A survey by the world’s largest journalism group shows three in every four journalists have faced official restrictions, obstruction or intimidation in reporting on the new coronavirus disease COVID-19. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also noticed that most staff and freelance journalists have “suffered pay cuts, lost revenue, job losses, canceled commissions, or worsening working conditions.”
Syria has accused Israel of conducting a pre-dawn airstrike on a military airfield near Damascus on Monday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said at least four Iranian militants and three civilians were killed, the Jerusalem Post reports.
A prominent Saudi Arabian rights campaigner imprisoned since 2013 for dissident activities for which he was awarded the ‘Alternative Nobel’ prize has died, activists and friends confirmed. The 69-year-old Abdullah al-Hamid passed away Thursday in King Saud Medical City in Riyadh, the capital, after suffering a stroke on April 9 in prison, said London-based Saudi rights group ALQST.
Saudi Arabia is ending flogging as a form of punishment amid efforts to modernize the judicial system, according to a document obtained by several media outlets. The kingdom’s top court said in written remarks that flogging would be replaced by prison sentences or fines, or a mixture of both.
A pastor in the Hunan province of China was arrested on April 2 for suspected subversion of state power. Persecution watchdog International Christian Concern (ICC) reports that the pastor was arrested after his church refused to join a government-approved religious organization.
Hungary has condemned global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for saying that an ‘Orwellian law’ has imposed an ‘information police state’ in the country. RSF urged two United Nations rapporteurs to condemn the governments of Hungary and dozens of other nations for ‘violating the right to information’ about the coronavirus pandemic.
Lebanese media have reported that on Wednesday afternoon an Israeli drone attacked a vehicle belonging to the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group, Hezbollah. The vehicle was in Syria, close to the border with Lebanon. There were no reports of any injuries from the strike.
A new law signed by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Friday has the effect of prohibiting any place or business that is open to the public from denying transgender biological males access to ladies’ bathrooms, locker rooms or dressing rooms.
A Cuban journalist reporting on abuses against Christianity in Cuba was recently taken in for questioning by authorities, who accused him of being a CIA agent and threatened his mother and two-year-old son.
The World Health Organization said Tuesday it had received assurances from North Korea that it continues testing for the new coronavirus and has more than 500 people in quarantine. The leadership of North Korea, one of the world’s most repressive states, has so far claimed there are no confirmed cases of the virus, known as COVID-19.
China has been appointed to a panel on the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council, where it will help vet candidates for important posts — despite its decades-long record of systematic human rights abuse that the U.S. has said fueled the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 100 civil society groups urged governments Thursday not to use the global coronavirus pandemic as cover for future pervasive electronic snooping but instead make sure data is erased once the health crisis is over.
Two churches in Sudan have been burned down by arsonists in the last month, Sudanese Radio Dabanga reported. This is despite Christian hopes for religious freedom following the ousting of dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. Radio Dabanga was notified of the attacks by Dimas Marajan, a local lawyer and human rights activist.
More information has surfaced about an attack on Rohingya Christian refugees in a Bangladeshi refugee camp last month by their fellow Muslim Rohingya, confirming earlier reports about the brutal assault.
A UN ‘special expert on freedom of religion’ is calling on states to regulate religion to suit modern ideologies of gender and sexuality.
The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy responded in February to a UN ‘blacklist’ of Israeli companies highlighted for supposed human rights abuses with an expose detailing the terror-links of the groups that lobbied for the list’s creation.
Christians were harassed again at the end of January in the Rohingya refugee camps across the border from Myanmar, from which military persecution forced 700,000 Muslims and a smaller number of Christians to flee recently.
Suspected Islamic gunmen interrupted a weekly worship service at a Protestant church in northern Burkina Faso, killing 24 people, authorities confirmed late Monday, February 17. Another 18 people were wounded in Sunday’s attack rocking Pansy town in Yagha province, the regional governor said.
The United Nations Human Rights Council published a blacklist of companies operating in Israeli settler areas across Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights Wednesday, accusing them of raising ‘particular human rights concerns.’
In what many observers see as an effort to exert substantial control over the Mediterranean in view of restoring the former glory of the Ottoman Caliphate, Turkey has begun sending Syrian mercenaries to Libya to bolster the UN-backed government there against General Khalifa Haftar and his rebels.