Marry-Your-Rapist Law Repealed in Palestine: Daily Brief

Palestine repeals 'Marry-Your-Rapist' law; Bangladesh's trend of arresting government critics; Russia shutters website raising HIV awareness; buying Mum jewelry for Mothers Day?; Britain's failure to push Burma on Rohingya crisis; Indonesia's growing anti-LGBT intolerance, and "killer" attitudes in the Philippines

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has repealed a law that allowed convicted rapists to avoid imprisonment if they married their victims. This is good news, and Palestine has more to do when it comes to women's rights. 

Scores of people have been arrested over the past five years in Bangladesh for criticizing the government, political leaders, and others on Facebook, as well as in blogs, online newspapers, or other social media.

Russia has taken steps to shutter ParniPlus, a website raising awareness about the exploding HIV epidemic, marking at least the eighth case of outright censorship under Russia’s 2013 federal “gay propaganda” law.

Sunday is Mother’s Day in many countries, an opportunity for many to give mum a piece of jewelry. But do you know where that gold is coming from? 

Over the last nine months some 700,000 ethnic Rohingya in Burma have been driven from their homes and across the border into Bangladesh by the Burmese military. The international response has been woefully inadequate and Britain, which has traditionally led on Burma on the UN Security Council, carries a particular responsibility for this failure. 

The Indonesian government’s failure to address growing intolerance for religious minorities and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has drawn renewed criticism from Southeast Asian lawmakers.

The Philippines’ new Bureau of Corrections Director Ronald Dela Rosa has a killer attitude toward his new job. Literally. This week he exhorted prison guards at Manila’s New Bilibid Prison to summarily execute imprisoned “drug lords.”

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