Monthly Archives: January 2014

PEN America is featuring five previously untranslated poems by Lui Xia, artist, poet, and wife of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xia has been held under extralegal house arrest for more than three years, with almost no contact … Continue reading →

Freedom House is condemning the Chinese government’s conviction of prominent human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong for “gathering a crowd to disturb public order” and a court’s sentencing of him to four years imprisonment. The New York-based organization is calling for … Continue reading →

Kim Jong-Un reinforced his abusive rule in North Korea in 2013, Human Rights Watch said this week in its World Report 2014. Over the past year, North Korea has tightened control over the country’s northern border to reduce flight, and … Continue reading →

The Chinese authorities must immediately release prominent Chinese  activist Xu Zhiyong, whose trial is due to start in Beijing on Wednesday, Amnesty International said. A highly regarded legal scholar, Xu Zhiyong wrote an article in May 2012 titled China Needs … Continue reading →

On Wednesday, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) partnered with Fighters for a Free North Korea to launch informational balloons from South Korea over the border to North Korea. The balloons carry democracy literature and equipment into North Korea as part … Continue reading →

In Cambodia, 65 civil society organizations are condemning the use of armed force and escalating violence against the Cambodian people. At the start of 2014, following three weeks of peaceful demonstrations in Phnom Penh, tensions increased dramatically as authorities brutally … Continue reading →

International human rights organizations, lawyers and legal scholars are condemning the Chinese government’s January 5th detention and subsequent disappearance of human rights activist and lawyer Liu Shihui. Authorities at the Dadongjie police station in Guangzhou detained Liu when he went … Continue reading →

Over the past three weeks, Cambodian human rights defender Ou Virak has been receiving a number of death threats as well as threats of violence against his family. Ou Virak is the President of Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), … Continue reading →

The new year started out poorly in Vietnam as security police arrested Vietnamese human rights defender and head of the Buddhist Youth Movement (BYM) Le Cong Cau on the morning of January 1st at Phu Bai Airport near Hue after … Continue reading →