NEWSLETTER FROM THE HUMAN RIGHTS HOUSE NETWORK

1 Urgent appeal for Kurdish human rights defender
The Kurdish human rights defender Remzi Kartal was arrested in Germany in January and faces extradition to Turkey, with the high likelyhood of being tortured upon return. The Norwegian Council for the Rights of the Kurdish People, one of the member organisations of the Human Rights House in Oslo, has appealed to the German government to release him and refuse any request for extraditon to Turkey.

2 Azerbaijan: Prison conditions life threatening
20-year-old Algait Maharramov, who was sentenced to three years for participating in post-election disturbances in October 2003, has died in colony No 17. - The situation in Azerbaijani prisons is the absolute mirror of events taking place in our country right now: strange, unexplained, uncommented and absurd, says local human rights activist Shahla Ismayilova. The tragic death of Maharramov in prison has coincided with a series of protest actions in a number of penal colonies.

3 Total Oil out of Burma!
This week, the Burma Campaign UK launched a campaign to drive the French oil giant Total out of Burma. Total openly co-operates with the military regime in Burma, and has been condemned by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The campaign is supported by 41 organisations, among them the Norwegian Burma Committee, a member organisation of the Norwegian Human Rights House.

4 3000 die annually in the Russian Army
About 3,000 conscripts die each year while doing their mandatory service in the Russian army, according to Veronika Marchenko (picture) at the Mother's Right Foundation. The most dangerous places to serve are in the Moscow region and the North Caucasus region surrounding Chechnya.

5 Belarusian human rights defenders pushing to improve legal standards
- I hope the European standards will become a basis for lawmaking in my country, Zhanna Litvina, Chair of the Belarusian Association of Journalists said last week in Minsk at a conference co-hosted by HRH, about European human rights standards. The situation for independent media in Belarus has worsened since 2001.

6 North Korea must be given prime priority, says HRH
- Seen from a human rights perspective, there is hardly a place on earth worse than North Korea. At the same time, depressingly little attention is paid to this. In that sense, the regime's closure of the country's borders has been a success, says Niels Jacob Harbitz from the Human Rights House Foundation (HRH), just back from an international conference in Seoul, South Korea, focussing on the human rights situation north of the border.

7 Strasbourg vindicates McLibel pair
In a ground-breaking judgment delivered today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the libel trial launched by McDonalds against two campaigners who had criticised its social and environmental practices, often referred to as the McLibel case, had been unfair and violated their right to freedom of expression. Article 19 reports.

8 Azerbaijan: Young lawyers combat corruption
Being a member of the Council of Europe, the corruption-ridden Azerbaijan is obliged to combat corruption. - Corruption is one of the most unsurmountable, poignant and delicate problems of our country, says Nadir Adilov, the chairman of the Azerbaijan Young Lawyers Union (AYLU).

******************************************************************
Free of charge news and background service from the Human
Rights House Network, an international forum of cooperation between
independent human rights houses. It works to strengthen cooperation and
improve the security and capacity of the 70 human rights organizations in
the Network. The Human Rights House Foundation in Oslo is the
secretariat.

To subscribe, please send an email to: newsletter-subscribe@humanrightshouse.org

More news and background on www.humanrightshouse.org

******************************************************************
Sent by:

Borghild Tønnessen-Krokan
Editor/Project Manager
The Human Rights House Foundation (HRH)
Address: Menneskerettighetshuset,
Tordenskioldsgate 6b, 0160 Oslo, Norway
Tel: (+47) 22 47 92 47, Direct: (+47) 22 47 92 44,
Fax: (+47) 22 47 92 01
Website: http://www.humanrightshouse.org,
http://www.menneskerettigheter.no