How China's one-child policy has fuelled a "bride" trafficking crisis from Myanmar; Saudi's women charged for their peaceful activism; Christchurch mosques attack shows stirring up hatred of "foreigners" is dangerous; Nicaragua crackdown prompts calls for UN probe; and an Iranian lawyer's draconian prison sentence... 

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The Myanmar and Chinese governments have failed to stem the trafficking of women and girls from Myanmar as “brides” to families in China, HRW said in a new report today.  Trafficking survivors said they were promised jobs in China but had instead been 'sold' for the equivalent of US$3,000 to $13,000 to Chinese families. Once in China, they were typically locked in a room and raped so they would become pregnant.

Saudi Arabia’s charges against several women’s rights defenders appear "almost entirely related" to their human rights activities, HRW says. Saudi Arabia opened 11 individual trials of prominent women's rights activists earlier this month, but most of the charges relate to peaceful human rights work. 

The attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, tells us that the short-term political gain in stirring up fear and anxieties around foreigners is not just wrong, but dangerous

The brutal crackdown in Nicaragua has prompted regional players to call for intervention by the UN Human Rights Council – the first-ever resolution on Nicaragua.

And finally, the prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh’s draconian sentence for her peaceful activism shows the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary courts to human rights work. 

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