Articles

States Avoid Serious Discussion of Rights in Algeria, Tunisia

(Geneva, April 18, 2008) – The first session of the new country review mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council was undermined by inconsistencies and the timidity of some governments in reviewing others, Human Rights Watch said today. On April 18, 2008 the council concluded a two-week session in which it examined the records of 16 countries as part of the new Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process.

Alkarama for Human Rights, 11 January 2008.

This decision is related to the communication Alkarama submitted on 14 Feb, 2007 to the U.N working group appealing for the urgent intervention after the arrest and detention of the following people:

Alkarama for Human Rights, 1 October 2007

The Human Rights Committee notified Mr. Ali Benhadj's lawyer of its findings rendered in the course of its 90th session at Geneva, 9-27 July 2007, regarding the sentencing of Mr. Ali Belhadj to 12 years' criminal imprisonment by the Blida military tribunal.

Alkarama for Human Rights and Algeria-Watch, 17 August 2007

We are launching a new appeal to Algerian human rights associations, women’s associations, journalists, independent unions, political party and association activists, lawyers and human rights defenders to get involved with the UN Human Rights Committee’s expert examination of the third periodic report of the Algerian government on 23 October 2007.

Alkarama for Human Rights, 2 August 2007

In another blow to the British government’s claim that “diplomatic assurances” prevent torture, British judges have stopped the government from deporting three people to Algeria.  Their close examination of the evidence confirmed a point that Alkarama and other human rights organisations had made from the beginning – that, notwithstanding the diplomatic assurances given by Algeria to the UK, people deported were still at risk of torture.

Alkarama for Human Rights, 13 July 2007 

Over the last few weeks Alkarama has been contacting UN bodies, specifically the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Working Group on Enforced Disappearance, and the Special Rapporteur on Torture, regarding the brothers Ibrahim and Usamah al-Jadhran, born 1983 and 1985, who were arrested at their home in Ajdabiya (170 km south of Benghazi) on 29 June 2005 by the Libyan Internal Security, and tortured  in the Internal Security Centre at Ajdabiya by two locally well-known officers.

Alkarama for Human Rights has received the following urgent report of a probable violation of freedom of speech:

New York, July 5, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by vague terrorism charges brought on Wednesday against the editor of an opposition news Web site. A state security court charged Abdel Karim al-Khaiwani, former editor of the online newspaper Al-Shoura, which is affiliated with the Popular Forces Union Party, with conspiring with antigovernment rebels.

Arbitrary detention in Egypt has become a routine and very widespread affair, to the point that any person may be detained by administrative decision at ant time under the State of Emergency Law that governs the land.  Alkarama for Human Rights has observed hundreds of cases of arbitrary detention over the past years, and has brought new cases of these violations to the attention of specialised UN bodies such as the Working Group for Arbitrary Detention.