Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 25 September

In 2011, Russia and the Untied States joined a unanimous vote in the UN Security Council to give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction in Libya. It's high time they do the same with Syria. 

The United States, curiously, has made little mention of criminal justice for the atrocities committed not only in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, but across Syria since 2011. Russia’s objection to an ICC referral should not be seen as irreversible. To successfully press Moscow on the issue, though, it needs to be clear that a global coalition of countries stands behind the measure, including members of the Security Council itself.  Boeing revealed it successfully piloted a retired F-16 fighter jet remotely, effectively turning the unmanned aircraft into a drone. Roboticist Noel Sharkey, a spokesman for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, warned of the dangers of developing weapons that could select and fire on targets without human intervention. In China, Zhang Jing got the call this morning: the execution of her husband, street vendor Xia Junfeng, was imminent.  By day's end, the sentence had been carried out.  Xia’s case highlights both the persistent abuses by a notoriously violent para-police force and the far grimmer problem of China’s use of the death penalty. Azerbaijan is set to celebrate what it will tout as a milestone in transparency and openness this week. It would be more convincing if it didn’t come in the middle of an intense campaign to silence its critics. The past 18 months have seen a string of arrests of journalists, political opponents and civil society activists in Azerbaijan on bogus charges.