Campaigning for human rights in the age of the internet

Friends, Families and Travellers is a group that seeks to end racism and discrimination against gypsies and travellers, whatever their ethnicity, background and culture. Their website has a section on the Human Rights Act in relation...

Johann Hari, a columnist on the Independent, looks on 2009 as a dark year now drawing to a close. He suggests that we give ourselves hope by looking at the people who have been inspirational during 2009 and gives his list.. Another...

In the 1990s in Angola there was an arms for oil scandal and it has led recently to several dozen convictions in France. Arming Angola was a programme first broadcast on Wednesday 6 January 2010.

Akmal Shaikh was executed In the far north-west of China, in the early hours (GMT) of Tuesday morning, 29 December 2009. Two of his cousins from London had travelled to Urumqi to present a final petition for mercy. Despite all the...

Trawling through recent blog entries on this site I have found some that relate to human rights. See Almansori's blog on the criticism of Libya by Human Rights Watch, for the detention of 330 prisoners without legal basis. Shao Jiang...

A human rights activist and Christian has entered North Korea with a letter asking the leader to release political prisoners.

Police have killed four protesters in Teheran . With other cities in Iran included the death toll may already be as high as nine . I wrote earlier on the interview between Jon Snow and the Iranian leader on Channel 4 news.

Liu Xiaobo, a leading dissident in China, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on 25 December 2009. The date of the announcement may have been cunningly chosen to minimise international attention. Many foreign diplomats and journalists...

Jon Snow interviewed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Channel 4 News. Snow challenged the Iranian leader in part of the interview with the statements of a defector from the Basij militia . The defector says that he witnessed killings and tried...

See the blog entry on on Akmal Shaikh , the Briton who faces execution in China, by Steve B from the Amnesty media team. The entry includes links to an interview with his brother and to the website of Reprieve. Clive Stafford Smith of...

The BBC has given an apology on Newsnight for one aspect of its reporting on Trafigura. The BBC withdrew the claim that waste dumped by Trafigura in west Africa caused deaths and serious injuries. If you saw the apology on the...

The medical aid charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) reports that civilians in various parts of the world have been denied access to aid , making humanitarian crises worse in 2009. They say that trapped civilians in Sri Lanka...

The Guardian reports today that UN investigators have looked into the massacre at the national football stadium in Guinea on 28 September 2009. Soldiers sealed the exits of the stadium and then attacked the many thousands who had...

Human Rights Watch issued a report earlier this month saying that migrants in South Africa suffer from discrimination and poor access to health care. Rebecca Shaeffer of Human Rights Watch says: "Migrants to South Africa are abused in...

Eritrea's football team will be depleted, at least for home matches, after twelve of the squad disappeared during a visit to Kenya . They are presumed to be hiding in an attempt to get away from the authoritarian regime in Asmara, as...

The Telegraph reports that Tony Blair is being urged to give to charities at least the £90 000 that he is reported to have been paid for a speech in Azerbaijan, in which he forgot to make any criticism about human rights. An aide to...

Survival International , "the movement for tribal peoples", celebrates its 40th birthday this month. One piece of news on Survival International's website is that Vedanta Resources has launched an unprecedented attack on the...

Human Rights Watch has issued a report saying that the United Nations needs to take stronger action to protect civilians in eastern Congo and to end atrocities. Human Rights Watch has made many visits to the area and interviewed many...

No, that is not the text of a motion before parliament, to be honest. However, Early Day Motion 408, on World Hunger , tabled by John Mann, has attracted only 38 MPs by 9 February 2010 and only one of those is a Conservative signatory...

I do not usually recommend reading the Daily Mail but Amnesty supporters may wish to look at this report of a death by stoning , illustrated with photographs. The face of the victim in one photo is pixellated on grounds of taste to...