Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 7 August

In Russia, local authorities have harassed numerous activists and journalists who had expressed concerns about preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, now only six months away. This follows several other important human rights issues around the games, including revelations of abuse and exploitation of migrant workers, the targeting of human rights groups, and worries about how the government's new law against "gay propaganda" might apply to athletes and visitors to the games.
Dispatches: With US-Russia relations getting increasingly tense on a range of issues, it comes as little surprise that President Obama postponed his bilateral summit with President Putin. The White House statement specifically mentioned the asylum case of Edward Snowden, and what HRW has reported as an unprecedented crackdown on civil society in the post-Soviet era.  Syria: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Amnesty International published shocking before and after satellite imagery illustrating the vast destruction of Aleppo, the country's largetst city. In Lebanon and Jordan, Syrian refugees remain vulnerable. It's crucial for UN member states to fund the $2 billion-plus gap between needs and resources.  The outpouring of refugees includes a sharp increase in wounded and amputees. Dispatches: This week fresh violence erupted against some of Indonesia’s religious minorities.  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s government has previously shown an unwillingness to respond to such attacks. Dispatches: In The Philippines, visitors can expect long airport delays after peacefully protesting human rights violations.  In the ongoing surveillance debate, internet researcher Cynthia Wong notes it is untenable for governments to argue that the right to privacy stops at their border while surveillance is borderless. Mass protests in Tunisia have demanded the resignation of the Islamist-led government and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. The latter demand seems to have been at least partially met with the suspension of the body charged with drafting a new constitution, but some ruling party officials have hit back at that decision, branding it a "coup". Yesterday's protest was the biggest since thousands gathered in the street after the killing of prominent opposition figure Mohamed Brahimi on July 27 -- an event associated with police violence.