HANOI, Vietnam – The Vietnamese government released journalist, Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, from jail.  The court sentenced her to nine months in prison for “disturbing the public order.”  Although Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was sentenced today, she was released for time already served.  Foreign reporters were denied access to her one-day trial at the Hanoi People’s Court.

Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was arrested in April of 2007 for posting articles critical of the government.  Two days prior to her arrest authorities entered her home and caught her posting the articles.  During the incident, police seized a memory stick that stored many of her articles.  In addition her articles, Tran Khai Thanh has written numerous novels, political essays, and was an editor of the dissident bulletin, Fatherland.  Read more...

By Meryl White
Impunity Watch Reporter, Western and Central Africa

N’Djamena, Chad – In eastern Chad, rebels are advancing towards the capital, N’Djamena, after seizing the central town of Bartha. In response, armed forces are attempting to intercept 300 vehicles that are heading towards the capital. Moreover, security forces have increased dramatically and children have been told to stay home from school. Also, the French embassy has closed a French school in the city.

The rebels are attempting to overthrow the President from power. In 2006, the rebels were able to reach the capital but they were repelled by government forces.  Read more...

NAIROBI, Kenya – Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan suspended crisis talks in Kenya today after an opposition lawmaker was shot dead by a policeman, triggering further clashes which killed at least two.    The talks are scheduled to resume tomorrow, and current Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he will go to Kenya as well to help with the talks. 

National police chief Hussein Ali said lawmaker David Too was killed in a “crime of passion” over the traffic policeman’s girlfriend.  Opposition leaders however have called it an assassination and see it as part of the country’s deepening ethnic strife.  Following the death of Too, thousands of people from his Kalenjin ethnic group sought revenge and set houses on fire and blocked roads on the outskirts of town.   Read more...

By Laura Zuber
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

DAMASCUS, Syria – On January 28, five Syrian security agents arrested Riad Seif, a prominent political dissent and a former MP.  This follows his imprisonment from 2001-2005 for his political views.  His arrest is related to his involvement with the “Democracy Declaration,” a political group calling for greater democracy in Syria.  The Democracy Declaration group met at Seif’s home in December 2007 to form a national council.  Read more...

PHNOM PENH ,Cambodia – The defense counsel for Nuon Chea moved to have Ney Thol removed from the trial. Nuon Chea’s attorneys allege Ney Thol cannot be impartial and has political ties to the Cambodian People’s Party. In the motion, the defense claims the “continued presence on the bench threatens to undermine the credibility and integrity” of the hearings.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal dismissed the motion. Media spokesman for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Reach Sambath, stated, “I can only say that the motion was not upheld.”  Read more...

By Elizabeth Costner
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, Africa

KIGALI, Rwanda – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited a memorial for the victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide on Tuesday and said the Rwandan genocide “will haunt the United Nations and the international community for generations.”

Ki-moon observed a long moment of silence for the 800,000 people who died in the genocide, mainly members of President Paul Kagame’s Tutsi minority.   Ki-moon’s visit was the first for a UN secretary general since Kofi Annan visited in 2001.   There is still outstanding resentment towards the UN for failing to prevent the genocide, and Annan had on several occasions admitted to the body’s failure to take action.   Read more...

By Juliana Chan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – The People’s Daily, the leading community party newspaper in China, expressed in a commentary piece Tuesday that any attempt to use the Beijing Olympics to discredit China or force it to change policy is doomed to failure.

This comes in response to an intense week of increased international criticism of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. On Monday, Britain’s Prince Charles, who has long taken an interest in Tibet, said he would not be going to the opening ceremony of August’s games. Wang Hui, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, responded to the Prince’s boycott as “unfair…[t]he Beijing Olympic Games belongs to the whole world, not only to China. Our slogan is ‘One World, One Dream.”  Read more...

By Kristy Tridhavee
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

DHAKA, Bangladesh – On January 24^th, Bangladesh authorities arrested Mehedi Hasan, a field investigator for the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), for instigating protests against emergency rules.

On January 15^th, rioters ransacked more than a dozen garment factories. Rioters protested their lack of unpaid wages and unsafe working conditions. In order to break up the riots, Bangladesh police shot tear gas into the crowds. During the riots, over one hundred persons were injured, factories were damaged, and vehicles were vandalized. The garment factories involved in the riots resumed operation on January 16^th.  Read more...

By Meryl White
Impunity Watch Reporter, Western and Central Africa

After 18 years spent in exile in Senegal, more than 100 black Mauritanian refugees will return home. These citizens were expelled from Mauritania after racial riots that took place in 1989. These race riots erupted in Mauritania and Senegal after a border dispute. Hundreds of people were killed, and others became the targets of attacks and land seizures. 35,000 black Mauritanians went into exile after ethnic purges were conducted by the Arab dominated government.  Read more...

By Vivek Thiagarajan
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, Middle East

Professor Atilla Yayla was arrested for his insulting remarks about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.  Yayla is the head of the Association of Liberal Thinking at Gazi University in Ankara.  Yayla remarked in a speech in 2006 that Atatürk was not as progressively minded as official Turkish history portrays.  Instead, Yayla argued that Atatürk’s one party system may have been “regressive in some aspects.”  (Guardian Unlimited- Turkey jails academic for insulting Ataturk)  Yayla was immediately fired concerning the court case about the remark, but was later reinstated by Gazi University.  (Guardian Unlimited- Turkish academic warns of governmental clampdown)  Read more...