Bahrain upholds Nabeel Rajab's unjust prison term; Kenyan police threaten activists; will leaders who met Saudi's new Crown Prince speak out on arrests of women activists?; fears for Azerbaijani lawyer arrested by plainclothes police; how China has turned Xinjiang region into "police state like no other"; five myths about the refugee crisis; US-led coalition's "war of annihilation" in Syria's Raqqa; Dubai arrests 200 beggars; and UN human rights expert blasts extreme poverty in the US... 

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There is dismay and anger with news that the prominent Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab has had his five-year prison sentence upheld by an appeals court in Manama. Rajab, who's effectively been jailed for nothing more than peacefully expressing his views, should be exonerated and freed immediately

Kenyan officials and police officers have been threatening activists who are trying to get justice for police killings and other serious abuses during the 2017 elections.

Saudi Arabia is set to reverse the ban on women driving in the Kingdom at the end of the month, but several women right's activists - who'd campaigned to end the ban - remain imprisoned. Leaders who met Saudi's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on his recent tour of Europe and the US should speak out. 

There is alarm in Azerbaijan, where a lawyer - who'd just returned from the US - has been arrested in the street in broad daylight by plainclothes police, bundled into a car, and taken away to an unknown destination. Authorities have since confirmed that Emin Aslan is being held by the Ministry of Interior's notorious Organized Crimes Unit, but are denying him access to a lawyer. 

An Economist article says that China has turned Xinjiang province "into a police state like no other", where "totalitarian determination and modern technology have produced a massive abuse of human rights". 

Thought you knew a thing or two about the refugee crisis? Turns out you need to think again. 

In the process of trying to free it from the grips of ISIS, the Syrian city of Raqqa has been "left in ruins and civilians devastated" after the US-led coalition's "war of annihilation", says Amnesty International in a new report

More than 200 people have been arrested for begging in UAE's largest city, Dubai, since the start of Ramadan, authorities there have confirmed. 

And staying with the theme of poverty, a UN human rights expert has blasted the yawning gap between rich and poor in the United States, insisting in a new report that the world’s richest country “is now moving full steam ahead to make itself even more unequal."

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