Over one hundred countries voted overwhelmingly in favour of a second
resolution on "Moratorium on the use of the death penalty" at the
United Nations on Thursday.
A human rights defender since the late 1980s, Svetlana was one of the founders of the NGO Citizen’s Assistance
(Grazhdanskoe Sodeistvie) and the Human Rights Centre Memorial.
Two years after the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya,
human rights activists and journalists are still at risk in the Russian
Federation, in particular in the North Caucasus region.
Recent attacks on independent journalists and human rights activists
illustrate the risks under which they work in Russia, Amnesty
International said on the eve of the second anniversary of Anna
Politkovskaya’s murder
After months of increased tension, and recent low-level hostilities,
the conflict between Georgia and the breakaway region of South Ossetia
escalated in the early morning of 8 August 2008.
Amnesty International has called on all sides to the conflict in South
Ossetia to fully respect international humanitarian law in order that
civilians are protected from hostilities.
The Gay Pride march in Riga on Saturday may have passed
largely without incident, but elsewhere in Europe, the right of
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to claim their
rights and celebrate their identity is under threat.
There has been a clampdown on the freedoms of assembly and expression
in the run-up to parliamentary and presidential elections in the
Russian Federation.
