Watchdog

A group providing aid to diabetics in the Russian city of Saratov says it is no longer able to conduct its operations after being labeled a “foreign agent” and will shut down.

Larisa Saigina of the Saratov Regional Organization for Diabetics (SROO) on October 29 said it will likely take six months for the organization to wind down its operations.

It was not immediately clear what roadblocks the group was facing to prevent it from continuing operations.

Charges against it were filed under a controversial 2012 law that requires NGOs receiving foreign funding and engaging in political activities to register as "foreign agents" and to regularly proclaim their status.

Civil-society advocates say the law is aimed at bolstering Kremlin control over Russian society

The case against SROO began in August 2017 when a local medical student who was an activist with the youth wing of the ruling United Russia party complained to prosecutors that SROO received funding from foreign pharmaceutical companies.

Prosecutors commissioned local historian Ivan Konovalov to evaluate the organization, and his report concluded that SROO "gives information to foreign partners about so-called sore spots in the region, particularly in the area of health care, that could be used to inflame protest tendencies in society."

In May, a court in Saratov fined Saigina and former SROO President Yekaterina Rogatkina 300,000 rubles ($4,600) for operating without registration as a foreign agent.

SROO was founded more than three decades ago and has provided practical and informational assistance to more than 80,000 diabetics and their families, according to its website.

Saigina said the court's October 29 ruling will not be appealed.

Based on reporting by Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta

Pakistan's Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a Christian woman facing execution for blasphemy, in a landmark decision that sparked angry protests and death threats from a hard-line Islamist party.

Chief Justice Saqib Nisar on October 31 overturned the conviction by the Lahore High Court that had sentenced Asia Bibi, a mother of five, to death in 2010 for allegedly insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad -- a charge Bibi has denied.

The court ordered that Bibi be freed. She is being held at an undisclosed location for security reasons.

The court decision was hailed by rights activists, with Omar Waraich, deputy South Asia director for Amnesty International, calling it "a landmark verdict."

However, the ruling angered supporters of the hard-line Tehrik-e Labaik Pakistan (TLP) Islamist party who blocked roads in major cities, pelting police with stones in the eastern city of Lahore.

The TLP called for the ouster of Khan's government and said that Nasir, the chief justice, and "all those who ordered the release of Asia deserve death."

In a televised speech later in the day, Prime Minister Imran Khan appealed for calm and hit out at extremists.

"They are inciting you for their own political gain. You should not get trapped by them for the sake of the country. They are doing no service to Islam," Khan said.

He also said that "the state will fulfill its responsibility" and asked the Islamists not to compel the state to take action against them.

Bibi's conviction and death sentence had outraged Christians worldwide. Pope Benedict XVI called for her release in 2010, while in 2015 her daughter met his successor and the current head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis.

In 2011, two government officials -- a Pakistani governor and a minister of minorities -- were assassinated for having spoken out in support of Bibi.

Insulting Islam is punishable by death in Pakistan, and the mere rumor of blasphemy can lead to lynchings by mobs.

Bibi was sentenced to death by a district court in the central province of Punjab in 2010 for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbors objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim.

Christians make up only about 2 percent of Pakistan's population and are sometimes discriminated against.

Approximately 40 people are believed to be on death row or serving a life sentence in Pakistan for blasphemy, according to a 2018 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

At least 1,472 people were charged under Pakistan's blasphemy laws between 1987 and 2016, according to the Lahore-based Center for Social Justice.

It said Muslims constituted a majority of those prosecuted, followed by members of the Ahmadi, Christian, and Hindu minorities.

Rights groups say the laws are increasingly exploited by religious extremists as well as by ordinary Pakistanis to settle personal scores.

No judicial execution for blasphemy has ever occurred in Pakistan, but 20 of those charged were killed.

People like Bibi who are charged with blasphemy but later freed have had to flee the country for their own safety.

With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, and Reuters