When Colombians on Sunday elected their first leftist president ever, they also voted for their country’s first Black vice-president. Francia Marquez, a Black single mother who worked as a maid before challenging international mining interests as a fiery environmentalist, now becomes Colombia’s first Black female vice-president. Her victory marks a turning point in a country plagued by
A Vietnamese journalist is in failing health after serving two years of a prison sentence for criticizing the country’s one-party communist government, RFA has learned. Prison authorities have rejected requests he be allowed to seek medical treatment outside his jail. Le Huu Minh Tuan, a member of the Vietnam Independent Journalists’ Association, was arrested on
Issued on: 04/06/2022 – 08:24 A protester was shot dead in the Sudanese capital Friday, medics said, as UN human rights expert Adama Dieng urged authorities to “refrain from use of excessive force” against demonstrators. Thousands took to the streets in Khartoum and other cities to demand justice for scores of pro-democracy protesters killed during
Issued on: 29/05/2022 – 08:06 The United States expressed concern on Saturday over China’s “efforts to restrict and manipulate” the UN human rights chief’s visit to the Xinjiang region where Beijing is accused of detaining over a million people in indoctrination camps. Michelle Bachelet’s long-planned trip this week took her to the far-western Xinjiang region,
The U.N.’s human rights chief on Monday will begin a six-day official visit to China, including to the far-western Xinjiang region where widespread abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities at the hands of Chinese authorities are said to have occurred. The trip is the culmination of years of effort by exiled Uyghurs to draw
Authorities in Kashgar allegedly paid Muslim Uyghur men to dance outside the most famous mosque in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region to celebrate the end of Ramadan, a performance that was filmed and released by state media ahead of an anticipated visit by the United Nations human rights chief later this month. Kashgar locals told RFA
Issued on: 27/04/2022 – 22:08 Mali’s media regulator on Wednesday ordered the definitive suspension of FRANCE 24 television and RFI radio in the country, a month after the country’s ruling military junta accused the news organisations of reporting “false allegations” of abuse by the Malian army. The broadcasters’ parent company France Médias Monde said it
Issued on: 22/04/2022 – 18:11 One of Turkey’s most famous prisoners made his final appeal for freedom on Friday, at the culmination of a years-long trial that has come to define Ankara’s tense ties with Western allies in the wake of a failed 2016 coup. Paris-born activist and philanthropist Osman Kavala was a relative unknown
The 12-year old Uyghur girl, who now lives in the U.S. state of Virginia, was about seven years old and starting to absorb a bit more knowledge when she first learned about the repression of Uyghurs in their homeland northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. As she got older, her mother would tell her more and more
The World Banks economic sector lending arm provided nearly half a billion dollars to 4 Chinese companies accused of using Uyghur forced labor in Chinas far-western Xinjiang area, according to an investigative report released Thursday. The International Financial Corporation (IFC) has a number of investments in the region, where mainly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic
