A Saudi court sentenced Raef Badawi, the founder of a human rights group, to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes Wednesday over “insulting Islam,” an activist said. Badawi, who has been behind bars since June 2012, has also been ordered to pay a fine of one million riyals ($266,666/191,846 euros), said the head of the network, Suad al-Shamari, AFP reports. “He is a prisoner of conscience,” said Shamari, pointing out that there is “no criminal charge against him.” “The ruling is unjust,” she told AFP. Badawi was sentenced in July 2013 to ...

Experts on disability have demanded allocation of at least 1.5% of the fiscal budget for the disabled and physically challenged populace. They also demanded effective and stronger administrative initiatives to speeding up implementation of the ‘Disable People’s Rights and Protection Act 2013’. Mainstream development aka the equity based development couldn’t be possible without integrating and ensuring development of the disabled, the experts opined. The speakers raised the issues in an exchange of views on ‘Integrating disabled in t...

The Bangladeshi government should publicly explain what efforts have been made to investigate the abduction, torture, and killing of the labor rights activist Aminul Islam two years ago, including alleged links to state officials, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today. While police have filed charges against a missing suspect, there have been no apparent efforts to investigate allegations that members of Bangladeshi security forces were part of the conspiracy to kill the labor activist.  Islam, 39, was a trade union organ...