Azerbaijani Activists Arrested, Charged With Treason 

July 31 (WMD).─ Prominent Azerbaijani human rights activist and World Movement participant, Leyla Yunus, and her husband, Arif Yunus, were both arrested on Wednesday, July 30, and face charges of treason. Arif Yunus was released soon after his arrest to await trial at home for health reasons. The World Movement for Democracy calls on the government of Azerbaijan to release Leyla Yunus immediately, drop the politically motivated charges against her and her husband, and end the harassment and persecution of human rights defenders in Azerbaijan.

Leyla Yunus is the director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, a human rights organization that seeks to advance reconciliation between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and promote the rule of law in Azerbaijan. She was named a Chevalier of the French National Legion of Honor as a tribute to her tireless work promoting human rights. Arif Yunus is a historian who has authored eight books and more than 230 articles on the contemporary history of the Caucasus.

Cologne, Jul.30.─ Democracy International (DI), an institution promoting global democracy, with which our PDCI maintains close ties of collaboration, today announced the formation of Democratic Europe Now!, a subsidiary initiative which will focus its efforts at the European level.

Sophie von Hatzfeldt, a young, dynamic and enthusiastic promoter of democracy, is driving a campaign, launched initially by DI in the European Parliament early this year, to promote an alliance of organisations from all over Europe under the new ‘Democratic Europe Now’ banner.

In that occasion, Democracy International’s Chairperson, Gerald Häfner, said that citizens don’t want a Europe in which the most powerful governments and financial markets have more influence than the citizens themselves: “Instead of decisions taken by the heads of states behind closed doors, we need an open discourse on the future of Europe and European democracy – and a real democratic European Union of and for the citizens.”

Today, the Amazon rainforest is home to diverse wildlife like the jaguar, three-toed sloth, and over 44,000 other unique species. But these animals are quickly losing their rainforest home as it’s destroyed, hacked apart, and sold for lumber.

Brazil’s illegal loggers are chopping through protected areas, destroying forests in indigenous lands, and falsely using legal documents to hide their crimes. Just last year — in one state alone, criminal loggers chopped down enough illegal Amazon timber to fill 14,000 trucks.

Logging and deforestation are threatening the very existence of the Amazon rainforest and its inhabitants. But we have the power to stop this destruction.

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El movimiento sindical y gremial autónomo y clasista y las organizaciones sociales, condenan y rechazan el uso inhumano e inconstitucional de los Cuerpos de Seguridad del Estado y de grupos paramilitares para reprimir las legítimas protestas estudiantiles. Se han utilizado armas de fuego contra manifestantes indefensos, con el terrible saldo de 6 muertos, decenas de heridos y más de 300 presos, algunos de los cuales han denunciado que fueron sometidos a torturas infamantes.

Los trabajadores sabemos que las reivindicaciones del movimiento estudiantil expresan el sentir de la mayoría del pueblo venezolano, quienes a diario están sometidos a la inseguridad, al asalto, a una muerte violenta, al deterioro creciente del poder adquisitivo de sus ingresos, a la escasez de productos básicos, al desabastecimiento generalizado y la precariedad de los más elementales servicios públicos.

La protesta estudiantil es la respuesta a una acción gubernamental errada, que ha empobrecido a la mayoría y enriquecido a unos pocos.