human rights

Thailand aims to seek a three-year membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council starting this year after it failed to become one of the 13 Asian inaugural members four years ago. The UN General Assembly voted in March 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights. The global organization then rejected Thailand's bid to become a founding member.

The United Nations sent its human rights envoy to Myanmar for talks on elections scheduled for this year that would be the first in two decades as the military government released an opposition leader from house arrest.

Civic and refugee activist groups hope talks with the Thai government will ensure the safety of Karen refugees from Burma who face deportation.

A Chinese activist who investigated the deaths of children in schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake was today jailed for five years for subversion, his lawyer said.

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that Canadian agents violated the rights of the only Canadian citizen held at the Guantánamo Bay detention center when they interrogated him there. But the ruling, the second concerning the man’s politically sensitive case, does not order the government to demand his return to Canada, as he has long requested.