Human Rights Cases

Brazil/Spain

The Brazilian Physical Society (SBF) issued an open letter in March 2008 expressing its concern about the treatment of some Brazilian citizens who are traveling to Spain, including a physics graduate student who was en route to a physics workshop in Portugal.

Bangladesh

Twelve professors at the University of Dhaka and Rajshahi University, including three professors of applied physics, were arrested in August and September 2007.  The arrests were in connection with student protests at the universities, some of which resulted in violence.  In addition to the professors who were arrested, many students were  injured and one person was killed.  Reports in the international press indicate that the professors were not formally charged with any crimes, yet they remained in detention for several months.  There were reports that some of them had been denied access to lawyers, their families, and medical care for extended periods of time.

In December 2007, four professors from Rajshahi University were acquitted, and four others were convicted, but subsequently pardoned.  In January 2008, three professors from the University of Dhaka were convicted, but pardoned, while one was acquitted.

Read the press release from Amnesty International, "Bangladesh: Pardons for Teachers not Enough," 22 January 2008
Letter from CIFS to the Chief Advisor of the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, January 2008
Read more in The Independent, 13 December 2007
Letter from CIFS to the Chief Advisor of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, November 2007
 Read the alert by The American Society of Plant Biologists and issued by the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program, 5 November 2007

United States of America & Iraq

  Read about the situation for Iraqi academics in APS News

  Letter from CIFS to U.S. General John Abizaid and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concerning the killing and kidnapping of scientists, engineers and health professionals in Iraq, August 2006
  Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and General John Abizaid, November 2006
  Letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Mailiki, November 2006

China

Tong Shidong, Physicist
Released from prison on 9 March 2006.
  Press release from The Dui Hua Foundation

Wang Youcai, Physicist
Released from prison 4 March 2004.
  Statement on the Medical Parole of Wang Youcai by The Dui Hua Foundation

Hua Di, Nuclear Weapons Expert

Jin Haike, Geological Engineer

Yang Zili, Computer Engineer

Gaza

Since 2007, several hundred Palestinian students in Gaza have been prevented from pursuing their academic careers abroad due to Israeli travel restrictions that were imposed after Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.
Letter from CIFS to the Prime Minister of Israel, January 2008

Libya

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV and sentenced to death despite scientific evidence that demonstrated their innocence.  On 24 July 2007, they were freed from more than 8 years in prison and returned to Bulgaria.
  "Libyan ordeal ends: medics freed," by Declan Butler, Nature, 24 July 2007 (subscription required)
  Letter from CIFS to Mu'ammar al‑Gaddafi, January 2007
  Letter from CIFS to Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi, November 2006

Russia

Valentin Danilov, Physicist
Danilov sentenced to 14 years in a maximum security prison.
  Alert from the AAAS Human Rights Action Network, 3 December 2004

Danilov's 2003 Acquittal Overturned by the Russian Supreme Court.
  Alert issued by the AAAS Human Rights Action Network, 10 June 2004
  Letter from CIFS to the President of the Russian Federation, May 2001
  Letter from CIFS to the Mayor of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, May 2001
  Letter from the APS President to the President of Russia, June 2001

Oscar Kaibyshev, Physicist
February 2005: Kaibyshev detained and interrogated on possible charges of espionage.
August 2006: Kaibyshev found guilty and received a six-year suspended sentence.
  Read the alerts from the AAAS Human Rights Action Network regarding this case.

Oleg Mediannikov, Biologist
In December 2006, Russian customs officials confiscated vials that Mediannikov was transporting to the Rickettsial Unit of the University of the Mediterranean in Marseilles, France.  The vials contained non-pathogenic strains of a typhus vaccine and had been approved for transport by the Russian health ministry.  According to the journal Nature, Mediannikov was subsequently indicted for "smuggling materials that might be used for preparing weapons of mass destruction" and been told to resign from his job at Gamaleya Institute of  Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow.
Read more in the 13 September 2007 article in Nature
(requires a subscription)

Igor Sutyagin, Researcher
In October of 1999, Igor Stuyagin was detained by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and charged with espionage and high treason. The FSB charged that during interviews Sutyagin conducted with military and civilian authorities as part of an internationally funded research project, he was spying on the Russian state.  As a civilian researcher with no military clearances, Sutyagin never had access to classified materials and conducted his research using open source material.  In the October 1999 search of his home and office, no classified information was found. In April 2004, Sutyagin was found guilty of high treason and subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison.  As of 2008, he remains in prison. 

Learn more about Sutyagin's case at www.sutyagin.org.

  Letter from the APS President to Sutyagin, February 2006
  Letter to Moscow City Court, October 2003
  Letter to Russian Supreme Court, December 2002
  Letter to the Chairman of the Russian Supreme Court, February 2002
  Letter from the Committee of Concerned Scientists, the New York Academy of Sciences' Committee on Human Rights, the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the AAAS, and CIFS, August 2001

Venezuela

Claudio Mendoza, Physicist
In 2006, Claudio Mendoza, a distinguished researcher at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), wrote an article in a Caracas newspaper that sarcastically addressed Venezuela’s nuclear activities and intentions. 

Several days after his comments--which the IVIC found defamatory--were published, the IVIC board of directors gave Mendoza 30 days to respond and “prove” his statements.  His response was rejected and he was asked to retract his article, which Mendoza refused to do.  While Mendoza remains an employee at IVIC, he was removed from his position as head of the computational physics laboratory, a position that he held for a decade.

“Venezuela free-speech row goes nuclear,” by Michael Hopkin, Nature, 12 April 2007 (Subscription required)