Veto Victory in Poland, Following Massive Protests: HRW Daily Brief

Very good news from Poland, where president Andrzej Duda has announced that he is vetoing controversial laws that would jeopardize the rule of law in his country. The member state of the European Union saw mass protests in the past week, as parliament passed the laws. In Turkey, seventeen journalists and managers of the newspaper Cumhuriyet have been put on trial on charges of aiding a terrorist organisation. If found guilty this week, they could face sentences of up to 43 years in jail. Human Rights Watch has issued a multimedia report that shows the scale and brutality of violent repression of protests by security forces in Venezuela in the past months. "Cruel, nonsensical, violates international law." HRW's Australia director Elaine Pearson explains what is wrong with Australia's obstruction of family reunification for refugees. Entire families stretched across four countries are now forcibly separated: parents from children, wives from husbands, sisters from brothers, because of the Gulf crisis... The army in Nigeria has blamed an 'unexpected gathering of homeless people' for an air strike that killed 112 civilians in a camp for people who fled the Boko Haram conflict. A bogus claim, says Mausi Segun, executive director of HRW's Africa division. Vietnam should immediately release rights activist Tran Thi Nga. She was arrested on January 21 for “conducting propaganda against the state” and is set to face trial on Tuesday. The attacks against Tran Thi Nga are part of a broader pattern of violent assaults against rights campaigners across Vietnam.