Forty years ago this week, Kim Phuc was photographed running down the road away from her burning village after a South Vietnamese plane dropped incendiary weapons.
This past week in Bangkok, the ASEAN Inter-government Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) discussed one of the most important documents drafted by ASEAN since the regional grouping adopted the ASEAN Charter five years ago.
In July, the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh will receive one of the most important documents drafted since the adoption five years ago of the ASEAN Charter.
“No prejudice against HIV/AIDS patients.” That’s a banner worth walking behind. To make it real in Vietnam will require those walking in Washington to ask tough questions of U.S. global AIDS policies.
Vietnam is the world’s largest exporter of cashews. But in the south, where cashew production is common, some of that production occurs in so-called drug “treatment” centers. Forty thousand drug users are detained at any one time in Vietnam, and forced labor is their main “treatment.”
Rehab here may be hard but it has nothing on drug "treatment" in Vietnam, where tens of thousands of unfortunate users are detained in forced labor camps and tortured and beaten. Even worse, international donors and aid groups actually work inside these detention centers, providing funding and a fig leaf to an extremely abusive system.
Sophie Richardson, Asia Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch spoke to The Fresh Outlook's Foreign Affairs reporter, Emma Wilson, about politically motivated arrests of bloogers in Vietnam.
The fact that June 26 is both "International Day against Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking" and "International Day in Support of Victims of Torture" has become more than a coincidence. Evidence from around the world indicates that people who use drugs are all too often victims of torture.
Forty years ago this week, Kim Phuc was photographed running down the road away from her burning village after a South Vietnamese plane dropped incendiary weapons.
This past week in Bangkok, the ASEAN Inter-government Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) discussed one of the most important documents drafted by ASEAN since the regional grouping adopted the ASEAN Charter five years ago.