Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 5 March 2015

India’s government is coming under fire for attempting to suppress a BBC documentary on gang-rape violence. The documentary, India’s Daughter, aired ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday and focuses on the 2012 rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl, an event that incited the Indian public to protest the growing problem of sexual violence in the country. An anti-gay bill in Kyrgyzstan threatens penalties on anyone deemed to be spreading “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” The bill puts at risk not only Kyrgyzstan’s LGBT community, but also journalists and those working in HIV prevention and health services. Two German men have been sentenced in Singapore to nine months in prison and caning for spray-painting graffiti on a train. Caning amounts to the use of torture for a misdemeanor crime. Cambodia regularly returns asylum seekers from neighboring countries, citing its neutral stance as preclusion to accepting refugees. So why has the Cambodian government accepted a $35 million deal to take refugees sent by Australia? Pakistan is poised to execute a man who was 16-years-old at the time of his sentencing. Muhammad Afzal was convicted in ananti-terrorism court for committing murder during a robbery in 1999. Pakistan should not execute a child offender, illegal under international law, regardless of the charges. The last known Ebola victim in Liberia has left the treatment facility, having been cleared of symptoms. With the spread of the virus contained, the large international response that the outbreak generated should go towards preventing another of its kind.