Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that philanthropist and businessman Osman Kavala’s three years of detention without a conviction did not violate his rights to liberty and security. Kavala was accused of organizing and funding the 2013 Gezi Park protests against then-Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. In February 2020, he and eight other individuals were acquitted. Kavala [...]

The Russian Ministry of Justice on Monday added veteran rights activist Lev Ponomaryov and four other individuals to its list of media “foreign agents.” This is the first time that individuals have been added to the list of “foreign agents,” as the legislation has previously been used primarily against media outlets. The “foreign agent” law [...]

Federal judge Kristine Baker of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas issued Tuesday a temporary restraining order that halted four Arkansas anti-abortion regulations from taking effect. In 2017, the Arkansas legislature passed a set of abortion laws that included a ban on the common abortion method of dilation and extraction, as well as [...]

Several large tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and LinkedIn filed Monday an amicus brief in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Facebook’s lawsuit against Israeli surveillance company NSO. NSO creates cyber-surveillance tools, which it then sells to foreign governments and other customers. Those customers can use the tools to track individuals’ [...]

The Nicaragua National Assembly Monday approved a law that will bar opposition politicians from participating in the November 2021 election. The “Law for the Defense of the Rights of the People to Independence, Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Peace” was sponsored by President Daniel Ortega and bars “those who ask for, celebrate and applaud the imposition [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Sunday rejected a lawsuit by the Republican Party that attempted to modify absentee ballot rules ahead of Georgia’s US Senate runoffs. The Georgia Republican Party, National Republican Senatorial Committee, Perdue for Senate, and Georgians for Kelly Loeffler brought suit in the US District Court for the [...]

An Iranian court sentenced British-Iranian anthropologist Kameel Ahmady to nine years in jail on Sunday for “subversive” research work. Iran has arrested dozens of dual nationals in the past few years. Many rights activists and organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, have been critical of and reported on many of the arrests. Ahmady is an [...]

The Hungarian National Assembly, the country’s parliament, passed a bill amending the Hungarian Fundamental Law on Tuesday, which stipulates that a mother is a woman and a father is a man. The bill, which is “intended to strengthen the protection of Hungarian families” and protect children, protects individuals’ rights to self-identify “according to their sex [...]

The South Korean Parliament passed a bill Monday that prohibits the launching of propaganda leaflets across the border into North Korea. For decades, South Korean defectors and campaigners sent anti-North Korean leaflets, as well as food, medicine, money, and USB sticks containing South Korean news and dramas, across the border to North Korea. They used [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Monday on Nigerian officials to release children detained in connection with Islamist rebel group Boko Haram. In September 2019 HRW reported that the Nigerian military has arbitrarily detaining thousands of children for their alleged involvement with Boko Haram. HRW reported that more than 3,600 children were detained by Nigerian armed [...]