Click to expand Image The 2017 trial of human rights lawyer Xie Yang seen on the social media account of the Changshai Intermediate People's Court in Beijing, China, May 8, 2017. © 2017 Ng Han Guan/AP Photo (New York)...

Click to expand Image South Koreans in Seoul watch a news broadcast showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter visiting the undisclosed manufacturing site for a nuclear-powered submarine, December 24, 2025. © 2025 Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images...

Click to expand Image A person standing before an image of the Chinese national flag in Beijing, October 23, 2017. © 2017 Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images (New York) – The Chinese government’s proposed law to combat cybercrime extends far...

Click to expand Image United Nations Headquarters in New York City, US, July 16, 2024. © 2024 Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP Photo The United Nations will hold elections in April for the 19 members of the UN Committee on...

Click to expand Image Exiled Tibetan artists observe a minute's silence as they mark the 66th anniversary of an uprising in Tibetan capital Lhasa, at the Tsuglakhang temple in Dharamshala, India, March 10, 2025. © 2025 Ashwini Bhatia/AP Photo...

(Paris) – Chinese authorities have attempted to pressure two ethnic Uyghur activists living in Paris, including by asking one to spy on France’s Uyghur diaspora, Human Rights Watch said today. The case highlights the Chinese government’s increasing harassment of critics abroad and members of diaspora communities, abusive acts beyond China’s borders known as “transnational repression.”

Click to expand Image Anna Kwok, a Hong Kong activist exiled in the US, in Washington, DC, July 10, 2023. ( © 2024 Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters (New York) – A Hong Kong court’s conviction of the father of a prominent...

Click to expand Image The United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York City, January 15, 2026. © 2026 Cristina Matuozzi/Sipa via AP Photo United Nations member countries will select a new UN secretary-general this year to succeed...

Click to expand Image A correctional services department vehicle believed to be carrying Hong Kong publisher and activist Jimmy Lai leaves the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts following Lai's sentencing, Hong Kong, February 9, 2026. © 2026 Chan Long Hei/AP...

Click to expand Image Jimmy Lai is transported by prisoner transport vehicles outside the court in Hong Kong, December 15, 2025.  © 2025 Photo by Keith Tsuji/Getty Images (Bangkok) – The Chinese government intensified its repression across the country in...

Click to expand Image Prime Minister of Finland, Petteri Orpo, in Brussels, Belgium, January 22, 2026.  © 2026 Michael Kappeler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Photo Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s scheduled January 25-28 visit to China, accompanied by over 20 Finnish business leaders,...

Click to expand Image Family members and neighbor (far right) of Alimnur Turganbay, a Kazakhstan citizen detained in China, outside their house in Uzynagash village, located outside Almaty, Kazakhstan on August 4, 2025. © 2025 Chris Rickleton (London, January...

(Ottawa) – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney should make human rights a key focus of his visit to China from January 13 to 17, 2026, Human Rights Watch said today. Carney’s trip to China is the first by a Canadian prime minister in more than eight years.

(New York) – Chinese authorities have detained half a dozen members of an underground Protestant church based in Chengdu, Sichuan province, Human Rights Watch said today. This was the latest in a string of arrests of members of prominent unofficial “house churches” in China in the past year.

Click to expand Image Jimmy Lai with a copy of Apple Daily's July 1, 2020, edition in Hong Kong. © 2020 Vincent Yu/AP Photo (New York) – The Hong Kong High Court’s conviction of Jimmy Lai, founder of the now-defunct...

(New York) – Chinese authorities have formally charged well-known journalist and author Du Bin (杜斌) with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” Human Rights Watch said today. Police in Beijing took...

Click to expand Image French President Emmanuel Macron and China's President Xi Jinping during the official welcoming ceremony in Beijing on April 6, 2023. © 2023 Sipa via AP Images (Paris) – French President Emmanuel Macron should privately and publicly...

(Bangkok) – Thai authorities should drop criminal defamation charges against the Australian journalist Murray Hunter, who is being prosecuted for reporting on Malaysia’s media regulating agency, Human Rights Watch said today.

Click to expand Image A protester writes "dignity" in English and Chinese in a show of solidarity with the White Paper protest in China at the University of Washington in Seattle, December 4, 2022. © 2022 Chin Hei Leung/SOPA...

foreign policy, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on November 6, 2025. The Japanese government should affirm its commitment to human rights by taking the lead in promoting civilian democratic rule and the rule of law across Asia and around the world.

Click to expand Image A protester from the Uyghur community living in Türkiye stands with East Turkestan flags in the Beyazit mosque in Istanbul on March 25, 2021, during a protest against the visit of China's foreign minister to...

Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City, Human Rights Watch said today. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”

Sheffield Hallam University in England terminated a project about Uyghur forced labor after Chinese state security officers reportedly interrogated a staff member in Beijing...

Click to expand Image Puma Shen, co-founder of Kuma Academy, during a media event of Kuma Academy in Taipei, Taiwan, June 2, 2023.  © 2023 AP/Chiang Ying-ying (New York) – The Chinese government has announced it is investigating the Taiwanese legislator...

(Seoul) – Chinese authorities since 2024 have forcibly returned at least 406 people to North Korea, where they are at grave risk of persecution and ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said today.

(New York) – Chinese authorities on October 10-11, 2025, arrested nearly 30 pastors, preachers, and church members of the unofficial Zion Protestant Church in seven cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, Human Rights Watch said today.

On October 13, a court outside Paris will put on trial Dr. Dilnur Reyhan, a prominent French-Uyghur scholar and activist, and the president of the European Uyghur Institute, for the criminal offense of “degradation of property belonging to others.”

Click to expand Image Chinese artists the Gao Brothers, Zhen and Qiang, with some of their "Miss Mao" pieces that feature life-sized, Pinocchio-nosed sculptures of Mao Zedong in their studio in Beijing, October 16, 2007. © 2007 David Grey/Reuters...

(New York) – A newly proposed law in China would provide a broad legal framework to justify existing repression and force assimilation of minority populations throughout the country and abroad, Human Rights Watch said today.

Chinese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Zhang Yadi, an advocate for Tibetan rights who had been an international student in France, Human Rights Watch said today. If convicted under article 103(2) of China’s Criminal Law, which prohibits “inciting others to...