Rwanda - Agnes Uwimana Nkusi

This Rwandan newspaper editor was released from prison on 18th June, 3 weeks earlier than expected. She had published articles critical of President Kagame and the Rwandan authorities, in the lead-up to the 2010 Presidential elections.

Originally she was found guilty of very serious offences including defamation, 'minimising the genocide' and 'divisionism'. She faced a 17 year prison sentence but the Rwandan Supreme Court threw out all but one conviction and given a reduced sentence.

China - Li Yan

Li Yan, aged 43 and from Sichuan Province in SW China, was sentenced to death on 24th August 2011 for beating her husband to death the previous year. She married Tan Yong in 2009, but he abused her emotionally and physically, including beating, kicking, stubbing out cigarettes on her face, cutting off one of her fingers and locking her outside in freezing conditions.

In desperation she killed him with the butt of an air rifle which he had threatened to shoot her with. In June of this year the Supreme People's Court overturned her death sentence. A retrial freed her after huge international and domestic attention on her case.

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