Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 6 November

Following reports that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot, had gone missing in Russia during a prison transfer, the Guardian has new information from her family and lawyer suggesting the activist has been transferred to a prison in Siberia, 2,000 miles away from Moscow.  

Tolokonnikova recently released a public letter describing “intolerable” prison conditions and a death threat when she complained. She began a hunger strike in protest on September 23. In the United States, Illinois is on the verge of becoming the 15th state to allow gay marriage.  The Illinois House of Representatives narrowly passed the bill 61 to 54 last night and Governor Pat Quinn has said he will sign it. The United States government should undertake a thorough and impartial investigation into new allegations of US complicity in the killings of 18 men in Afghanistan An article published on November 6, 2013, by Rolling Stone magazine contains new information that US personnel were implicated in the killings in Nerkh district, Wardak province The estimates of trafficking and forced labor are staggering. A recent index measuring “modern-day slavery” put the figure at almost 30 million for a broader category including forced labor, trafficking, and other forms of servitude such as child marriage. The domestic workers’ rights movement has powerful lessons, based no recent successes, for the broader fight against forced labor, trafficking, and servitude.