Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 31 March 2015

In an historic election, Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has been defeated by opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari, marking the first time in the country's history that an incumbent has lost a national election. Next, the government should fulfill a smooth democratic transition. The Azerbaijani government yesterday refused to allow Human Rights Watch researcher Giorgi Gogia into the country, instead confiscating his passport and holding him in the airport for 31 hours before deporting him earlier today. But Gogia fared better than the journalists and activists imprisoned there -- an odd behavior for the country selected to host the 2015 European Games. Nearby Kyrgyzstan has also been engaged in harassing human rights defenders, this time with its security service searching the offices of a human right organization and the homes of two of the organization's lawyers. While the US state of Indiana grapples with the negative response to its discriminatory "religious freedom" bill, which could allow people to discriminate against the LGBT community on religious grounds, it turns out that 15 states had similar bills introduced this year. From earlier today: Violence is continuing in Yemen, with air strikes by a Saudi-led Arab coalition against Houthi rebels continuing into their fifth night. An air strike has also reportedly killed at least 40 people at a refugee camp in the north-west of the country, although there are conflicting reports about who's to blame for the huge explosion. There are also growing fears that the Arab coalition may serve only to further polarize Yemen.