In 1990, Mohammed Yusuf, his wife and their children moved to Gimbi where they were given land to till and also engaged in farming. On 18 June, Gimbi was invaded by armed men. Assuming that they would not kill women and children, Mohammed Yusuf went into hiding in a maze farm while his children and grandchildren stayed at home behind closed door.
on June 18 the Christian TV network CBS broadcast a statement of the murderer, who said he had committed the crime because his ex-wife was a member of a Korean Christian new religious movement, Shincheonji. It came out that in the days before the murder the assassin went though four counseling sessions with Pastor Oh Myeong-hyeon of the Heresy Research Center, an institution specialized in fighting Shincheonji and other groups it considers “heretic,” which also supports kidnapping and forced conversion (deprogramming). Obviously Pastor Oh did not suggest that the man killed his ex-wife, but he excited his hatred against Shincheonji. To deflect blame from himself, Pastor Oh later held a press conference where he claimed that Shincheonji was responsible for the crime and should be punished. If the wife had not joined Shincheonji the crime would never have happened, he said.
A 34-year old PhD student sentenced to 34 years in prison and a 34-year travel ban afterwards, a cynical and cruel game with this number At mid-August 2022, Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi 34-year old PhD student from the University of Leeds, was sentenced under the kingdom’s counter-terrorism and cybercrime laws to a heavy penalty: 34 years in prison and a 34-year travel ban after her release for following and retweeting messages from Saudi women’s rights activists, including Loujain al-Hathloul ranked third in the “Top 100 Most Powerful Arab Women 2015” and the winner of the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize in 2020.
CAP Freedom of Conscience is a secular European NGO with United Nations Consultative Status, created in 1995 and dedicated to protecting the Right of Freedom of Religion and Belief. It combats all forms of discrimination based on religion or belief, inter alia, by alerting European and International bodies to abuses and violations of international standards. It collects testimonies of discrimination and human rights violations affecting religious or belief communities disseminating them to international bodies, to broadly raise awareness on the subject and to generate debate on the need for protection of freedom of religion or Belief. CAP Freedom of Conscience also advocates for any religious or spiritual group facing discrimination supporting the right to have their freedom of religion or belief recognized.
Despite France is adherent to the ICCPR, to the Tokyo Rule, to the UNODC recommendations on prison conditions, it has been repeatedly pointed out on this issue during its UPR in 2018, by the ECHR, the OIP and the CPT. Moreover, on April 2021 a law was voted in France intended to guarantee the right to respect for dignity in detention.
We call on France to definitively put an end to this campaign of discrimination and stigmatization with regard to spiritual minorities or beliefs.
Mr. Dvorkin is a Russian activist with strong links to the Russian Orthodox Church and a close to Patriarch Kirill who for decades has been inundating the Russian, Chinese and Western media with hate speech against spiritual minorities and anti-Ukrainian propaganda. He was the vice-president of FECRIS for years and today he remains a member of its board of directors.
CAP Liberté de Conscience, along with Human Rights Without Frontiers and other international NGOs, are very concerned about repeated massacres of Amharas in total impunity in Ethiopia as well as mass arrests by the Ethiopian federal government of Amhara activists, journalists and other critics.
