is operating in syria against the syrian president bashar assad but what we're hearing from human rights watch is that there are elements within the opposition that are guilty of human rights abuses attention to. all of this happening to the security forces as well as syrian people who support the government human rights watch says it has reviewed at least twenty five videos on you tube and their families that is it's these security force members and literally consisting of crimes they committed with that in fact these statements were made and did you raise in addition to this they have a video footage that shows the opposition executing people it has in its custody the group is calling on the opposition in syria to forbid it's an interest from doing this but this raises the problem in terms of who exactly is in charge of the opposition in syria and one hand you have lost in term various other western allies who have recognized the syrian national council as the opposition but you do have many people in syria who do not belong to these groups and who indeed are acting by and large on their own

foundation and in new york we have to leave all of your own he is the united nations director at human rights watch all right gentlemen crosstalk rosenberg and you can jump in anytime you want jacob if i can go to you first i've been watching the syrian conflict and american british t.v. western media in general and it's basically good guys and bad guys so can you explain to me who the good guys are and who are the bad guys are because we have a regime that's killing its own people and we have an armed insurrection resorting to terrorism so please tell me who are the good guys and the bad guys. well i think it's always difficult to tell in this kind of situation i mean you've got a dictatorship there and traditionally a dictatorship is the bad guys i mean there's there's traditionally nothing good about a dictatorship and this happens to be one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world you've got an armed insurrection and that as i understand it human rights watch is now accused of some major human rights atrocities. and what are the issues involved here i would be the last one to to be an expe

opposition who are guilty of human rights abuses intimidation the detention and torture of security force members as well as supporters of the government human rights watch says it has watched at least twenty five videos on you tube and on those videos it sees security forces members and rigidly confessing to crimes that they committed the very indeed these statements were made and did you receive in addition to those they have footage that shows that the opposition has been executing people in their custody and now human rights watch has called on the opposition to forbid the members from doing this but the problem is that it's not clear who is the leadership of this opposition because on the one hand while washington and western allies have recognized the syrian national council there is a multitude of opposition figures who do not fall within this fold and as a result it's not actually a who's calling the shots many of them have an alawite sentiments many of them are just acting on their own accord and so this really begs the question while the west is calling for so in president bashar assad to step down and be replaced who all want to place him all

on them bogglingly coming from human rights watch me to say arming let me ask you a measure is regime is committing mass such as you think do you think they should know if there is still russia was attempting to pressure the assad reaction to give a clear to him that it's not ok to bomb civilian neighborhoods why can't we have the right dialogue children can we have the right dialogue the side of syria the wrong way philip jr be more dialogue should now would be the an international community should be supporting dialogue inside of syria and not giving arms and training it should be dialogue. well a little political organization which we do is really document human rights violations so i would priority right now is really to tell china and to tell rachelle to stop supporting the syrian regime the syrian government needs to feel the pressure of the pressure of the u.n. security council so right now the russian government. the regime and there's a speedy trial. as we speak now a resolution is being discussed towards that end here jake i'm going to give you the last word in the program h

on zimbabwe really coming from human rights watch me to say arming let me ask you a measure is regime this is a meeting that's the tricky thing is do you think they should you know if they're still russia was attempting to pressure the assad regime as we do make clear to him that it's not ok to bomb civilian neighborhoods like here we have to raise dialogue children can we have dialogue decided seriously a long way philip jitney be more dialogue should now would be the international community should be supporting gaia log inside of syria and not giving arms and training it should be dialogue. well if we look at political organisation which we do is really a documentary with a rights violation so i work for you it's a right is really to tell china and to tell rashad to stop supporting the syrian regime is the syrian government needs to feel the pressure of the pressure of the u.n. security council so right now the russian government. has said the regime is a speedy trial i did anything to promote we're getting word as we speak now a resolution is being discussed towards that end here j

on his end obviously coming from human rights watch me asking arming me as you and measure his regime is committing mass atrocity things you think they should know if they're still russia was attaching to pressure the assad regime actually do you make clear to him that it's not ok to bomb civilian neighborhoods like you know we have the right dialogue children can we have the right dialogue your side of syria your own where you feel a picture it may be more dialogue should not would be the an international community should be supporting gaia log inside of syria and not giving arms and training it should be dialogue. well we look at political organisation which we do is really document human rights violations so i would pray or it's the right is really to. rush out to stop supporting the syrian regime the syrian government needs to feel the pressure of the full pressure of the u.n. security council so right now the russian government. said the regime and there's a speedy trial i did recently going to promote we're getting reports as we speak now a resolution is being discussed towards

so to ask over a new report released by human rights watch it zones in on california's justice system where approximately three hundred youth offenders those that committed the crime while they were minors or they've been sentenced to life in prison without parole i just put this in perspective for you the u.s. is the only country where people under the age of eighteen can be sentenced to life without parole we pride ourselves on such a thing minors to death but life without parole is the sentence to die in prison you just have to wait decades for it to happen naturally now all the never might be three hundred in california nationally there are more than twenty five hundred youth offender serving these sentences and it's a horrible thing and this report is pushing to change it so we throw in a few more statistics if they compile the way in california forty five percent of the hundred twenty seven cases surveyed use have been who have been sentenced to life without parole hadn't been the person to physically commit a murder as in that they may have stood by they may have driven the get

it is a broader systemic issues. >> human rights watch is calling for a transparent investigation toelp highlight abuses suffered by migrant workers in lebanon. and makes life unlivable. >> here in germany, political parties are gearing up for an unexpected battle. snap elections in the bellwether state of north rhine- westphalia. >> the minority government there collapsed after failing to pass a budget vote. the resulting election does not bode well for the coalition here in the capital berlin, especially for the junior partners the free democrats. >> if germany were to vote today, it is unlikely that the current coalition would return to the cabinet table. recent opinion polls show that the three government parties with no longer have a majority. the fdp would not even reach the 5% of votes needed to enter parliament. polls show the cdu and csu at 37%. that puts them ahead of the opposition spd at 30%. the fdp are at 3%. the left party remains unchanged at 7%. the greens remain the third biggest party at 13%, but they are under pressure, especially from a wild card newcomers, the p

wounded from syria and bring in medicine with moscow adding its voice for a daily ceasefire human rights watch has accused the syrian opposition of abuses including kidnapping contention and torture of security forces members. human rights groups trying to us kept sending afghan detainees to prisons where evidence of torture had been uncovered this despite a ban on such transfers last july claims of new abuse have already surface. u.k. construction workers demand justice as they find out they landed on an illegal blacklist after campaigning for safer jobs and investigation found some of the information used to identify so-called troublemakers came from the police. violence in syria raging on r.t. speaks with dr bashar ger fahri the country's ambassador to the un to ask whether any solution is near and the crisis. joining our teeth for an exclusive sit down interview is syrian ambassador to the united nations dr bashar to fahri ambassador thank you very much for speaking with our key to that thank you for having me with your family thank you the united nations estimates that more than eight tho

but the human rights watch survey of women in prison makes for grim reading. some have been convicted for offenses which would not even be considered crimes and were else in the world, even in the most conservative islamic countries. they are reporting the have been raped after running away from violence. reports have confirmed these crimes recently. >> the afghan supreme court has said that the crime of running away can be found in sharia. but when we looked around the world, no other government thinks that running away is in sharia. afghanistan stands alone in that interpretation. >> some of the stories in the report tells of women who were jailed after asking strangers for help, only to be turned into the police, or after fleeing from families where they faced constant sexual abuse by male residents. afghan women mps have failed to change the law. >> the punishment is for 10 years in prison. why? she ran away from home without permission by the husband,, which in this case is not really part of afghan law. >> there has been some progress for women, particul

of foreign bodies these odd foreign bodies feeding these human rights statistics and building up the death count when in fact now human rights watch has just been implicated really in covering up rebel abuses in syria and that's a major thing because if you think the whole the whole thing is really based on a humanitarian issue that's how it's framed in the media in the west and we don't know where these statistics are coming from c.n.n. has been caught staging sake news with danny de am the u.s. of britain and their allies sit on one side of the table and they would like a ceasefire but they do not want to just on the rebel groups ok the kind of one of them to run wild through the streets of damascus and so forth and this is the exact same sort of paradigm we saw in libya was the disk does come down to politics when you talk about the u.n. and the security council because it is a political body. stay with us here on our t.v. still to come prejudice faced by gypsies and travellers in the u.k. . home to sort of play goes live in peace a pop each night and he seems to think he's bad and need a break in slam for discriminating agains

after a year it's unity and while washington and its allies continue to support the opposition human rights watch warns that the rebels are a force to be reckoned with guilty of torture and. french police are locked in a standoff with a man suspected of killing seven people in the city of toulouse while the funerals have been held for the three schoolchildren and a rabbi who were shot dead on monday at a jewish school and here we are looking at live pictures from the scene in to lose our president is expected shortly they stand off continues the suspect calling himself a mujahideen announcing his jihad is convictions off. his mother to the house to try and convince him to come outside. and the head of the international monetary fund issues a warning over skyrocketing oil prices in the wake of tensions in the middle east adding to the destructions to iranian crude supplies could destabilize the global economy. or some analysts fear to mask his could follow libya's path with foreign military intervention still not completely written off by nato states the next we sit down with newspaper editor one

well, the human rights watch is one of the organizations calling for these changes and we're joined byir spokesperson on the phone from baltimore. a year on. let's just talk about the situation a year on in syria. what do you make of it now? >> well, it's pretty bad. after the fall of homs a couple of weeks ago, the syrian security forces turned our attention to another opposition strong hold, the city of idlib. and just in the last four days, there has been a relentless assault on the city with machine guns, tanks, mortars, firing indiscriminately in civilian areas. we have spoken to syrian activists who have lists of 114 killed just in the last four days, reports of hospitals overflowing, and forces recently just in the last hours entered the city, and as they did so, they detained people, going house to house. they burnt down houses of known opposition activists. so it's a repeat really of what's been happening and what actually continues to happen in homs because there's resistance there still, a lot of violence. so the situation is really very, very bad and it's not just in these

whether or not they're going to be able to achieve that because the opposition as you know from a human rights watch report yet just this morning are having a lot of problems are and they're made out be an alternative as you're saying as you say regarding the support of human rights watch has condemned some of the syrian rebels about for abuses including a torture and of retribution killings is it possible the u.s. and its allies are wary of who they're actually supporting in this conflict do they know who they're supporting here. i'm not sure i certainly do if somebody should know we are no twenty nine reasons to distinguish this case for us from libya but in one respect the opposition is similar it is not united it is fractionalized is seemingly by by the day of course in syria are in libya you had nato doing the work of the opposition and then they fell apart and they're falling apart even today in syria they never got it together so i think that i think that's a major or you know a major problem and has human rights says there are serious human rights violations there i don't think the american

human rights in africa. her work at him and rights watch has included documenting access to safe and legal abortion in ireland. before doing -- before the joining human-rights watch, she worked for some of the key institutions promoting human rights and democracy. including the south african human rights commission. she was involved in high-profile human rights litigation to promote women and children's rights, including the case the change the definition of rape in south africa. please join me in congratulating her. [applause] >> thank you. i think we do not do enough to celebrate some of the things that we have achieved. as many of the speaker said today, there are still many things we need to write. i think if will look over the past 20 years, we will see that significant improvements have been made to the lives of women. i am really happy you chose to take a timeout to celebrate those. i am very honored to be part of this distinguished group. the work that you do is amazing. i feel very privileged to be part of you today. i would like to accept this award on that -- on behalf of my staff. i feel somewhat

the group human rights watch it has accused opposition forces of committing human rights violations, including torture. government forces are committing serious abuses near homs. >> workers in portugal walked off their jobs today in protest of the government's austerity programs. the metro in lisbon has been closed, forcing tens of thousands of people to find other ways of getting around. the strike is also a process against reforms in the country's labor codes, which union members say makes it easier to hire and fire workers. >> many people waited for buses that never came. ferries and trains were not running either. many union workers are striking due to labor codes they say reduce wages and make it easier to be fired. >> we always hope a strike will have an impact. it is not our it team to halt all trains. our aim is to show our discontent with the policies adopted by the government and its aggressive measures. that is why we are on strike. >> many are reeling from fresh pay cuts. the unemployment rate has shut up to over 14%. the economy has been shrinking for two years, with no

the allegations made by organizations from human rights watch, amnesty international, this is a disgraceful state of affairs, isn't it? but haven't seen the video, i did not witness any. i have visited some many prisons many prisons.o m-- so it doesn't say that the whole country is like this. >> amnesty international visited 11 places, 10 of which people said they had been subjected to mistreatment. >> most of the prisoners receive their family visiting almost every second day. if there was something like that, it would be set by their families. the allegations are false. >> these are people that have been tortured on the internet, they are all faith -- fake? >> try to make sure it is being filmed in a prison. we don't know where this is coming from. amnesty international or any organization comes themselves. is comingnow where it from. >> let's talk about the politics for a second door to. this demand that the arrangement within the country be changed so that there be some sort of federal system in which it left a much more to its own devices, doesn't that indicate a profound lack of faith