The Macedonian government’s decision to ignore sexual orientation as a protected category in its draft anti-discrimination law would leave lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender (LGBT) people without vital protection, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Macedonian authorities.

Human Rights Watch writes Prime Minister of Macedonia, Mr. Nikola Gruevski, in concern over the government's decision to deny effective protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity in a proposed new anti-discrimination law.

In a letter to the government of Macedonia, the undersigned, supporters and representatives of sex workers and organizations and individuals advocating for human rights, strongly condemn police actions in relation to the recent mass arrest of alleged sex workers in Skopje, Macedonia.

The Central Intelligence Agency secretly operated illegal prisons for terrorism suspects in multiple locations in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005, according to a report released today by the Council of Europe, a European intergovernmental human rights body.

The European Parliament should condemn European complicity in the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program of “extraordinary renditions” and secret detention of prisoners, Human Rights Watch said today.

European governments must provide detailed information about their participation in or knowledge of the Central Intelligence Agency’s unlawful detention and transfer of terrorist suspects.

On January 22, 2005, a large group of law professors, politicians, and artists gathered in Belgrade’s Sava Center to support Vojislav Seselj, indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). A number of participants repeated two legal arguments which, coming from well-known lawyers, purport to represent authoritative criticism of the tribunal. Both arguments, however, are patently false.

This month, the Hague tribunal’s many opponents in Belgrade believed they had a reason to be jubilant. In the space of ten days, a former United States ambassador and a newspaper supposedly close to the current administration criticised the UN court and strongly argued in favour of trying indictees before domestic war crimes courts. Serbia’s nationalists had won an all-powerful ally in their fight against the tribunal – or so it seemed.