The government of El Salvador has apologised for the "blindness of state violence" that resulted in the massacre of over 1000 civilians in the town of El Mozote, in 1981.

Soldiers, of the now criminalised Atlacatl battalion executed civilians, almost half of whom were children. The victims were accused of working with left-wing guerrilla groups.

Speaking at a remembrance event held on Sunday in El Mozote, El Salvador's Foreign Minister, Hugo Martinez, said,

In a statement released on International Human Rights Day 2011, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton reflected on the on-going repression of "people exercising their universal rights" and asserted that it is an "obligation of every government to guarantee the rights of all citizens".

See full statement here, extracts reproduced below:

The Dutch government has issued a formal apology for the massacre of villagers in Java in 1947.

On the 64th anniversary of the killings, Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia, Tjeerd de Zwaan, attended a memorial event at the Heroe’s Cemetery in Rawagede, the site of the massacre.

"In this context and on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for the tragedy that took place in Rawagede on the 9th of December, 1947," de Zwaan said.

The committee on constitutional law of the French National Assembly has passed a bill which will make denial of the killings of over 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by Turkey as genocide a crime.

The bill, which will now be sent to the National Assembly, will make genocide denial a criminal offence and carries  a fine of 45,000 euros and a one year prison sentence for those found guilty.

The first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize has called on the international community to support the pro-democracy protests that have swept across the Arab world this year.

Speaking at the ceremony, Yemeni journalist Tawakkul Karman, who shares the prize with Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and rights activist Leymah Gbowee, called on the international community to intensify support for the wave of protests in the Middle East.

The Taliban’s deputy leader, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad has announced they are in talks with the government of Pakistan.

The announcement is likely to exacerbate tensions between the US and Pakistan, already at a critical point after the recent deaths of Pakistani troops in a NATO attack.

The Libyan government has given British police the go-ahead to conduct inquiries into the Lockerbie bombing and the killing of PC Yvonne Fletcher.

Scottish detectives will travel to Libya to interview Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was convicted for involvement in th Lockerbie bombing in 1988.

Al-Megrahi was released in 2009 on compassionate grounds due to his ill-health. At the time he was only expected to live another 2 months.

Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC said:

A draft conclusion of the EU heads of government summit currently being held, may delay a decision on Serbia’s accession into the EU until March 2012, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Stipulating conditions that Serbia had to fulfil, it concluded,

"With a view to granting Serbia the status of candidate country by March 2012, the European Council tasks the Council to examine and confirm that Serbia has continued to show credible commitment and achieved further progress"

Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, reflected on the work of the UN Human Rights Council and urges further action.

Extracts reproduced below, see here for full article.

"More consequential to the Council’s effectiveness than its composition has been the fact that many Council members – from all regions of the world – have begun to break free from the regional straightjackets of the past and worked together to advance human rights."

"The regional bloc voting practices of the past are giving way to more considered discussion and collective action. This engagement on the part of countries has helped to make the Council more effective and progressive than other human rights institutions."

"Council action in response to the human rights situations in Iran, Libya, and Syria has, in each case, been possible due to the support of countries from Africa and Latin America, and even from within the Middle East."

"It is true that conducting effective diplomacy and changing political dynamics is hard, but working to find agreement with countries that have disparate worldviews has always been a difficult endeavor. Nevertheless, it is important and worthwhile."

United Russia, the nationalist party backing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin saw its representation slashed from 315 to 238 seats out of 450 in Sunday’s polls.

But even this reduced showing seemed to have been gained through interference by authorities at polling stations, the Financial Times reports.