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/ 20 October 2007
The military regime in Burma is still holding up to 2 500 people in prisons and labour camps around the country, and continues to arrest suspected dissidents, the British government claimed on Friday. The crackdown on the protest movement has only served to make Burma more unstable, a senior British diplomat said.
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/ 18 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta on Thursday night announced the formation of a Constitution Drafting Commission, another step in the government’s ”road map” to democracy that is supposed to lead to free elections some time in the future. The move came after the junta brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations last month.
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/ 17 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta blamed Buddhist monks Wednesday for last month’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests, as it admitted nearly 3 000 people had been detained over the rallies. Troops and police quelled the protests in late September, leaving at least 13 dead and drawing international condemnation.
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/ 14 October 2007
A total of six activists were rounded up by Burmese authorities in a raid on a safe house over the weekend, Amnesty International said on Sunday, as the junta continued to hunt for protest leaders. ”There is no information on where they are being detained,” the group said in a statement.
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/ 10 October 2007
Sudan’s army has denied attacking the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a peace deal with Khartoum, saying tribal clashes were to blame for the fighting that killed 45 people in Muhajiriya town. The Sudan Liberation Army, led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, was the only one of three negotiating rebel factions to sign the May 2006 deal and become part of government.
Protests against Burma’s bloody crackdown on dissenters took place in cities around the world on Saturday, with thousands demonstrating in London and smaller gatherings held in Sydney, Stockholm, Bangkok, Paris and elsewhere. The coordinated displays of public condemnation followed the violent crackdown by Burma’s junta on thousands of activists in late September.
The use of lethal injections in the United States has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: ”It don’t work,” a report by Amnesty International said on Thursday.
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/ 29 September 2007
Rwanda joined other countries on Friday in appealing for a global moratorium on executions, saying that if its government could abolish the death penalty while perpetrators of the 1994 genocide still await sentences, no country should use it. About 500 000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were massacred in 100 days of frenzied killing led by radical Hutus.
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/ 16 September 2007
A real and unprecedented opportunity for peace in Darfur is emerging after breakthrough talks between Britain and Khartoum this week, according to the United Kingdom’s key envoy to the region, Mark Malloch Brown. A new optimism is building ahead of next month’s crucial talks between 13 rebel factions and the Sudanese government in Libya.
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/ 15 September 2007
Rights groups on Saturday accused Egypt of curbing press freedom after a Cairo court this week sentenced four editors each to one year in prison for criticising the president. ”Egypt continues to imprison journalists and editors who publish stories critical of President Hosni Mubarak and other high officials,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
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/ 11 September 2007
Angolan police still violate human rights ranging from brutal slum clearance to torture, with no investigation or disciplinary action, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday. The report finds that the abuse of power and failure to bring perpetrators of these violations to justice goes on unhindered.
Why have not very many people heard of Nanda Soobben? Niren Tolsi reports.