Russians are “now observing the end of an epoch that began with Gorbachev’s perestroika,” says a prominent analyst.
“These are simply the last remnants of freedom, freedom of scholarship and freedom of information,” said Lev D. Gudkov (above), the director …
Laws on blasphemy and apostasy are being used to silence political dissent and suppress government critics, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual report, which documents a pronounced decline in religious liberty that has generated growing religious intolerance and …
Russia’s NGO law branding overseas-funded groups as foreign agents is impeding the country’s civil society development, says a former Finance Minister.
“The law on NGOs as foreign agents that the Duma has passed is a clear restriction of …
Afghanistan’s parliament has rejected a law banning violence against women in “a severe blow to progress made in women’s rights in the conservative Muslim country since the Islamist Taliban was toppled over a decade ago,” Reuters reports:
President Hamid …
“Amid an intensifying crackdown on nongovernmental groups that receive foreign funding, Indian activists are accusing the government of stifling their right to dissent in the world’s largest democracy,” The Washington Post’s Rama Lakshmi, reports from New Delhi:
India …
Libya’s worst political crisis since the 2011 revolution “is precisely the time for greater engagement….not only with Libya’s beleaguered government but also with its increasingly assertive civil society,” says a prominent analyst.
After armed militias recently laid siege to government …
The Kremlin’s efforts to undermine the democratic opposition and cultivate anti-American sentiment are the real factors behind the arrest of alleged CIA spy Ryan Fogle, analysts suggest.
“Public humiliations of hapless foreign spies were a staple of the Soviet …
“Together, the EU and the US account for around half of global GDP and almost two-thirds of global military spending,” say two leading rights advocates. “A coordinated, transatlantic approach to human rights would mean the world’s rising authoritarian powers could …
State-controlled media reveled in embarrassing the U.S. over an alleged attempt to recruit a Russian intelligence agent, highlighting the summoning of U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul (right) to the Russian Foreign Ministry to receive a formal protest.
“In the Russian elite …
A group offering support to Russians suffering from cystic fibrosis is one of hundreds of civil society groups to have been subject to official warnings and intrusive inspections under the Kremlin’s “foreign agents” law, a leading human rights group …