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How can a photographer defame her country? Uzbekistan tried to answer that question this week in a slander trial that harked back to the days of Soviet censorship. The answer, in part: by showing people with sour expressions or bowed heads, children in ragged clothing, old people begging for change or other images so dreary that, according to a panel of experts convened by the prosecutors, “a foreigner unfamiliar with Uzbekistan will conclude that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages.” Umida Akhmedova, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, was found guilty on Wednesday of slandering and insulting the Uzbek people, in a case that has stirred outrage in artistic circles throughout the region. Though the charges carried a prison sentence of up to three years, the judge waived the penalties, saying that Ms. Akhmedova had been granted an amnesty in honor of the 18th anniversary of Uzbek independence. Update on Uzbekistan: Ahmedova charged with defamation against Uzbek nation

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers is deeply concerned at reports (The Guardian, 1st Feb 2010) that a 15-year-old girl, a Turkish Kurd, named Berivan, has been jailed in Turkey for nearly eight years after being convicted of "terrorist" offences. She was arrested at a demonstration in the south-eastern city of Batman in October 2009. The 13-and-a-half-year sentence originally imposed on her was later reduced on appeal to seven years and nine months because of her age. She was found guilty of "crimes on behalf of an illegal organisation" after prosecutors alleged she had hurled stones and shouted slogans. She was also convicted of attending "meetings and demonstrations in opposition to the law" and "spreading propaganda for an illegal organisation". There are substantial concerns as to the fairness of her trial and conviction.

Please write to the Iranian authorities calling on them to halt executions of nine people arrested in relation to protests following the disputed presidential elections. The Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) international solidarity network urges the Islamic Republic of Iran to halt the executions of political prisoners sentenced to death. The prisoners’ trials did not meet international or even national legal standards set up by the laws of Islamic Republic. The accused faced ambiguous charges of Mahrab, meaning “enmity against God.” Moreover, after the officially confirmed deaths of at least two while in detention, the Iranian public and the international community are greatly alarmed about the extent of torture used against Iranian political prisoners in an attempt to coerce confessions.

French authorities have denied citizenship to a man who forced his French wife to wear a face-covering veil, saying he had rejected national values of secularism and gender equality.

The government has been speaking out strongly against head-to-toe veils, and is moving toward banning them in public after a long public debate over French national identity in the age of globalization.