Front Line is extremely concerned following reports that human rights defender and community leader, Vicente Zhunio Samaniego, from Ecuador, has been located, after 16 hours of incommunicado detention, in a hospital with gunshot wounds to the head.  

Front Line is concerned at the charges of 'outrage against the State' brought against the following five human rights defenders and journalists, arrested in Libreville on 31 December 2008: Mr Marc Ona Essangui, national coordinator of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Gabon, Mr Georges Mpaga, president of Réseau des organisations libres de la société civile pour la bonne gouvernance au Gabon – ROLBG (Gabonese civil society network for good governance), Mr Gregory Ngoua Minsta, public servant and plaintiff in a civil complaint lodged in Paris calling for an investigation into the assets acquired in France by the President of Gabon, Mr Gaston Asseko, technical director of Radio Saint-Marie, and Mr Dieudonne Koungou, journalist with the private magazine Tendance Gabon.  

Front Line is concerned at the smear campaign against Ms Sihem Bensedrine, spokesperson of the Conseil national pour les libertés en Tunisie - CNLT (National Council for Liberties in Tunisia) and chief editor of the online newspaper and radio Kalima. Several newspapers have reported on accusations of opportunism and misuse of funds brought against Sihem Bensedrine by a former employee at Kalima, and depicted her and other eminent human rights defenders as 'radical activists' in apparently orchestrated smear campaign.  

Front Line is deeply concerned about the provisions of the forthcoming Charities and Societies Proclamation (draft law) which according to reports received is scheduled for discussion in the Ethiopian parliament on 24 December 2008. This is the fifth draft of a law to regulate all domestic and international civil society organisations (CSOs) operating in the country. The provisions of the new law would seriously curtail the already-limited work of human rights defenders in Ethiopia and would drastically reduce their ability to criticise or act independently of the government, through the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on their work, complex bureaucratic procedures, severe criminal penalties and escalated government surveillance of their activities.