Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 15 January 2015

What actually happened when terrorist group Boko Haram attacked the town of Baga, in northeastern Nigeria, earlier this month? While exact figures of the death toll and extent of damage remain unknown, new evidence from satellite imagery offers the clearest picture yet of the incredible damage caused by the horrific attack. Saudi Arabia’s harsh sentence for blogger Raif Badawi – 1,000 lashes – has continued to draw criticism from international observers, with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights today calling the punishment “cruel and inhuman.” Western governments should call forSaudi Arabia’s flagrant rights violations to end. Tajikistan has also struck a blow to free expression, sentencing a prominent human rights lawyer to nine years in prison in a politically motivated trial. Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, imprisoned in Iran since July for unknown reasons, has finally been formally charged and will go to trial, though it is unclear what charges he faces. Hopes are high that Ukraine finally has a government that can learn from the past to foster needed reforms. But some of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s comments last week during a visit to Berlin raise questions about whether the government is willing to admit its own errors.