Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 27 October 2014

Women and girls abducted by the Islamist group Boko Haram are being forced to marry, convert, and endure physical and psychological abuse, forced labor, and rape in captivity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Boko Haram militants are accused of kidnapping about 30 children in the north-east of Nigeria as recently as last week, despite government claims of a truce. The group has abducted over 500 women and girls since 2009. In Egypt, a court has sentenced 23 activists, including several prominent civil rights campaigners, to three years in jail for breaching a new protest law introduced by the Sisi government. The law allows Egyptian authorities broad powers to detain any 'unregistered' gathering of 10 people or more. Iran's government has come under intense international pressure following the execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari. The 26-years-old was hanged in Tehran on Saturday despite widespread condemnation from human rights groups who claimed she had not had access to a fair trial. Iran has already executed over 250 people since the beginning of the year. Human Rights Watch calls on Bahraini authorities to drop all criminal charges against two prominent human rights activists and immediately release them. So far only the US and Norway have made explicit calls for their release. The silence from other governments is deafening. Protesters in Hungary have demanded that a law to tax internet use be scrapped. Thousands marched in the capital, Budapest, against what it called 'anti-democratic' legislation that it says will hit the poor and limit freedom of speech in the increasingly authoritarian country. Rwanda has suspended all BBC Gahuza radio broadcasts with immediate effect because of a documentary questioning official accounts of the 1994 genocide. MPs voted to ban the BBC and charge the documentary-makers with genocidal denial, a crime in the country.