Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 23 January 2015

Yemen's president and prime minister have resigned after the takeover of the capital Sanaa by Shia Houthi rebels. The insurgent group from northern Yemen, which prefers to be called Ansar Allah, seems to have successfully engineered a coup with the tacit assent of Yemen’s military, but how will they rule now that they’d gained power? In its recent military operations, Ansar Allah appears to have tried to avoid civilian casualties, but they have failed to respect other important rights obligations, such as the prohibition on child soldiers. The UN Secretary-General has expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where demonstrations in major cities this week have been met with deadly force by the security services. Reporting has been hampered after SMS and internet connections were apparently shut down, but it seems protests have continued in Goma this morning. The United States has given Uzbekistan hundreds of military vehicles. Washington says they are for defensive purposes only, but given Tashkent's use of armored personnel carriers against its own people in the Andijan Massacre, many fear such claims ring hollow. Burundian authorities arrested a prominent journalist just days after his radio station broadcast a series of investigative reports into the September 2014 murder of three elderly Italian nuns in the country. Bob Rugurika's broadcasts included allegations about the involvement of senior intelligence officials in the attack on the convent. A UN commission on the conflict in the Central African Republic has called for the establishment of an international court to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities there. Also, the UN refugee agency launched a major appeal for CAR today. Indonesia's National Police have arrested Bambang Widjojanto, a highly respected human rights activist and commissioner of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), sparking protests online and in the streets of Jakarta. The Chinese judicial system’s failure to release three high-profile activists detained in recent months – public intellectual Guo Yushan, lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, and legal activist Guo Feixiong – reflects progressively harsher suppression of civil society, Human Rights Watch said today. Chile is poised to recognize same-sex unions...