Wednesday, April 7, 2010 as of 11:14 AM ET
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights.
Read More at Wikipedia ›Egypt's notorious emergency law expired Thursday, ending 31 years of broad powers to detain and arrest for a police force accused of severely abusing its far-reaching authority.
Since former President Anwar Sadat's 1981 assassination, the security forces were empowered to detain and arrest people without charge, keep them locked up despite court releases and extract confessions under torture. Abuses almost always went unpunished. And at one point under the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak, human rights groups said there were more than 10,000 people in detention — many of them disappearing in Egyptian prisons."This is huge," said Hossam Bahgat, a human rights activist who had campaigned for years to lift the hated law. "What is really crucial is the message. The security forces operated under a culture that told them they were constantly above the law. Now they need to abide by the existing legislation and they won't enjoy any extralegal powers."Last year's popular uprising that drove Muba...A Congolese general already sought on an international arrest warrant for his alleged use of child soldiers during an earlier conflict has forcibly recruited another...
A new report says female immigrant farmworkers in the U.S. are commonly subject to sexual harassment and assault, in part because their immigration status makes them...
Female farmworkers across the United States are commonly sexually harassed and assaulted, in part because their immigration status makes them fearful of calling poli...
A branch of Chinese city governments set up to monitor everything from unlicensed street vendors to unauthorized construction is rife with abuse of power, stoking al...
U.N. envoy Kofi Annan called Monday on "every individual with a gun" in Syria to lay down arms, saying he was horrified by a weekend massacre that killed more than 1...
Morocco's glittering Mawazine international music festival wraps up this weekend with performances by Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, after nine days of showcasing t...
India should rethink the harsh military laws imposed on Kashmir if it wants to defuse tensions in its portion of the disputed, divided Himalayan region, a panel of I...
After a prolonged chill, security ties between Israel and China are warming up.With Israel offering much-needed technical expertise and China representing a huge new...
An official says a court in central Vietnam has sentenced three political activists to up to three and a half years in prison for distributing anti-government leafle...
Every workday at 7:20 a.m., colleagues pick up Yao Lifa from his second-floor apartment and drive him to the elementary school where he taught for years.This is no c...
Describing talks with Saudi Arabia as "not an easy situation," IOC President Jacques Rogge said the Olympic body is still working with the Gulf country on sending fe...
Libya's former prime minister will only be extradited to his country if his life isn't in danger there and he can be guaranteed a fair trial, Tunisia's presidential ...
The U.N.'s top human rights official warned Friday that all-out civil war could engulf Syria unless countries that have backed international envoy Kofi Annan's peace...
Russia wants to help U.N. envoy Kofi Annan achieve "positive results" and prevent an all-out civil war in Syria, President Vladimir Putin said in Germany on Friday.M...
Egypt's notorious emergency law expired Thursday, ending more than 30 years of broad powers to arrest and detain for a police force accused of widespread human right...
A third witness in the 2009 election-related massacre of 57 people in the Philippines has been killed and his body chopped to pieces, a prosecutor said Thursday, cas...
A court sentenced a Thai webmaster Wednesday to an eight-month suspended sentence for not moving quickly enough to delete online comments deemed insulting to the cou...
The chief of Bangladesh's largest Islamic party and one of his deputies were indicted Monday for alleged crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 independen...
Special envoy Kofi Annan said Monday he was horrified by a gruesome weekend massacre that killed more than 100 people in Syria, and called on "every individual with ...
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