Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 24 November 2014

Ghoncheh Ghavami, arrested in Iran after protesting a ban on women attending volleyball matches, has reportedly been released on bail, but the discriminatory prohibition remains... Also, judicial authorities in Iran have continued their crackdown on free expression... Saudi authorities are expanding their own crackdown on people who peacefully criticize the government on the Internet. Labor ministers from Gulf and Asian countries meeting this week have an opportunity to improve labor law protection, reform abusive immigration policies, and increase dialogue with trade unions and nongovernmental groups, 90 human rights organizations and unions said today. Millions of contract workers from Asia and Africa, including an estimated 2.4 million domestic workers in the Gulf, are subject to a wide range of abuses, including unpaid wages, confiscation of passports, physical abuse, and forced labor. Jordanian authorities have forcibly deported vulnerable Syrian refugees back to Syria in violation of Jordan’s international obligations. The UN General Assembly's human rights committee has called on Burma (Myanmar) to grant citizenship to its Rohingya Muslim community, who have been much persecuted in recent years, including being the target of ethnic cleansing. An attack on a bus in Kenya by the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab killed over two dozen people on Saturday. The Kenyan military responded on Sunday, killing what they say were 100 Shabab militants linked to the bus attack. Unidentified gunmen have killed a key witness of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre and wounded his companion and fellow witness as they were traveling to meet with prosecutors. Both men had been employees of the powerful Ampatuan family, whose patriarchs are chief suspects in the 2009 killings, allegedly by the family’s “private army” that left 58 people dead. Two years after the devastating fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory in Savar, outside the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, only two out of 16 firms linked to the factory are believed to have paid any meaningful amount of compensation to the victims. At least 112 workers died in the fire, which took place in the same industrial town where five months later the Rana Plaza building collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers. Gambia’s recent passage of a homophobic law puts the already persecuted lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community at even greater risk of abuse, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said.