has called for the extension of a United Nations investigation into human rights violations in Iran, including gender apartheid and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the government.

In a statement delivered by Mahmoud Amiri-Moghaddam, the director of the Iran Human Rights organization, at a UN Human Rights Council meeting, Mohammadi stressed the urgent need for continued international scrutiny.

Mohammadi has been convicted fives times since March 2021 -- three times for activism carried out while she was imprisoned -- and has been sentenced to over 12 years in prison during that period.

She was already serving a sentence of 10 years and nine months on charges of acting against national security and propaganda against the state before the more recent convictions.

Amid unrest within the country, Mohammadi stressed that the Iranian regime's violent suppression tactics were not only intensifying but also broadening in scope, affecting not just political dissidents but women, religious minorities, and ethnic groups indiscriminately.

The call for action coincided with a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, where Javaid Rehman, the special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, criticized the Islamic republic for its discrimination against minorities and the enactment of repressive laws targeting women and girls.

Rehman advocated for the creation of an international mechanism to hold the Iranian government accountable, highlighting the long-standing impunity enjoyed by the regime.

Mohammadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023, has been campaigning for human rights in Iran for decades and has been in and out of prison for the last 20 years.

Concerns were also raised about the well-being of Mohammadi herself, who is currently imprisoned and facing serious health issues, including heart and lung conditions that pose a significant risk to her life.

In November 2022, the Geneva-based UNHRC formed a fact-finding committee to investigate human rights violations amid a violent crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted over the death of Mahsa Amini.

The resolution provides for an independent investigative mission to document human rights violations in Iran in the context of the crackdown on the protests, which erupted in mid-September after Amini died after being arrested for allegedly wearing a head scarf improperly.

In a report presented earlier this month by Sara Hossain, head of the UN's Independent Fact-Finding Committee, the Iranian government was directly implicated in the physical violence leading to Amini's death, with the committee describing such government actions against women as "crimes against humanity."

However, Kazem Gharibabadi, the secretary of the Human Rights Council of Iran, accused the UN's Fact-Finding Committee of bias and a lack of independence.

Despite these accusations, 43 human rights organizations specializing in Iranian and international affairs have issued a joint statement urging the UN Human Rights Council to renew the mandates of both Javaid Rehman and the Fact-Finding Committee, emphasizing the critical nature of their missions in safeguarding human rights within Iran.

Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda