The need for far-reaching changes in Georgia’s prisons, brought to life by recent graphic videos of rape and beatings, paved the way for Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s rise to power.
Firuza Mirkhamidova was visiting family in her native Tashkent in October when she received an unexpected phone call. Her husband, Abdulvosi Latipov, had unexpectedly been released from jail in Volgograd, where they lived.
A court in Tajikistan has ordered the closure of a prominent rights group, citing a variety of alleged technical violations of its operating license, including moving offices without duly notifying authorities, engaging in unauthorized training sessions involving high school students and operating an improperly registered website.
In Kyrgyzstan, if a man kidnaps a woman to make her his wife, he runs little risk of prosecution. Should he steal sheep, however, there’s a good chance he’ll go to prison.
Just days ahead of the country’s October 1 parliamentary vote, televised images of the brutal treatment of detainees at Georgia’s Prison No. 8 are stoking one of the most serious political crises ever encountered by President Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration. The scandal has quickly scrambled assumptions about the upcoming election.
The June 29 death of an army doctor after a brutal beating by guards at a Yerevan restaurant has sparked an emotional outcry in Armenia against the use of private bodyguards.
With Eurovision now a thing of the past, Azerbaijan’s Sing for Democracy civil rights activists are expressing concern about how to keep the country’s spotty civil-rights record in the international spotlight. As media attention moves on to other countries, they say, government crackdowns could resume against outspokenly critical human rights activists and journalists.
