With the sentencing of two female activists who tried to help an abused woman, the Kingdom has made it clear that it will not tolerate women who stand up for other women's rights.
The courts can be reformed in countless ways but fair trials are possible only when the judiciary asserts its oversight over the police and tempers its readiness to accept contested statements into evidence.
When European Union ministers meet their counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council states for a summit in Bahrain on June 30, the dismal state of that island kingdom's human rights record needs to have a prominent place on the agenda. Despite King Hamad's claims of reform, Bahrain is clearly heading down the road of greater repression and the EU ministers should make a point of clearly and publicly saying so.
While world leaders managed to produce a joint communique on Syria at the end of the G8 summit, the closing media remarks made it clear that Vladimir Putin hasn’t actually moved an inch on the issue. The Russian president once again lashed out at the European Union and the United States for considering arms shipments to the Syrian opposition, suggesting it will further destabilize Syria. At the same time, he made it clear that Russia will continue supplying a range of weapons to the Syrian government, arguing that this will help stabilize the region while preventing a foreign intervention.
From tragedy can come positive change. The Libyan government has that chance, after violent clashes last week between a militia and residents of Benghazi left 32 people dead.
On June 4, an Egyptian criminal court sentenced 43 people to prison on charges of membership in illegal organizations. It was a familiar scenario for anyone who worked on human rights under Hosni Mubarak, when activists regularly criticized the roundup of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members and their prosecution on the same charges
“I have waited my whole life for tomorrow, which will be a new day for Libya,” an elated Haja Nowara told Human Rights Watch on the eve of Libya’s first democratic national elections in July 2012. “We sacrificed a lot to get here.”
Even as Syria’s nightmare continues, policy makers should consider the country’s future once hostilities end. Those planning for Syria’s “day after” should learn a lesson from the past and avoid an approach just adopted in Libya, and before that in Iraq, that will widen divisions rather than heal the wounds.
The sight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs marching on the streets of a number of Arab countries, demanding their dignity and rights, will remain among the iconic images of the twenty-first century. The willingness of so many citizens to take such tremendous risks to their own lives, with thousands dying for their freedom, stunned a world long accustomed to the image of the resigned, subordinate, cynical Arab masses.
The Iraqi government has hurled the country to the brink of a new civil war. In under a month, Baghdad launched a vicious assault on a Sunni protest camp, resulting in 44 deaths; executed 21 alleged Sunni terrorists in one day, and suspended the licenses of 10 satellite channels, 9 of them deemed pro-Sunni.
Even by the standards of Syria's ever-worsening stream of atrocity and massacre videos, the latest footage from the country cannot fail to shock for its sheer savagery. The video, posted on May 12 but filmed on March 26 near the Syrian town of Qusayr, on the border with Lebanon, opens by calmly filming a rebel commander cutting open the chest of what we assume is a deceased pro-Bashar al-Assad fighter, removing his heart and liver with surgical precision and sang-froid.
The last time Amina al-Rabeii video conferenced from Yemen with her brother Salman, a detainee at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, she barely recognized the skeletal man on the screen.
Dubai confirmed its position as an international trade hub for gold in April. At a precious metals conference in the city, the United Arab Emirates’ government announced that the gold traded in the country in 2012 exceeded $70 billion, more than a quarter of the world’s global gold demand that year. Gold refiners and traders like Dubai as a tax-free, business-friendly, well-functioning location.
On April 29, just ahead of International Workers' Day, Iranian authorities summoned Behnam Ebrahimzadeh to discuss the terms of his temporary release from Tehran's notorious Evin prison. Ebrahimzadeh, a labour activist and blogger who is almost three years into a five-year prison sentence, was given leave from the prison after many pleas to care for his ailing son, who suffers from a serious blood disorder.
Syrian men don’t usually cry. But for Yasser, the memory of his son, Mohammed, hurt too much. Sitting in the dark inside his shop on a bustling market street in Aleppo, the 63-year-old, hunched over in his chair, kept asking me: “Why did he deserve to die that way?” Yasser’s grief over his son who was apparently executed is shared by far too many Syrians caught up in this grisly war.
The refugee burden that Syria’s neighbors are shouldering is heavy and should not be borne alone. But keeping people fleeing for their lives in buffer zones inside Syrian borders risks trapping rather than protecting them.
Life in Aleppo is not easy. People here have suffered from shortages of food, electricity and running water, and there has been little humanitarian assistance. The long, cold winter months were particularly rough. The only possible consolation was that there were fewer air strikes because of the cloudy, rainy weather. The government’s jets only seem to fly – and drop bombs – when the sky is blue.
When President Barack Obama sits down with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates this week, Bill Clinton’s praise will no doubt will still be ringing in his ears. On a visit to American University in Dubai last week, Clinton described Dubai – one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE – as a “model of shared prosperity” in a gushing speech that gave no indication of the country’s poor and deteriorating record on basic human rights.
The Chinese call it jin zhuan, or golden brick. The Russians have suggested calling it briuki, an acronym meaning trousers in Russian. And what about the ambiguous S? It originally was just a plural for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, places where a Goldman Sachs analyst was urging greater investment. Now it stands for South Africa, which joined in 2010 despite having an economy roughly on the order of China’s sixth-largest province.
The United States should provide aid to the refugees but ensure that no aid money goes to or through the Jordanian government as long as Jordan sends some refugees back to face death - even as it welcomes others.
Official communiqués on the BRICS summit in Durban are promising new initiatives on trade, economic development and technical co-operation. But Russia wants more from its partners than just trade. With concern rising in Europe over the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin is coming to Africa to find supporters of its world view.
Yemen has set out on a six-month “national dialogue” to address the key challenges facing the country more than a year after it ousted its longtime ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh. A draft transitional justice law before parliament is a good indication of how difficult these challenges are going to be.
The law would offer little by way of justice for the families of victims of the three decades of dictatorship and rampant human rights violations. Among them are several waves of forced disappearances -- predominantly socialists and Nasserists who were victims of the North-South political strife in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances reported 102 cases transmitted to the government by 1999.
During his visit Friday to Jordan, there’s little doubt President Obama will praise it for its hospitality toward some 350,000 Syrian refugees. While praise and support for Jordan’s reception of many Syrian refugees is deserved, the president should not give Jordan a free pass when it comes to its forcible returns of Palestinian refugees to Syria.
After 10 years, Washington should have learned that it cannot improve a government's human rights conduct when it joins that government in demonstrating indifference to basic rights.
On the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein, violence and political crisis plague Iraq. The government blames its problems on regional interference, the unceasing threat of terrorism and the specter of Saddam Hussein’s Baathism. Implicit in their thinking is the idea that rights violations are justified by the state’s responsibility to prevent terrorism.
Two years ago on March 18, as popular revolts swept Yemen, gunmen in civilian clothes carried out the deadliest attack on protesters of the country’s 2011 uprising. As state security forces stood by, the gunmen opened fire on protesters amassed for a rally they had named the Friday of Dignity, killing 45 and wounding 200.
Bahrain’s Sunni ruling family and their allies in Washington and London say they are pinning their hopes on a new “national dialogue” to break the bitter stalemate with the country’s political opposition among the majority Shia population. But a just settlement will remain elusive unless the government delivers on two outstanding reforms: accountability at the highest levels of the country’s security forces for their abusive response to the 2011 uprisings, and freedom for the country’s unjustly imprisoned opposition and human rights leaders.
The Yemen donors meeting in London this week have plenty of issues to focus on, but they should speak up about one forgotten group in Yemen – youth offenders on death row.
I met Hind in a prison in Yemen almost a year ago. Nineteen years-old, she wore an orange hooded sweatshirt, a long denim skirt, and the sullen expression of a teenager who trusts that no one is on her side. “Hind doesn’t want to talk to anyone,” a social worker told me.
The Arab uprisings have been a poignant reminder of how the Internet can promote free expression and assembly, but also how governments can try abuse it. The medium used by demonstrators to organize protests and bring medical supplies to Tahrir Square, for example, was also used by the government to pinpoint human rights defenders for arrest, harassment, and even torture.
The Syrian people are caught in a horrible downward spiral. The government’s slaughter seems only to intensify as President Bashar al-Assad pursues a ruthless strategy of draining the sea to get the fish — attacking civilians so they will flee and leave the armed opposition isolated.
As rioting resumes in Egypt, militias reign ominously in parts of Libya, and relentless slaughter proceeds in Syria, some are beginning to question whether the Arab Spring was such a good idea after all. But would we really want to condemn entire nations to the likes of Mubarak, Gadhafi and al-Assad? As we know from the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America and the demise of the Soviet Union, building a rights-respecting democracy on a legacy of authoritarian rule is not easy. However, there are steps that both the people of the region and the international community can take to make a positive outcome more likely.
Some say we should put Britain's complicity in torture and human rights abuse in Libya behind us. We cannot do so. Lessons have not been learned, victims still await justice, while the 'secret courts bill' would help ensure future abuses remain hidden.
Unusual currents have been swirling around the United Nations Security Council’s shameful paralysis on Syria, a product of repeated vetoes by Russia and China. On January 14, a group of 58 governments urged the council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute those responsible for the egregious crimes in Syria. In the face of the spiraling carnage on the ground, these governments, in an unprecedented act of “justice diplomacy,” insisted that the time for Security Council silence is long past.
It was cloudy the afternoon of January 3 when residents say the cluster bombs fell on the Syrian town of Latamneh. Three rockets containing the cluster munitions fell in nearby fields, apparently doing no harm, but a fourth landed on the street between residential buildings. Its impact was devastating.
In the absence of a reliable mechanism that Syrians know will bring them justice, revenge killing on a wide scale will be likely. And unless Syrian and international players move beyond promises for accountability and offer a concrete plan for justice, Syrian soldiers and armed militias would not be deterred by the possibility of standing trial for their atrocities.
Rizana Nafeek was a child herself -- 17 years old according to her birth certificate -- when a four-month-old baby died in her care in Saudi Arabia. She had migrated from Sri Lanka only weeks earlier to be a domestic worker for a Saudi family.
If Obama wants to bolster his legacy in his second term, he can and should get tough on some of the United States' most unsavory friends and allies. Here are eight leaders to start with.
Dubai confirmed its position as an international trade hub for gold in April. At a precious metals conference in the city, the United Arab Emirates’ government announced that the gold traded in the country in 2012 exceeded $70 billion, more than a quarter of the world’s global gold demand that year. Gold refiners and traders like Dubai as a tax-free, business-friendly, well-functioning location.
Official communiqués on the BRICS summit in Durban are promising new initiatives on trade, economic development and technical co-operation. But Russia wants more from its partners than just trade. With concern rising in Europe over the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin is coming to Africa to find supporters of its world view.
During his visit Friday to Jordan, there’s little doubt President Obama will praise it for its hospitality toward some 350,000 Syrian refugees. While praise and support for Jordan’s reception of many Syrian refugees is deserved, the president should not give Jordan a free pass when it comes to its forcible returns of Palestinian refugees to Syria.
Unusual currents have been swirling around the United Nations Security Council’s shameful paralysis on Syria, a product of repeated vetoes by Russia and China. On January 14, a group of 58 governments urged the council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute those responsible for the egregious crimes in Syria. In the face of the spiraling carnage on the ground, these governments, in an unprecedented act of “justice diplomacy,” insisted that the time for Security Council silence is long past.
It was cloudy the afternoon of January 3 when residents say the cluster bombs fell on the Syrian town of Latamneh. Three rockets containing the cluster munitions fell in nearby fields, apparently doing no harm, but a fourth landed on the street between residential buildings. Its impact was devastating.