The Pussy Riot case sheds a light on the lack of rule of law in the Russian Federation, and the willingness of government officials to violate their constitution in order to silence dissent. LGBTi organizations have also been targeted by the Russian government–starting with the ban of Pride Marches for 100 years. Human Rights First’s Innokenty Grekov gives us his analysis.

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This week’s FirstCast covers the story of the blind “barefoot” lawyer Chen Guangcheng. We honored him with the 2012 Human Rights First Award for his lifelong work fighting for the rule of law in China. Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale called him a “giant among men” as he presented the award.

Although Chen is now safe in New York, he continues to fear for his family in China–especially his nephew Chen Kegui who has just been sentenced to three years in prison for self-defense. Chinese officials stormed into Kegui’s home and started beating him, his mother, and father.

Tell Secretary Clinton to help Chen’s nephew in China!

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On FirstCast this week, we focus on some of the most vulnerable of the LGBT community: refugees. We look at what the Obama Administration and the international community is and should be doing to protect them from violence and discrimination.

Human Rights Firsts’ Duncan Breen provides us his analysis and recommendations for the Obama administration on how to better protect LGBTI refugees from violence and persecution.  He is the author of The Road to Safety, a recent report that looks at the dangers facing LGBTI refugees in Uganda and Kenya.

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In this week’s FirstCast, a Human Rights First podcast, we focus on the escalating violence in Syria and the Russian state arms dealer–Rosoboronexport–which continues to arm the Syrian regime with weapons.

More on our work on Syria.

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Drawn by the promise of the Statue of Liberty, refugees flee to the United States seeking freedom.  But too often, the U.S. government welcomes them with handcuffs and jail. For many years, Human Rights First has worked to correct this injustice.  We achieved an important victory in 2009 when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) publicly announced that it would shift away from a penal model of detention to one more appropriate for immigration detainees.

But two years later–as we found in our recent report, “Jails and Jumpsuits”, the overwhelming majority of the nearly 400,000 detainees ICE holds annually are still held in jails or jail-like facilities—at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of more than $2 billion a year. A full 50 percent of ICE’s beds are in actual jails.

Our report notes that former prison officials and other corrections experts have found that less penal conditions in detention can actually help improve safety inside a facility, a finding echoed in multiple studies. It outlines steps that the administration should take to end its reliance on facilities with conditions that are inappropriate for asylum seekers and other civil immigration law detainees, and to bring U.S. detention practices into compliance with international human rights standards.

Read our latest report: Jails and Jumpsuits: Transforming the U.S. Immigration Detention System – A Two-Year Review.

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Collectively, these provisions would undermine the effective counter-terrorism strategies that are already in place in the United States, and pose a significant threat to our national security. Listen to the podcast to learn more.

In this special edition of FirstCast, we interviewed Jaleela Al-Salman just days before she was rearrested. She describes how the Bahraini security forces tortured her while in detention. Subscribe now!

BREAKING: Masked security forces in civilian clothing broke into Jaleela’s house at 3:00am today for the second time this year. They claimed to be executing a court order but carried no warrant of arrest. Neither her no her lawyer had received an official notice  prior to her arrest. This special podcast carries Jaleela’s latest testimony of torture while in detention in Bahrain.

At the same time that the Bahraini government is violently cracking down on pro-democracy advocates, the U.S. Department of Defense is now preparing to sell $53 million worth of armored Humvees and missiles to the dictatorship in Bahrain. The testimonies of these two courageous women show why this arms sale must stop–a proposal that is at odds with United States foreign policy goals of promoting democracy, human rights, accountability, and stability in the Middle East.

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While Russia’s heightened prosecution of ultranationalist groups resulted in a decrease of violent hate crime, law enforcement and prosecutorial officials also use the same legislation to persecute nonviolent government critics including journalist, independent media and human rights organizations and religious organizations–draining resources away from police units tasked with combating real threats of racist violence.

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This week’s FirstCast features commentary from everyday people, reflecting on lessons learned since 9/11 and steps on how to move forward.

The campaign was launched despite a break-in at FARUG’s headquarters earlier that same week. Kampala police initially refused to go to the crime scene but the organization’s lawyers stood up to this injustice, getting the police to open an investigation and take fingerprints at the office.

After the burglary at FARUG’s office, Human Rights First issued a call to the Ugandan police chief, asking him to personally oversee the investigation:

Dear Major General Kayihura:

I write to express my deep concern about the recent news of a burglary at the office of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG). According to news reports, the police were late in getting to the crime scene. However, an investigation was ultimately opened and the crime scene analyzed by forensics experts. FARUG staff estimate that the burglars stole 5 computers, 2 printers, a server, a microwave, and various documents, including the members’ electronic database which includes the names of the organization’s members.

I urge you to personally oversee the investigation into the burglary and ensure that all perpetrators are located and brought to justice. If the perpetrators purposely targeted FARUG because of its work to protect the rights of LGBTI individuals, their possession of the oranization’s electronic database put individual members at risk. I urge the police to give high priority to this investigation and to stay true to your motto of “protect and serve” by guaranteeing protection to the members of Freedom and Roam Uganda and other rights activists who may be threatened by further violence and attacks.

More than 4,100 individuals have signed our petition to the police chief, and we hope that these signatures will help ensure that the crime does not go unpunished. We still don’t know if the robbery and another attempted break-in were meant to silence the work of organizations fighting for the rights of LGBTI Ugandans. However, FARUG and its executive director Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera assure us that their struggle will continue.