Nigeria: Justice Initiative condemns crackdown

The Open Society Justice Initiative today (13 July) denounced a police crackdown on a meeting of human rights activists in Abuja and the threatened arrest of meeting organizers. The meeting, termed a "People's Tribunal," was organized by Nigerian human rights NGOs to protest the recent removal of Bukhari Bello as head of Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)—a move interpreted by the NGOs as a direct assault on the independence of that body.