GENOCIDEWATCH

(CNN)When anti-government protests erupted in Sudan at the end of last year, the response of President Omar al-Bashir came straight from the dictators' playbook -- a crackdown that led to scores of civilian deaths.

At the same time, a more insidious strategy was being developed -- one that involved spreading misinformation on social media, blaming Israel for fomenting the unrest, and even carrying out public executions to make...

Lena Avilkin at home in Turku, Finland, with her three children. She and her husband, Sergey, decided to flee Russia after the Supreme Court declared Jehovah’s Witness an “extremist” organization and effectively outlawed it in April last year. Credit: Janne Korkko for The New York Times

TURKU, Finland — Sergey Avilkin, one of the hundreds of Russians now sheltering in Finland to avoid arrest as “extremists” in their home countr...

Russia's Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia in April 2017 (AFP Photo/Vasily MAXIMOV)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum remains deeply concerned over the continuing harassment and persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses by Russian authorities. Since the Russian Supreme Court labeled Jehovah’s Witnesses an “extremist organization” in April 2016, Witness property has...

In 2013, the Russian government enacted a federal law criminalizing the promotion and distribution of materials in support of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors, but a group from Spain managed to skirt what many say are anti-LGBT laws and bring a human Pride flag to the streets of Russia.

The European Court of Human Rights, in a 6-to-1 decision last year, ruled that the propaganda law reinforces stigma, encourages h...

Religious persecution, other abuses

28.06.2018 – Law enforcement authorities across Russia have carried out a sweeping campaign against Jehovah’s Witnesses in recent months, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities have carried out dozens of home searches, raids, interrogations, and other acts of harassment and persecution.

The authorities are holding 18 men in pretrial detention on charges of organizing, participatin...

"Foreigners giving up on Bosnia: country close to collapse."

That's a recent headline from Sputnik, the Russian state media arm in Serbia since 2015.

The accompanying photo -- a sepia-toned panoramic shot of Muslim gravestones overlooking the city of Sarajevo, overlaid by a spectrally transparent image of a Bosnian flag -- appears likewise meant to convey imminent doom. It might not be a surprise, given Sputnik's (and Russi...

Riot police arrest a boy during demonstrations against the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow on May 5, 2018. Photograph by Celestino Arce / NurPhoto / Getty

When my kids were fifteen and twelve, we lived through a period during which the Russian government was threatening to take children away from queer parents, and, specifically, threatening to go after my kids. I sent my son, who is adopted, to boarding school in...

Facebook accounts with Russian ties not only sowed racial and cultural division, but their ads preceded spikes in hate crimes.

One of the ads depicted a Mexican immigrant as a ravenous boll weevil and a “parasite.” Another purported to show a map of a planned American “Aztlan.” One claimed that President Obama “literally called for open war against police officers and whites.” Another depicted Islamic immigrants bringing “a cul...

Russia is in talks with breakaway Somali region, Somaliland, to set up a naval base of at least 1500 men outside Zeila, a city near the border with Djibouti to offer support to warships and submarines patrolling the strategic stretch of coastline.

Reported by Somaliland and other international news outlets, the base is expected to be home to two destroyer sized ships, four frigate class ships, two large submarine pens, two airs...

April 4, 2018

The Russian authorities have abjectly failed to take effective action in response to the violent persecution of gay men in Chechnya, Amnesty International said one year after a series of homophobic crimes in the southern republic were exposed.

A report by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper revealed a horrifying “gay purge” in Chechnya in which dozens of men were abducted, tortured and killed. However, to date, not one per...