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For more than a year, Turkish authorities have imprisoned Mehmet Desde for the peaceful expression of his political views. Following an unfair trial, authorities convicted him in June 2007 of having a connection with the Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan/Turkey), which is a small, non-violent political party. His conviction was based largely on statements allegedly extracted under torture.
On December 1, 2004, some 200 people participated in a nonviolent ceremony in Papua Province during which the Morning Star flag, a symbol of Papuan independence, was raised in commemoration of the declaration of Papuan independence in 1962. For peacefully raising this flag, Filep Karma and Yusak Pakage may spend the next decade or more in prison in Indonesia.
The military rulers of Myanmar have jailed thousands of people in their continuing efforts to crush all dissenting views. Most prominent of those detained is Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has spent 13 of the past 18 years under some form of detention. Ma Khin Khin Leh, a school teacher and young mother, is another individual serving a life sentence simply for trying to organize a peaceful demonstration in support of the NLD.
When the women left their homes that May morning in 2006, they never imagined the horrific experience that lay ahead of them. During a police operation in response to protests by activists from a local peasant organization in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, over 45 women were arrested without explanation.
The activists of the human rights organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) know the price of freedom. For organizing peaceful demonstrations to protest the worsening social, economic and human rights situation in Zimbabwe, WOZA members have been repeatedly harassed, intimidated, beaten and jailed by authorities.
In April 2004, the Chinese journalist Shi Tao used his Yahoo! email account to send a message to a U.S.-based pro-democracy website. In his email, he summarized a government order directing media organizations in China to downplay the upcoming 15th anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Police arrested him in November 2004, charging him with "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities."
Libyan authorities arrested Fathi el-Jahmi in 2002 after he called for free speech and political reforms during a conference in Tripoli. For that "crime," he was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released in March 2004 following international pressure. Mr. el-Jahmi's freedom proved short-lived, however, as authorities detained him again just weeks later after he repeated his call for democracy during a television interview.
The military rulers of Myanmar have jailed thousands of people in their continuing efforts to crush all dissenting views. Most prominent of those detained is Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has spent 13 of the past 18 years under some form of detention. Ma Khin Khin Leh, a school teacher and young mother, is another individual serving a life sentence simply for trying to organize a peaceful demonstration in support of the NLD.
