As paralyzing protests enter their third week in Hong Kong, a split emerges in the movement between a conservative current seeking to keep the goal restricted to narrowly defined "democracy," and a more working-class element also concerned with economic grievances. In… Read moreBlack versus Yellow in Hong Kong protests
Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged that during and since last month's popular uprising in Kazakhstan, security forces have arbitrarily detained protestors, tortured some detainees, and interfered with their access to lawyers. The nationwide protests, which began over of a rise in energy prices, turned bloody after President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered his armed forces to "shoot and kill without warning," leading to the deaths of at least 227 people. HRW says it has received dozens of credible accounts of arbitrary detentions, with some of those arrested being beaten with batons or given electric shocks. Media have reported at least two cases of deaths in custody in Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, apparently as a result of police mistreatment, and one such case in Kyzylorda. Authorities say some 10,000 people have been detained across the country, and 898 are facing criminal charges, including for "terrorism." (Photo: San Francisco protest following 2011 Zhanaozen massacre in Kazakhstan, by Amineshaker/Wikipedia via The Ecologist)
Sh'iite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was convicted of sedition and other charges in Saudi Arabia and sentenced to death—posing greater sectarian tensions in the Gulf states.
Pakistan's Lahore High Court upheld the death sentence for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of "blasphemy" in a case emerging from an argument among farm workers.
