Best of Dispatches: Top News Posts This Week

Assessing the responsibility - and courage - to challenge Bahrain's abusive rights policies; confronting the poor state of rights in Putin's Russia; and Beijing's hostility backfires in Hong Kong - these were among the most popular posts to Dispatches, our daily forum for breaking human rights news and commentary. You can find all our Dispatches here.

Dispatches: Time to Stand up for Bahrain's Dissidents

Nicholas McGeehan
Many Bahraini activists have borne the brunt of their government’s unjust laws, unfair convictions and unlawful tactics, but few have resisted with such steely resolve as the activists in the al-Khawaja family...

Dispatches: Countering Putin With Human Rights

Wenzel Michalski
The summer break for German parliamentarians is over. On their return to the capital, their eyes will almost certainly be on the crisis in Ukraine, and the role that the Kremlin has played in stoking it. Many politicians are probably wondering how, only 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat of another major war in Europe looms. But they also need to look beyond this...

Dispatches: China Sows Seeds of Crisis in Hong Kong

Sophie Richardson
The Chinese government has a talent for producing precisely the outcome it doesn’t want: whether it’s repressing religion, culture, and expression in Xinjiang so much that tensions now run extremely high, restricting the space for helpful civic groups such that they find it difficult to operate or imprisoning some of its most constructive critics, stifling opportunities for peaceful debate and progress...

Dispatches: Remembering Jim Foley

Peter Bouckaert
My dear friend Jim Foley, the American journalist brutally executed by the Islamic State this week, was one of the kindest and most caring people I’ve ever worked with...

Dispatches: Under Siege in Amerli

Letta Tayler

(Erbil) – For nearly three months, Iraqi helicopters came just twice a week to the besieged Shia town of Amerli, dropping food and weapons to the estimated 18,000 residents encircled by Islamic State fighters...