Lots of juicy civil rights abuse nuggets in this report from Algeria on two arrested lawyers and a banned reconciliation conference. Read the whole thing, but enjoy these excerpts:
On February 7 authorities broke up the "Truth, Peace and Conciliation" seminar organized by five Algerian organizations that represent families of some of the thousands of persons whom state agents forcibly disappeared during the 1990s, as well as families of those abducted or killed by terrorist groups. After several of the invited foreign speakers were unable to obtain visas to enter Algeria, police amassed at the Mercure Hotel in Algiers on the morning of February 7 and prevented the two-day conference from getting under way.
At 9 p.m. the night before, the Algiers prefecture notified the organizers, who had applied five weeks earlier for permission to hold the conference, that this conference could not take place. The prefecture did not explain its decision. However, Farouk Ksentini, who heads Algeria's state human rights commission, was quoted on February 11 in the French-language daily L'Expression as saying that banning the conference was "consistent with the terms of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation." He said, "Article 46 [of the Charter] ... forbids raising anymore the issue of the 'disappeared.' The matter is closed and no one has the right to speak about it."
Asked to confirm his remarks in L'Expression, Ksentini told Human Rights Watch on February 15 that he was not expressing his own view but merely speculating on authorities' motives in banning the gathering. However, he acknowledged that he had yet to criticize or regret publicly the interdiction of the conference - to which he himself had been invited to speak.
Mr. Ksentini let slip an inconvenient truth about freedom of expression in Algeria, and his attempts to weasel out of it are both comic and a sign of the obstacles facing human rights advocates in Algeria.




Many Persians hail their ancient ruler Cyrus for introducing a code of civil rights. Indeed, the UN building in New York features a monument to Cyrus' decrees. But now the Iranian leadership is planning to flood the plain where Cyrus' monumental tomb and other archaelogical sites lie. It seems to be in part an attempt to wipe out Iran's pre-Islamic heritage.
Syria plans a series of elections this year, including a referendum
for a new mandate for President Bashar al-Assad, as the regime hardens
its stand against opposition figures seeking to ease political
restrictions.
A plebiscite gave him an official 97.29 percent of the votes...