Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 4 April 2016

EU-Turkey dirty deal in action; Syria's besieged areas; conflict mounts in Nagorno-Karabakh; abuses by Venezuela security forces; DRC military jailing kids; Vietnam convicts bloggers & activists; lawyers jailed in China; and the corruption of rights-abusing authoritarians (among others) exposed.

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"The biggest ever leak of confidential documents" has exposed a network of corruption and money laundering by a number of rights-abusing authoritarian leaders and other elites through offshore services. The so-called "Panama Papers" include a "US$ 2 billion trail that leads to Vladimir Putin."
Senegal has made an important humanitarian gesture in agreeing to resettle two Libyan nationals being held at Guantanamo Bay. Both men were held for nearly 14 years without charge or trial but now have a chance to start a new life. President Obama promised to close the detention facility but despite some recent progress, 89 people remain detained.
Today, New York State took a vital step toward supporting working families after the governor signed into law a bill that establishes a paid family leave program. The United States has no federal paid family leave, and in the absence of one, individual states are beginning to adopt their own programs. Workers no longer need to choose between their jobs and their families.
Farmers are the victims in South Africa's War on Drugs. Marijuana is illegal in South Africa, but many subsistence farmers grow it out of economic necessity. The government's response has been indiscriminate spraying with banned chemicals that aim to kill the plants but end up harming the environment and health of the villages subjected to it.
From earlier today: The deeply flawed EU-Turkey deal on migrants and refugees started to take effect on the ground today, with boats leaving Greece to bring people to Turkey. Authorities say these initial transfers only include those who are "economic migrants" and people who chose not to apply for asylum.

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