… President Cyril Ramaphosa has publicly rejected the protest groups’ threats and warned against vigilantism, though critics — including Human Rights Watch — have said the police response to earlier attacks this year was inadequate. …
… In January, Human Rights Watch said the 2022 trial had ignored video evidence showing government agents helping to direct the experts toward the ambush site. …
… Human Rights Watch has warned that the legislation could expose not only LGBTQ people but also advocates, parents, teachers, journalists, doctors, donors, and human rights defenders to prosecution. …
… The ban has been sharply criticised by international organisations, including Human Rights Watch, which said it placed LGBTQ+ people’s lives at risk while also “encouraging citizens to surveil and denounce one another”. …
… In its September 2025 publication, Human Rights Watch condemned Ethiopia’s government for arbitrarily arresting journalists and media professionals and called for an end to the harassment of independent journalists. …
… Human Rights Watch also cited the case in this year’s report on Tanzania, pointing to a broader crackdown on opposition figures, activists, and free expression. …
… According to international human rights organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Africa continues to record increasing cases of abuses linked to armed conflicts, restrictions on free expression, violence against women and vulnerable groups, poor healt …
… Human Rights Watch confirmed the severity of this shift in an April report, stating that under Traoré, the junta has carried out a broad crackdown that has fostered “an atmosphere of terror and severely restricted the flow of information.” The government has historically ignored …
… In 2021 – following the arrest of Karasira and others like him – Human Rights Watch called on Rwandan authorities to investigate the “suspicious deaths and disappearances of critics, opposition members, civil society actors, and journalists, and prosecute those responsible”.
… Human Rights Watch said in an April report that under Traoré, the junta has carried out a broad crackdown, fostering “an atmosphere of terror and severely restricting the flow of information.”-AP Follow our WhatsApp Channel now! …
Workers discovered a mass grave in Sri Lanka's Jaffna region while extending a cremation ground in February; by August, archaeologists had excavated skeletal remains of 572 people, including children, believed to be the largest mass grave ever found in Sri Lanka. Families of those who disappeared during the country's civil war hope the discovery will provide answers about what happened to their loved ones.
Workers discovered a mass grave in Sri Lanka's Jaffna region while extending a cremation ground in February; by August, archaeologists had excavated skeletal remains of 572 people, including children, believed to be the largest mass grave ever found in Sri Lanka. Families of those who disappeared during the country's civil war hope the discovery will provide answers about what happened to their loved ones.
Three Hong Kong activists who organised annual vigils commemorating Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown have been sentenced to up to seven years in prison under the city's national security law. Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung were convicted of inciting subversion of state power, while Albert Ho pleaded guilty; the UN human rights office has called for the sentences to be quashed.
A hospital in southern Tunisia received at least 19 bodies of migrants recovered from the sea following a weekend boat sinking that carried members of the same family. The incident triggered violent protests in Ben Guerdane as residents demanded better living conditions and economic development, citing dangerous sea crossings to Europe as a result of years of marginalisation and lack of opportunities.
Tunisia's coastguard recovered eleven bodies after a boat carrying Tunisian migrants sank en route to Italy over the weekend, with three people still missing and one survivor. The boat departed Thursday with 15 people on board, including seven family members and a pregnant woman, and rescue efforts continued with military and civil protection teams backed by helicopters.
An opinion piece argues that Ghana should establish Regional Tribunals despite past military-era tribunals committing human rights violations, saying proper constitutional safeguards can prevent such abuses. The author contends that historical concerns, while understandable, should not prevent Ghana from using an institution recognised by the Constitution if adequately regulated.
Yonas Kedir, editor-in-chief of The Addis Standard, was allegedly abducted and assaulted by security forces last Saturday and held for 24 hours, according to the news outlet's owner. Rights groups say the incident is part of a pattern of targeting independent media in Ethiopia.
Death row inmates held in Saudi Arabian prisons, mostly Ethiopians facing execution for drug-smuggling, have contacted the BBC from their cells seeking assistance. In the first seven months of this year, 17 Ethiopians have been executed—the highest number among non-Saudis.
New Bell, a notorious prison in Douala, Cameroon, hosts Jail Time Records, an on-site music studio and label founded by former inmate Steve Happi that has helped produce music videos and concerts featuring prisoners, with some gaining international audiences across South Africa, the US, and Argentina.
Ethiopian police have arrested 17 suspects, including alleged ringleader Mohammed Tahir, in connection with a multi-million-dollar international human trafficking ring accused of transporting over 40,000 Ethiopians to Saudi Arabia and collecting more than 1 billion Ethiopian birr from victims through extortion, abuse, and torture in Yemen detention warehouses.
A Sudanese court has issued death sentences against Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and fifteen other high-ranking commanders, finding them guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide related to the conflict in West Darfur. The proceedings, conducted in absentia, cited the June 2023 assassination of state governor Khamis Abbakar and deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure including residential areas, schools, and houses of worship.
A 40-year-old Ghanaian national was shot dead in Cape Town on Monday amid South Africa's escalating xenophobic demonstrations, prompting Ghana's Foreign Affairs Ministry to lodge a formal diplomatic protest and demand investigation and prosecution.
A Congolese High Military Court sentenced Colonel Jean de Dieu Mambweni to death for orchestrating the 2017 killings of two UN experts investigating mass deaths in the Kasai region. The sentence will effectively become life imprisonment, as Congo has not carried out executions since 2003.
An opinion piece argues that Ghana's LGBTQ debate reflects deeper shifts in society, and warns that the real danger is not moral disagreement but the normalization of suspicion—citizens surveilling one another and the state treating difference as a threat.
Ghana's Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill criminalises homosexuality and LGBTQ+ advocacy, with penalties of up to three years' imprisonment for identifying as LGBTQ+ and up to ten years for promoting LGBTQ+ activities. The legislation also requires citizens to report suspected violations to police and forces a reckoning over the nation's democratic identity, fiscal stability, and international partnerships.
Ethiopia's general election takes place on Monday as conflict prevents many people from voting, with the entire northern Tigray region excluded from the poll due to its recovery from a civil war that ended in 2022. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Prosperity Party is expected to win, with the winning party needing at least 274 of 547 parliamentary seats to form the next government.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Tanzanian senior assistant commissioner of police Faustine Jackson Mafwele over his alleged involvement in torture and sexual assault of East African rights activists, including the detention and abuse of Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire in May last year.
Vice-Chairman of Parliament's Human Rights Committee Dr. Kingsley Agyemang has called on African countries to strengthen human rights education to reduce violations across the continent. He argued that human rights education should encompass not only political freedoms but also access to healthcare, safe infrastructure, and basic living conditions.
Reporters Without Borders reports that Burkina Faso's military junta uses forced military conscription as a cover for secretly detaining and abusing dissidents, including investigative journalist Atiana Serge Oulon, who was seized from his home in June 2024 and whose location remains unknown to his family.
Rwandan singer Aimable Karasira died at Nyarugenge Hospital as he was being released from prison in Kigali; the Rwanda Correctional Service attributed his death to an overdose of prescription medication, though government critics have questioned the circumstances and called for an independent investigation.
Reporters Without Borders said Burkina Faso's military junta secretly held and abused investigative journalist Atiana Serge Oulon and up to 40 others in a makeshift detention facility in Ouagadougou, contradicting the government's claim that Oulon was conscripted into military service. The advocacy group said detainees reported abuse including sleeping on bare floors and being beaten by guards.