Lori Helene Berenson is an American convicted felon, who served a 20-year prison sentence for collaboration with a terrorist organization in Peru in 1996. Berenson worked with the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a group accused of trying to overthrow the Peruvian government by force, and is considered a terrorist organization by the Peruvian government. The MRTA was placed on the U.S. State Department's official "terrorist organization" list from 1997–2001. Her arrest and conviction, and the circumstances surrounding her trials, drew considerable attention in both the United States and Peru.
Abortion law permits, prohibits, restricts, or otherwise regulates the availability of abortion. Abortion has been a controversial subject in many societies through history on religious, moral, ethical, practical, and political grounds. It has been banned frequently and otherwise limited by law. However, abortions continue to be common in many areas, even where they are illegal. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), abortion rates are similar in countries where the procedure is legal and in countries where it is not, due to unavailability of modern contraceptives in areas where abortion is illegal.
Mao Hengfeng is a women's rights and human rights activist in the People's Republic of China. She refused to abort her third child after already having twins and was detained in an ankang and then dismissed from her job. A frequent petitioner, Mao served a year and a half of re-education through labor in 2004-2005 and two and half years in prison for "intentional destruction of property" in 2006-2008. She was released from Shanghai Women's Prison on 29 November 2008. Since then she has served another year in RTL after protesting in support of Liu Xiaobo. She was briefly released, in February 2011, but under house arrest. She was almost immediately taken again, and placed in Shanghai City Prison Hospital, where she was previously tortured and ill-treated.
According to human rights organizations, the government of the UAE violates a number of fundamental human rights. The UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens do not have the right to change their government or to form political parties. There are reports of forced disappearances in the UAE, many foreign nationals and Emirati citizens have been abducted by the UAE government and illegally detained and tortured in undisclosed locations. In numerous instances, the UAE government has tortured people in custody . and has denied their citizens the right to a speedy trial and access to counsel during official investigations.
Mary Anne "Mamie" Cadden was an Irish midwife, backstreet abortionist, and convicted murderer. She was born 27 October 1891 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, US to the Irish parents of Patrick and Mary Cadden. In 1895, Cadden and her family returned to Ireland in County Mayo, where she completed years of schooling. Once she obtained her spot on the list of licensed midwives in Dublin, she opened a series of maternity nursing homes to aid women with health issues and to perform illegal abortions. After a series of criminal convictions, Cadden lost her status as a licensed midwife. In 1944, Cadden was charged and convicted for the murder of 33 year old Helen O'Reilly. She was sentenced to life in prison, and after a year at Mountjoy prison, she was declared insane and moved to the criminal lunatic asylum Dundrum, where she died of a heart attack on 20 April 1959. Although many people committed backstreet abortions during the period of Cadden's life, Cadden was the only person in Ireland to be sentenced to the death penalty for a maternal death occurring as a result of an abortion. As the most notorious Irish abortionist, the term 'Nurse Cadden' has become synonymous with evil.
Abortion in Nicaragua is completely illegal. Prior to a change in the law, which took effect on 18 November 2006, the law allowed pregnancies to be terminated for "therapeutic" reasons, but this clause is no longer in effect.
Abortion in El Salvador is illegal. The law formerly permitted an abortion to be performed under some limited circumstances, but, in 1998, all exceptions were removed when a new abortion law went into effect.
Timeline of women's legal rights represents formal changes and reforms regarding women's rights. The changes include actual law reforms as well as other formal changes, such as reforms through new interpretations of laws by precedents. For such things only in the United States, see Timeline of women's legal rights in the United States. The right to vote is exempted from the timeline: for that right, see Timeline of women's suffrage. The timeline excludes ideological changes and events within feminism and antifeminism: for that, see Timeline of feminism.
There have been persistent concerns over human rights in El Salvador. Some of these date from the civil war of 1980–92. More recent concerns have been raised by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. They include women's rights, child labor, and unlawful killings and harassment of labor union members and other social activists.
Judge María Lourdes Afiuni Mora is a Venezuelan who was 46 years old as of April 2010 and had served as a judge for eight years; she was head of the 31st Control Court of Caracas. In 2009 she was arrested on charges of corruption after ordering the conditional release on bail of businessman Eligio Cedeño, who then fled the country. She was moved to house arrest in Caracas in February 2011, and granted parole in June 2013, but she is still barred from practicing law, leaving the country, or using her bank account or social networks.
Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human rights lawyer in Iran. She has represented imprisoned Iranian opposition activists and politicians following the disputed June 2009 Iranian presidential elections as well as prisoners sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were minors. Her clients have included journalist Isa Saharkhiz, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, and Heshmat Tabarzadi, the head of the banned opposition group National Democratic Front. She has also represented women arrested for appearing in public without a hijab, which is a punishable offence in Iran.
In 2010, Pakistani Christian woman Aasiya Noreen was convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court and was sentenced to death by hanging. In October 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence, though she was not allowed to leave Pakistan until the verdict was reviewed. She was held under armed guard and was not able to leave the country until 7 May 2019; she arrived in Canada the next day.
Asylum in the European Union (EU) has its roots in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, an agreement founded on Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following the adoption of the Schengen Agreement on the elimination of internal border controls of signatory states and its subsequent incorporation into the EU legislative framework by the Amsterdam Treaty, the EU set up a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) to unify minimum standards related to asylum, leaving up to EU Member States the discretion to establish procedures for obtaining and withdrawing international protection.
Gender inequality can be found in various areas of Salvadoran life such as employment, health, education, political participation, and family life. Although women in El Salvador enjoy equal protection under the law, they are often at a disadvantage relative to their male counterparts. In the area of politics, women have the same rights as men, but the percentage of women in office compared to men is low. Though much progress has been made since the Salvadoran Civil War ended in 1992, women in El Salvador still face gender inequality.
Abortion in Brunei is legal only when it is done to save a woman's life. In Brunei, a woman who induces her abortion is subject to up to seven years in prison. The penalty for someone who performs an abortion was 10–15 years.
Verónica Cruz Sánchez was the first Mexican human rights activist to be awarded the Defender of Human Rights award from Human Rights Watch. In 2006, she was awarded the honor for her work with women's right to access legal and medical services. She brings public awareness to the situation of predominantly uneducated, indigenous and impoverished women who are imprisoned for abortion and miscarriage in Mexico. Cruz has worked to decriminalize and de-stigmatize women's decisions over their bodies and reproductive rights. She is founder of Las Libres, an organization dedicated to the defense, guarantee and respect of human rights for women in the state of Guanajuato and across Mexico.
On December 29, 2013, three journalists working for the Qatari-based international news channel Al Jazeera English, Australian Peter Greste, Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed were taken into custody by Egyptian security forces at the Marriott Hotel in Cairo following a raid at their room, which was used for the news channel's remote studio. The Egyptian Interior Ministry confirmed the arrest and said the journalists were accused of reporting false news which was "damaging to national security".
Morena Herrera is a Salvadoran feminist and social activist, noted for her work against her country's ban on abortion. During the Salvadoran Civil War, which ended in 1992, Herrera served as a left-wing freedom fighter for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) against the United States-supported government. She has been particularly active against abortion since it was abolished in 1997, and in 2009 began working with the Citizen’s Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, which she now heads. Herrera was named one of the BBC 100 Women in 2016 for her contributions to women's rights in El Salvador.
Amnesty International Ireland is the Irish branch of the international non-governmental organisation focused on human rights, Amnesty International. The Executive Director is Colm O'Gorman.
Jordi Cuixart i Navarro is a Spanish businessman and cultural activist from Catalonia. He is the president of Òmnium Cultural, a non-profit cultural organisation founded in 1961 with more than 160,000 members and 40 local branches in Catalonia. As part of his role in the pro-independence demonstrations prior to the Catalan independence referendum of 2017, he has been imprisoned since October 2017 under charges of sedition and violent rebellion brought by the Spanish prosecutor's office. Cuixart was sentenced to nine years of prison for sedition. Amnesty International believes his detention and sentence constitutes a disproportionate restriction on his rights to free speech and peaceful assembly, and urges Spain to free him.
