Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 19 September 2014

Bahrain has freed rights activist Maryam al-Khawaja from detention, but she’s still facing trial and a travel ban. Non-governmental organizations, which had been demanding her release, expressed "cautious optimism" at the move. A joint Bahraini and Danish citizen, al-Khawaja was detained when she returned to the country earlier this month to visit her father and fellow activist, Abdullhadi al-Khawaja, who is still in prison and suffering from ill health. 

In Argentina, the first "baby theft" trial has finally begun, decades after the country's military government (1976-83) took some 500 children born to left-wing political prisoners and gave them to other families using false birth certificates. Two doctors and a midwife are charged with kidnapping.

Sierra Leone has ordered a three-day lockdown to confine people to their homes in an effort to control the spread of the Ebola virus, but some activists fear that overly-broad quarantines could actually undermine efforts to contain the epidemic. In neighboring Guinea, the bodies of a health team and three journalists have been found following attacks on the group as they entered a village suspicious of their work. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, has strongly criticized "growing violence" against journalists in Russia. The condemnation follows yesterday's serious attack on a BBC News team investigating the death of Russian soldiers near Ukraine. The militant group Islamic State continues its string of crimes, most recently attacks on civilians following their taking of over 20 villages in northern Syria. A US-led coalition is coordinating a response, which also risks rights abuses if not undertaken with careful consideration. The convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence - also known as, the "Istanbul Convention" - enters into force today. In Malaysia, student leader Adam Adli has been convicted under the country’s sedition law, which Malaysia uses to arbitrarily arrest opposition lawmakers, activists, and critical academics,