NEWSLETTER FROM THE HUMAN RIGHTS HOUSE NETWORK

1) Attack on Rebiya Kadeer's family and business
Several of the recently released Uighur spokeswoman Rebiya Kadeer's employees were brutally arrested by Chinese police yesterday. Her son is in hiding. The Rafto Foundation asks the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take action.

2) HRH asks governments to adopt policies to protect defenders
- We want governments to adopt transparent, comprehensive, and verifiable policies to protect human rights defenders, both in their own countries and abroad, says Maria Dahle Executive Director of the Human Rights House Foundation, in the introduction to the Human Rights House Network Annual Report 2004. Read more about the activities at the established and emerging Human Rights Houses in Oslo, Moscow, Warsaw, Sarajevo, Bergen, London, Zagreb, Nairobi, Kampala, Minsk, Baku, Istanbul, and Bogota.

3) Belarus: Freedom of Press Prize awarded to Alena Raubetskaya
The Press prize of Ihar Hiermianchuk Memorial was awarded to the editor-in-chief Alena Raubetskayaby by the Belarusian Association of Journalist (BAJ), the Norwegian PEN and the Human Rights House Foundation (HRH) on the Press Freedom Day on May 3rd. Raubetskaya was honoured for her outspoken articles about the flawed October elections in 2004

4) Time is running out for Uganda's chance to rescue itself
- Time is running out for a peace agreement, say sources close to the UK-Dutch- Norwegian attempt to make the parties to the conflict in the north meet and talk. In the last month, HRH has had this dramatic assessment confirmed both in Uganda and in Norway. - If significant progress won't be made within the next few weeks, the war is more than likely to escalate, possibly to unprecedented hights.

5) Azerbaijan: Lack of registration hinders NGOs activities
Almost 1000 NGOs are denied registration by the Azeri Ministry of Justice. The adoption in 2003 of a law on State Registration has not led to substantial improvements, according to a new OSCE report.

6) Kenya: A murky future for textile workers
The silence in the room was deafening. Thousands of sewing machines lay unused in one of the production units at Upan Wasana, a textile factory located in Ruaraka, on the outskirts of Nairobi. The reason for this inactivity: something Kenyans call the 'Chinese tsunami'.

7) Critical human rights situation in Western Sahara
Several reports about violence from the police during peaceful demonstrations have reached the Rafto Foundation. The 2002 Rafto Prize laureate, Sidi Mohammed Daddach and his closest associates are the only ones who can publicly air discontentment and criticism regarding Morocco´s policy in Western Sahara.

8) Nepal: End of state of emergency promises little
The announcement that King Gyanendra had lifted Nepal's state of emergency caught most observers by surprise but left few confident that the country would see the immediate restoration of human rights including freedom of expression for its media.

9) Croatia: Impartiality of war crime trials improved
In the most recent report on the war crime trials in Croatian courts, the OSCE mission to Croatia recognized improvements in the Croatian judiciary. These improvements also reflect positively on the willingness of Croatian courts to take over some of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) cases. However, the report underlines the need for additional reforms.

10) Mordechai Vanunu invited to Norway
The board of Norwegian PEN has nominated Israeli writer, whistleblower and nuclear physicist Mordechai Vanunu as new City of Asylum writer in Kristiansand, Norway.

11) Moscow: Human rights activists teach civil servants
In April the Moscow Helsinki Group led a training seminar for employees of the Regional Ombudsmen apparatus for human rights and the Regional commissions for human rights of the Russian Federation.

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Borghild Tønnessen-Krokan
Editor/Project Manager
Human Rights House Foundation (HRH)
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Tel: (+47) 22 47 92 47, Direct: (+47) 22 47 92 44,
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