Category World News

Russian authorities have outlawed Human Rights Watch as an “undesirable organisation”, a label that, under a 2015 law, makes involvement with it a criminal offence.

Friday’s designation means the international human rights group must stop all work in Russia, and opens those who cooperate with or support the organisation to prosecution.

HRW has repeatedly accused Russia of suppressing dissenters and committing war crimes during its ongoing war against Ukraine.

“For over three decades, Human Rights Watch’s work on post-Soviet Russia has pressed the government to uphold human rights and freedoms,” the executive director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Bolopion, said in a statement.

“Our work hasn’t changed, but what’s changed, dramatically, is the government’s full-throttled embrace of dictatorial policies, its staggering rise in repression, and the scope of the war crimes its forces are committing in Ukraine.”

The decision by the Russian prosecutor general’s office is the latest move in a crackdown on Kremlin critics, journalists and activists, which has intensified since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In a separate statement on Friday, the office said it was opening a case against Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot that would designate the group as an “extremist” organisation.

Separately, Russia’s Supreme Court designated on Thursday the Anti-Corruption Foundation set up by the late opposition activist Alexey Navalny as a “terrorist” group.

The ruling targeted the foundation’s United States-registered entity, which became the focal point for the group when the original Anti-Corruption Foundation was designated an “undesirable organisation” by the Russian government in 2021.

Russia’s list of “undesirable organisations” currently covers more than 275 entities, including prominent independent news outlets and rights groups.

Among those are prominent news organisations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, think tanks like Chatham House, anticorruption group Transparency International, and environmental advocacy organisation World Wildlife Fund.

Founded in 1978, Human Rights Watch monitors human rights violations in various countries across the world.

WhatsApp might be ‘completely blocked’

Meanwhile, Russia’s state communications watchdog threatened on Friday to block WhatsApp entirely if it fails to comply with Russian law.

In August, Russia began limiting some calls on WhatsApp, owned by Meta Platforms, and on Telegram, accusing the foreign-owned platforms of refusing to share information with law enforcement in fraud and “terrorism” cases.

On Friday, the Roskomnadzor watchdog again accused WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian requirements designed to prevent and combat crime.

“If the messaging service continues to fail to meet the demands of Russian legislation, it will be completely blocked,” Interfax news agency quoted it as saying.

WhatsApp has accused Moscow of trying to block millions of Russians from accessing secure communication.

The self-installed de facto leader of the country, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, met with Lukashenko at the Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw, according to Myanmar state media on Friday.

“This visit marked a historic occasion and demonstrated Belarus’ goodwill and trust in Myanmar. A Belarusian Head of State has visited Myanmar for the first time in 26 years of diplomatic relations, according to military-run newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar.

Premier Nyo Saw, Prime Minister, and other top military officials from Myanmar’s military government welcomed Lukashenko on Thursday night with full state honors and cultural performers.

Since Myanmar’s military imposed the democratically elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government on February 1st, 2021, Lukashenko is only the second foreign leader to visit the country after former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The Belarusian leader’s visit comes just one month before the military is scheduled to hold national elections, which many domestic and international observers have denounced as a fake. The military government has hailed his visit as a return to normalcy, with polls scheduled for late December being supported by the general public.

The Global New Light also confirmed that Belarus plans to “send an observation team to Myanmar” following Lukashenko’s meeting with Min Aung Hlaing on Friday.

The leaders also agreed that “collaboration will also be strengthened in military technologies and trade,” a day after Yangon’s Myanmar-Belarus Development Cooperation Roadmap 2026-2028 was signed.

According to Belarus’ Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxim Ryzhenkov, who was quoted by the state media as saying that Belarus has “expertise and modern technologies in mechanical engineering” while Myanmar has “significant potential in various industrial sectors.”

“We in Belarus produce a full line of machinery and equipment, and Myanmar intends to mechanize its agriculture. No topics are off limits for our cooperation, according to our president, according to Ryzhenkov.

Since the organization was founded in 1994, Lukashenko has been the former Soviet state’s first and only president. Belarus’s government is widely regarded as authoritarian.

Belarus is one of the few nations that has kept in touch with Myanmar’s military leaders since the coup, along with its major backers China and Russia.

The Myanmar military’s control of the divided nation, where ethnic armed groups have waged decades-long conflicts for independence, has since become a popular protest movement in the immediate wake of the coup.

In late 2024, census workers for the military government were only able to count the population in 145 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, which suggests that the military now controls less than half the nation.

Other recent estimates estimate that the military controls only a portion of the nation’s territory. About twice as much of the territory is controlled by ethnic armed groups and the anti-regime People’s Defence Force, which have pledged to boycott and violently disrupt the upcoming elections.

Critics have criticized the absurdity of holding elections in such circumstances despite geographic restrictions, rampant violence, and the Myanmar military’s vote to dissolve Aung San Suu Kyi’s enormously popular NLD in March 2023.

The United States immigration authorities announced on Friday that they would continue to make decisions regarding all asylum applications for the time being.

In a post on X on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the State Department had “paused visa issuance for ALL individuals traveling with Afghan passports.”

Authorities named Afghan national Rahmanaullah Lakanwal as the main suspect in the Washington, DC shooting that left one National Guard member in critical condition on Wednesday.

Rubio claimed that protecting our country and our people is the top priority for the United States.

The State Department under President Trump has stopped issuing visas to ALL travelers using Afghan passports. &nbsp,

Protecting our country and our people is the top priority for the United States. https://t.co/HuR1Lj7F9t

Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolfe, both of whom were patrolling close to the White House, are accused of being attacked by Lakanwal in an unprovoked attack by Lakanwal.

The Trump administration confirmed on Thursday night that 24-year-old Wolfe is still in critical condition while 20-year-old Beckstrom passed away from her injuries.

Lakanwal worked for the spy agency in Afghanistan before immigrating to the US shortly after the Western forces backed out of the nation in 2021, according to the CIA.

The charges against Lakanwal have been upgraded to first-degree murder, along with two counts of assault with the intent to kill while armed, according to US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director Joseph Edlow stated in a separate announcement on Friday that the agency had also put a stop to all asylum applications in the name of “the safety of the American people.”

In a post on X, Edlow wrote that “USCIS has halted all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the fullest extent possible.”

According to Trump, Edlow claimed a day earlier that he had ordered “a full, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern.”

At Trump’s request, the measures are the most recent in a line of increasing immigration restrictions.

Trump has criticized former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, including the granting visas to Afghan nationals who worked with US forces in Afghanistan, on numerous occasions in recent days.

Following the US’s exit in 2021, Lakanwal arrived in the US as part of a program from the Biden era called “Operation Allies Welcome.”

Trump declared he planned to suspend immigration from “all Third World countries,” and ordered authorities to re-examine all green card applications from 19 “countries of concern” in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.

Although he did not define the term “Third World,” it is frequently used as a slang term for developing nations in the Global South.

Trump added that he would “remove anyone who is incapable of loving our country or who is not a net asset to the United States.”

He declared, “I will denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquillity, deport any foreign national who poses a public security risk, or is incompatible with Western civilization,” and so on.