Human Rights

Statement issued by People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) May 16, 2012 was an urgent clarification that the peaceful organisation was not party to any bomb threat but sees that allegation as a ploy by the local authorities to stifle further sit-ins and civil disobedience. There were reports in the media that KKNPP received three letters threatening bomb attacks.

In Quebec there are more than 200,000 students on strike – they are on strike saying that the student fee increase is stopping a lot of them access to college and university education. The students have been on strike for four months. The response of the Quebec government was to this day take Law-78 onto its books, to break the student union and to break the student’s strike.

After deadly clashes on 2 May near the defence ministry, thousands of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria two days later to protest against the army’s hold on power.

This is the fifth such killing if a journalist this year in Somalia – as reported by Reporters Without Borders. Radio journalist Farhan James Abdulle was murdered 2nd May, in the evening, near the Galkayo capital of the north-central region of Mudug. Two unidentified individuals shot him several times in the street as he was returning to his home in the village of Garsor.

Dr Volker Jung, President, Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau, welcomes the co-operation between his church and the Green Crescent organisation and says that it is part of Evangelical understanding of the Christian faith that Protestants should be open to others. Pressenza retells his Internet posted story – copyright © Qantara.de 2012.

A senior UN official has strongly condemned the reported acts of sexual violence committed against Malian women and girls amid renewed fighting. Allegations include “abductions, public rapes and subjecting women and girls to acts of sexual violence in front of family members”.

Geneva-The world, in particular rich industrialized countries, is apparently unwilling to save the lives of 15 million human beings affected by the drought and conflict-related crisis in the Sahel region, with about 1.5 million are children who face the prospect of severe acute malnutrition.

Geneva, 7 April – Within the next five years, for the first time in history, the population of people aged 65 and older will outnumber children under the age of five. The World Health Organization (WHO) also informs that in the middle of the last century there were 14 million people in the world aged 80 years or older.

Geneva, 3 April – The United Nations refugee agency today voiced deep concern about the deteriorating political and security situation in Mali, where thousands of people continue to flee their homes due to fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels in the country’s north.

New York – At any given time across the globe, some 2.4 million people are victims of human trafficking, a crime that generates $32 billion annually, rivalling the profits reaped by the illicit trade in arms and drugs. Every year, thousands of people fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad, with women comprise two thirds of trafficking victims.