Enough Is Enough in Venezuela: Daily Brief

Latin music star Ricardo Montaner and Human Rights Watch have launched a new campaign calling on Latin Americans and their governments to speak out and urge President Nicolás Maduro’s government to recognize and tackle the devastating human rights and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. Join us! Russia keeps backing the Assad regime in Syria despite extensive evidence of its repeated use of chemical weapons. The experts weigh in... Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has won a second term (in an election that was clearly neither free nor fair). So, will he now start to prioritize reforms to end serious human rights violations in the country? Speaking of fake elections in abusive dictatorships, Azerbaijan heads to the polls tomorrow... Hungary is not a dictatorship yet, but its ruling party is doing what it can to get there. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has slammed Sunday's elections, saying that, "intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing constricted the space for genuine political debate, hindering voters’ ability to make a fully-informed choice." Now, the government is already showing signs of deepening its assault on independent groups and critics. 200 nongovernmental organizations from around the world are calling on South Korea to press for human rights issues to be included in all discussions with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), including in the agenda of the summit between South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for 27 April. Iranian authorities apparently feel so threatened by human rights defenders that they imprison them for years. They should immediately release Golrokh Iraee, a human rights defender hospitalized in Tehran. A bill before the Honduran Congress would severely harm free speech by compelling companies providing internet services to censor content. A new VICE report has drawn attention to a suspected execution room inside the basement of a collapsed building in Mosul, Iraq, in a part of the city where ISIS made a last stand. But are bodies now being removed from the scene of a potential war crime?