Latest Human Rights Watch News
LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr issues warning to users in Egypt
CAIRO (AP) — A popular gay social networking application said Friday that it is issuing a warning to its users in Egypt, as police impersonate community members to target LGBTQ+ individuals. Users in Egypt will see the following warning appear in Arabic and English when they open...
Cambodian court charges activists with insulting king online
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Two anti-government activists in Cambodia were charged in court Wednesday with insulting the king and incitement to commit a felony for comments they made on social media about Prime Minister Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihamoni. Yim Sinorn and Hun Kosal,...
Uganda's legislature passes harsh new anti-LGBTQ bill
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Ugandan lawmakers passed a bill prescribing jail terms of up to 10 years for offenses related to same-sex relations, responding to popular sentiment but piling more pressure on the East African country’s LGBTQ community. The bill was passed late Tuesday...
Rights group says Lebanon electricity crisis deepens poverty
BEIRUT (AP) — Since the collapse of Lebanon’s state power grid, many middle and working class families have been forced to spend most of their monthly income to pay shady neighborhood businessmen running private generators. Still, they go without electricity for nearly half the...
Thai man gets 2-year term for calendar said to mock king
BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai man was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for selling calendars featuring satirical cartoons of yellow ducks that a court said mocked the country’s monarch, a legal aid group said. Bangkok’s Criminal Court ruled that the calendar for 2021 containing...
Disgraced ex-Haitian soccer president announces he's back
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s former soccer federation president whose lifetime ban from the sport over sexual abuse allegations was overturned last month announced Wednesday that he is reclaiming his position. Yves Jean-Bart’s defiant announcement could lead to a...
NYC to pay millions over police 'kettling' at Floyd protest
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City has agreed to pay several million dollars to settle a lawsuit brought by protesters who say they were assaulted, abused and trapped by police using a technique known as “kettling” at a demonstration in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. In court...
Activists call on Trinidad to repatriate citizens in Syria
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on Trinidad & Tobago to repatriate more than 90 of its citizens who have been detained as Islamic State suspects and family members in war-torn Syria, noting that at least 56 of them are children. Some of them...
Rights group: Mideast governments target LGBTQ people online
BEIRUT (AP) — Security agencies and government officials in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been using social media platforms and mobile dating apps to crack down on LGBTQ people, a rights group said Tuesday. The findings of a new report by Human Rights...
Human Rights Watch condemns UK, US actions on Chagos Islands
LONDON (AP) — Britain and the United States committed crimes against humanity when they forced the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to leave their homes five decades ago to make way for a U.S. Navy base, a rights group charged Wednesday, calling on the two governments to let the...
