Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 26 May 2014

Amid deadly violence in the east of the country, Ukraine's national election has apparently brought billionaire Petro Poroshenko to the presidency. Eastern insurgents have been terrorizing election officials, and an Italian photojournalist and his interpreter, a respected rights campaigner, have been killed in Slavyansk. European Parliamentary elections brought gains for extreme right-wing and anti-immigration parties in some member states. Turnout was quite low in many countries. Traffickers in Yemen hold African migrants in detention camps, torturing them to extort payment from their families, with the complicity of local officials, according to a new report.  Human rights are in "free fall" in Thailand after last week's coup. International TV broadcasts and websites of some media and NGOs (including HRW) have been blocked. Armed soldiers raided the Bangkok house of human rights defender Sukanya Prueksakasemsuk and arrested her and her son, Panitan Prueksakasemsuk. Iran’s judiciary is pushing a case against seven young people for participating in a video showing them dancing to "Happy", the international hit song by Pharrell Williams. Authorities released six of the seven on bail on 21 May, the day after they showed the suspects on television “confessing” and expressing remorse for their roles in the video, but the charges remain. There have been more deadly attacks in Nigeria's northeast, apparently by the extremist group Boko Haram, whose campaign of destruction has caused a humanitarian crisis. Nearly 300 schoolgirls remain hostages of the militants, and in the security vacuum in part caused by abusive military forces, a growing vigilante movement threatens more violence.