Human Rights Watch writes to urge President Köhler to use his forthcoming visit to Nigeria to raise specific human rights concerns with President Umaru Yar'Adua and his administration. Serious problems include rampant government corruption and mismanagement that undermine the realization of the right to basic healthcare and education; political and intercommunal violence fomented by government officials and politicians; and widespread use of extrajudicial executions, torture, and extortion by state security forces.

Human Rights Watch would like to take the opportunity of your upcoming visit to Russia to urge you to raise two priority human rights concerns: Russia’s implementation of European Court of Human Rights judgments on abuses in Chechnya and Russian government curbs on independent civil society activism.

Your forthcoming trip to Turkmenistan will be a key opportunity to articulate European values and expectations for engagement in Turkmenistan at a time when the government is ending the self-imposed international isolation of the Niazov era.

We write to ask you to use the opportunities offered by your visits to Uganda and Rwanda to contribute, as Germany has so often done in the past, to the promotion of respect for human rights and justice for serious crimes under international law.

We write to express our profound concern about the detention by Czech authorities of Omonillo Maksudov and Zohid Mirzaev, both recognized refugees from Uzbekistan residing in Germany. We understand that Czech border police arrested Maksudov and Mirzaev pursuant to an Interpol warrant based on an extradition request posted by the Uzbek government, following their entry into the Czech Republic on July 2.

Herrn
Dr. Albert Schmid
Präsident des Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge
90343 Nürnberg

Dear Dr. Schmid:

We are writing today to ask for your support on behalf of Annadurdy Khajiev, a Turkmen refugee who was granted humanitarian status in Bulgaria in 2004 and who is currently at risk of extradition to Turkmenistan. We strongly believe that this case needs your urgent attention and intervention and that because of Germany’s presidency of the European Union you are well-positioned to raise this case with the Bulgarian government.

Human Rights Watch commends the collective call by the European Union to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center that was made at the E.U.-U.S. summit last month.