The seminar, organized by Projekthaus Potsdam Babelsberg (Germany), was held from 3 to 12 September, 2011 in Potsdam. This is the second stage of the pilot program and a logical continuation of the training course "satire and humor against contemporary fascism”, which took place in Voronezh (11/28-12/05 2010).

The activists of anti-fascist groups and human rights organizations, young artists and directors met to share their experience in working with humor and satire against authoritarian ideologies. The event was held in the format of open space, where each participant was responsible for a thematic block and its moderation.

On September 5, human rights and civil society activists came to the Embassies of Belarus in six countries to demand that Belarusian authorities release human rights activist Ales Bialiatsky. The participants of the action at the Moscow Embassy had prepared a video message.

11 April, 2011. Leading civil society organizations from Central and Eastern Europe and other countries of the OSCE region welcome launch of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism towards Belarus. An official letter sent by representatives of governments of 14 OSCE participating states to the representative of Belarus to the OSCE[1] says: ”Our view is that  a particularly serious threat to the fulfillment of the provisions of the OSCE human dimension has arisen in Belarus”. The authors of the letter insist on establishment, in accordance with the OSCE Moscow Mechanism, of a mission of independent observers to study the situation within the country after 19 December 2010.

The city court of Orsha settled the case of “disorderly conduct” in which Alexander Lashmankin was accused – a Russian journalist, editor of the news agency “Freedom”, which received official accreditation from the Belarusian Foreign Ministry. The judge Ina Kokhav found the arguments of the charges convincing enough and sentenced him to three days of administrative arrest. The jailed journalist went on hunger strike.

Russian human rights defenders have identified 111 incidents of restricted access to the Internet and persecution of Internet users in the period January 2008 – May 2011. While for the whole of 2008 only 12 incidents were recorded, for the first five months of 2011 there have already been 23. For more information and a link to the report (in Russian and English versions) see below.

Today in Dublin Mary Robinson, president of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, presented the annual Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk to the Joint Mobile Group of the Russian Federation for their outstanding work investigating torture and disappearances in Chechnya despite the serious risks.

Further Information

The International Secretariat of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has received new information on the following situation in the Republic of Moldova/ Region of Transnistria.

New information
The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by a reliable source and Antenna International, a member organisation of OMCT SOS-Torture Network, that Mr.

The Promo-LEX Association, a Non-Governmental and apolitical Organization, which aims to promote democracy and human rights, welcomes the efforts and the results achieved by the constitutional authorities of Chisinau in the release of both The Mayor of Corjova and a Local Councilor, Valeriul Mitul and Iurie Cotofan.

The South Caucasus Network of Human Rights Defenders have sent a statement to the Azerbaijani authroities on 10 March 2011 to condemn the recent interrogation of human rights defenders and last week arrests of youth activists and bloggers in Azerbaijan.
 
The statements calls upon the authorities to stop the repression of the civil society, and immediately release the five detained youth activists and  urges the  to respect freedom of expression and assembly of the people in Azerbaijan. The Network calls upon the international community to monitor the ongoing harassment and repression and send representatives to visit the youth activists in custody and to put pressure on Azerbaijani authorities for the immediate release of the detained youth activists.