February 8, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The people of Egypt today mark 14 days of nonviolent uprising against a brutal military regime that has ruled with near total power for 30 years. The peaceful protests are an astonishing coalition of educated and working-class, Muslim and Christian, secularist and religiously driven, old and young, male and female, and yet they are in fact a peaceful citizen-driven revolution against tyranny. The Mubarak regime has waged a brutal assault on peaceful demonstrators, human rights monitors and international press, and now there is concern the international attention may turn away.
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February 7, 2011 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A video from Alexandria reportedly shows Mubarak’s police force shoot an unarmed pro-democracy demonstrator in cold blood. The man was walking in a street, and there were reportedly other demonstrators behind him, encouraging him to walk toward the armed police. The video clearly shows the man shot by the police, without any violent provocation whatsoever.
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February 7, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
After intense pressure from Amnesty International, foreign governments, private business and the press, Egypt’s new vice president Omar Suleiman pledged yesterday that Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who is reputed to have launched a Facebook page denouncing police brutality and political persecution, would be freed. He was abducted by regime police near the beginning of the pro-democracy demonstrations, on 28 January, and was not heard from publicly till today.
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February 7, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
It has recently become fashionable to say the US is not expressing a consistent policy on Egypt, that the policy has been changing every day or is noncommittal. This is patently untrue and distorts the very consistent message of support for the pro-democracy movement coming from the White House. Pres. Obama and his administration have consistently supported the just cause of the demonstrators, while urging the Egyptian government to take substantive reforms without delay.
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February 6, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
Even as the government has begun to agree to concessions and to begin a process of democratization, there are concerns an employee of Google, reportedly abducted by the regime at the beginning of the pro-democracy protests, faces “serious risk of torture”. There is video showing the moment of his abduction by plainclothes security officers working for the Mubarak regime.
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February 6, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
On Tuesday, more than one million Egyptians turned out for mass demonstrations in cities across the country. On Friday, crowds massing in central Cairo and Alexandria were reported to be even larger than the Tuesday crowds, despite brutal and bloody assaults by pro-Mubarak militia on Wednesday and Thursday. It is now day 13 of the Egyptian transition to demonstrations, and opposition leaders are reportedly negotiating with the government to shape an orderly and peaceful process of transition.
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February 5, 2011 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
The news from Egypt this Saturday suggests pro-democracy demonstrators have begun negotiations with the authorities on ways to ease Hosni Mubarak out of power. Under pressure from foreign governments and diplomats across the region, as well as the UN, EU and US, Egyptian government officials and the military have reportedly begun planning for a process [...]
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February 5, 2011 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
The Guardian’s Jack Shenker has sent forward a list of human rights activists and pro-democracy leaders taken into custody by the Mubarak regime during the last week. The list, which is not considered to be complete, as it is difficult to get information on who has been arrested, and under what circumstances, includes the affiliation [...]
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February 4, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
Friday, for the planned “day of departure”, hundreds of thousands of non-violent pro-democracy demonstrators again massed at Midan Tahrir —Cairo’s Liberation Square—, despite two days of brutal pro-Mubarak militia attacks on demonstrators and journalists. The military today began to play a more active role in securing the square against armed gangs and pro-government cadres. They [...]
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February 4, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
Al Jazeera says the campaign of persecution has escalated dramatically, as a “gang of thugs” broke into their offices, destroyed equipment and set fires, threatening the staff and carrying out what appeared to be a concerted effort by government forces to shut down international media reporting on the protests in Tahrir Square. According to the [...]
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February 4, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
Video from the Guardian newspaper shows massive crowds, described by some as the single largest public pro-democracy protest in the history of the Arab world, at Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Demonstrators urge embattled Pres. Hosni Mubarak to “please, leave now”; one says “Everything is destroyed. What more do you want? Just leave,” while another says “Please, Mr. Mubarak, if you love this country, leave this country.
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February 4, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Over the last two days, Hosni Mubarak has made Cairo the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. After Mubarak’s new prime minister issued an “apology” for the lethal violence waged by pro-Mubarak gangs on Wednesday and into Thursday’s pre-dawn hours, the government appeared to be engaged in an even more intense campaign of violent assaults on unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators and journalists.
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February 4, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
The “Day of Departure” rally has swelled the ranks of pro-democracy demonstrators occupying Tahrir Square. Reuters reports the prime minister has instructed the army to “assist” journalists and protect them from the armed pro-Mubarak gangs roaming the city. The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont gave an interview describing a harrowing experience of being detained multiple times by armed men, some wielding machetes, being forced “to kneel in front of a wall”, being detained for 2 hours by the army, which he described as “polite and disciplined”.
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February 3, 2011 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Ahmed Shafiq, the new prime minister installed over the weekend by embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, has made public apology for the violence that occurred yesterday in Cairo’s Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square. Shafiq addressed the nation, saying “As officials and a state which must protect its sons, I thought it was necessary for me to apologize and to say that this matter will not be repeated”. He called the bloodshed “a disaster”.
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January 26, 2011 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: 8 Comments
Yesterday, in defiance of a total ban on public gatherings, tens of thousands of Egyptians marched in Cairo, decrying the authoritarian methods of the regime of long-time president Hosni Mubarak. Organizers said they planned to repeat and expand the protests today, but thousands of military and riot police are reported to be lining the streets of Cairo, and the government has shut down all access to Twitter inside Egypt, in an effort to prevent social media organizing.
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January 9, 2010 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been a relentless defender of the most aggressive tacts used during the Bush era to combat terrorism. The word aggressive applies to the attitude, of course, not the thoroughgoing nature or effectiveness of those policies. He is now attacking Pres. Obama for his response to the alleged terror plot that involved a Christmas Day bombing over Detroit, which was foiled. Yet Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, has called Cheney’s criticism unfair, and says Obama’s response has been “strong” and “decisive”.
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January 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
There is a fundamental difference between the logic of military tribunals for battlefield captures and the Constitutional order of criminal prosecution and due process: the Constitutional criminal justice system is designed to deal with people who violate laws; military tribunals are meant to be an ad-hoc legal variation of that standard, reserved for representatives of enemy states that violate the laws of war in a battlefield setting. By inveighing against the US criminal justice system’s ability to handle terror prosecutions, the Republican party is not only actively promoting lies, but working to elevate Al Qaeda to the status of a legitimate, sovereign government.
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December 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.
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December 29, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: One Comment
Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed Burmese pro-democracy opposition leader, was recently granted visitation rights to meet with three aging leaders of her National League for Democracy. The meeting marked the highest-level contact she has had with her party in years, even as the Burmese junta prepares to clamp down on pro-democracy elements ahead of the first nationwide election since her victory —never realized by taking office— in 1990. Suu Kyi has instead spent most of the last two decades under house arrest.
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November 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Obama has reportedly secured Chinese president Hu Jintao’s pledge of cooperation on global economic recovery, efforts to curb emissions and combat climate destabilization, and nuclear non-proliferation, both in Iran and North Korea. The pledge of cooperation came despite Obama’s demand that China honor the “universal” human rights of its people, alongside differences over how strongly to pressure Iran to guarantee its nuclear pursuits are legal and peaceful in nature.
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August 15, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: Comments Off
Sen. James Webb (D-VA) has won the release of American John Yettaw, who was sentenced to 7 years, including hard labor, for swimming to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakefront home, effectively breaching the terms of her house arrest. Suu Kyi’s house arrest was extended by 18 months after she was convicted for allowing Yettaw to rest and recuperate at her home; the sentence will exclude her from the planned 2010 elections process.
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August 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The military junta that rules Burma —which it has renamed Myanmar— with authoritarian zeal has handed down a guilty verdict against the nation’s leading pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. Human Rights Watch says the verdict is a “reprehensible abuse of power”. US president Barack Obama has called the process a “show trial” and has called for Suu Kyi’s immediate, unconditional release.
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August 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Associated Press perceives the routine standard for online journalism, blogging and social networking, which involves quoting, citing and linking to sources, as injurious to its revenue stream. It is now seeking to institute a blanket global policy, whereby quoting even 5 words by the AP would cost the quoting publication $12.50. Quoting 251 words or more would cost $100. Critics say the AP, like other online news producers, benefits immensely from the incoming links posted across the web by readers and journalists referring back to its news material.
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August 1, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Corazon Aquino, who served as the 10th president of the Philippines, has died due to complications from colon cancer, at the age of 76. She is known affectionately by millions of Filipinos by the nickname Cory, and is remembered as the woman who helped orchestrate the ‘People Power’ non-violent revolution that deposed the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. She served as president from 1986 through 1992.
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July 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The government of Sudan has abducted a United Nations media worker and is preparing to issue a verdict that might have her flogged 40 times for the “crime” of wearing pants. According to Sudan’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, the aid worker’s two-legged pants are considered to cause “harassment to the public sentiments”. She will be brutally whipped 40 times as punishment for risking the emotional discomfort of Sudanese citizens, by wearing pants that for most people conceal a woman’s body from view.
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July 20, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Former president and leading reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami has urged that Iran hold a nationwide referendum to allow voters to judge whether the 12 June election was legitimate or whether the government has sought to stay in power through mass fraud and other illegal means. Several reformist websites have reportedly carried the news, with Khatami saying “Durability of order and continuation of the country’s progress hinge on restoring public trust”.
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July 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Natalya Estemirova, from the Russian human rights organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, was kidnapped today while leaving her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and later found dead. She reportedly shouted to bystanders “This is a kidnapping!” No one was able to intervene, as four armed men grabbed her and put her into a white automobile.
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July 10, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Post election demonstrations in Iran are getting more confrontational, as smaller numbers of angrier demonstrators continue to suffer physical assaults at the hands of militia and security forces. With conservative clerics stepping up their questioning of the legitimacy of both Pres. Ahmedinejad’s re-election and the continued rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, demonstrators have reportedly been heard chanting “Death to Khamene’i” for the first time.
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July 1, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The government-linked Basij militia has called for the prosecution of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, alleging that he is responsible for inciting violence in the streets that resulted from clashes between demonstrators and security forces. Mousavi has repeatedly urged his supporters to behave within the law and to practice non-violence; the violence seen since the 12 June election appears to have been consistently the result of security forces attacking unarmed civilians, some demonstrators, some not.
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July 1, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”
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June 29, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
Citing foreign “propaganda”, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has formally requested in a letter to Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, head of Iran’s judiciary, that an investigation be launched into the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of Neda Agha Soltan. Soltan was shot in the chest and died within minutes, while protesting election results that show Ahmedinejad won re-election.
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June 26, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: 5 Comments
Dr. Arash Hejazi is one of the bystanders who attended to Neda Agha Soltan when she was shot and killed at a demonstration in Tehran. Hejazi lives and works in England, and he was in Iran visiting. He told the BBC, after returning to Britain, of how the shocking events of that day transpired, and says bystanders seized an armed Basij militiaman who admitted he had shot Soltan.
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June 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo has been detained on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”. Liu was jailed for 2 years following the TIananmen Square protests in 1989 that ended with a massacre of unarmed protesters. He was one of the co-authors of Charter 08, a petition calling for the diversification of China’s one-party system. Human Rights Watch and other watchdog organizations have strongly condemned his arrest.
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June 25, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
There is increasing evidence of a brutal campaign of violence and suppression being waged against the opposition and against demonstrators calling for a full accounting of the votes cast on 12 June. Ahmedinejad’s chief rival Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading reformist candidate, has said “I will not leave the scene in response to the deception, the essence of which has become clear to the people”.
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June 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 8 Comments
As Iran’s presidential election has morphed into a massive international spectacle, with opposition protesters demanding justice and a full accounting of how votes were tallied, the regime has used every technological advantage at its disposal to obstruct online communications and mobile phone traffic. The government now has a wealth of powerful technologies, from western firms, it can use to spy, block communications, and even alter messages before they are delivered.
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June 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
California-based Korean-American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea for “grave crimes” allegedly stemming from their filming video across the North Korean border, from Chinese soil. Reports suggest the two women were abducted by North Korean border guards, who crossed into Chinese territory to seize the journalists in a military raid, while the two women were reporting for Current TV.
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June 5, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The Associated Press is reporting that China has marked the 20th anniversary of the bloody military assault on demonstrators gathered peacefully in Tiananmen Square with a comprehensive crackdown on media or public mention of the tragedy. While the regime refuses to acknowledge what was done to unarmed Chinese citizens on 4 June 1989, an effort has been underway for months to prevent reporting online or in print, as well as to track or block text messages that might mention the day’s meaning.
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June 3, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
BBC reporting from 4 June 1989, day of the massacre at Tiananman Square. A BBC reporter delivers her report from among the crowd, under constant gunfire. She reports: “the air was filled with shouts of ‘fascists! stop killing!’” / “they’re shouting ‘stop the killing!’ and ‘down with the government’” / “the young man in front of me fell dead; I fell over him” / “two ambulance drivers were shot and injured” / “There was not one voice on the streets that did not express despair and rage. ‘Tell the world’ they said to us.”
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June 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Chinese government, in Beijing, controlled by a Communist party that allows no dissent, and no opposition, continues to suppress public awareness, discussion or inquiry, regarding the events of June 1989, in which the Chinese military massacred hundreds of student demonstrators. The term Tiananmen produces filtered results in web searches, and the regime has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, the Huffington Post, LiveJournal, MSN’s Bing, and other sites, in an effort to prevent Chinese internauts from locating any reporting on the massacre of 4 June 1989.
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May 15, 2009 :: Severino Villalonso :: Comments Off
Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s leading opposition figure and pro-democracy activist, has been removed from her home less than one month before her house arrest was due to be lifted. She was detained by the military junta on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest by meeting with an American citizen in her home.
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May 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, jailed in Tehran on allegations of espionage, has had her sentence reduced from 8 years to 2 years, suspended for 5 years. Iranian officials announced today that she was free to leave Evin prison immediately. Saberi, originally detained for buying a bottle of wine, was subsequently charged with reporting without government credentials, then espionage. Her trial was a 15-minute closed-door hearing in which no defense was permitted.
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May 6, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
A mounting movement in the south of Yemen, in opposition to the government has led to the government ordering the closure of 7 major newspapers. Large anti-government rallies led to clashes in which at least 8 people were killed, and the government has now banned the publication of newspapers it says threaten “national unity”.
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April 25, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
Roxana Saberi, jailed for 8 years by Iran for alleged “espionage” (read: reporting without a censor’s license), is now in her 5th day of a hunger strike. She says she will continue her hunger strike until she is freed. Her father, Reza Saberi, says he has spoken to her, she is determined to refuse food until released, and that she “seems weak”. Foreign governments, the US, as well as individuals and rights groups, are calling for her immediate, unconditional release.
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April 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
A court in Iran has jailed Iranian-American journalist, Roxana Saberi, to 8 years in prison, alleging that she spied for the US. Saberi had been detained originally on charges she violated Iranian law by reporting without an official press license. The charges were later raised to espionage, and within one week, she was found guilty, after a one-day closed-door trial.
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April 17, 2009 :: Severino Villalonso :: One Comment
Cuban pres. Raúl Castro has said he is willing to engage the US in talks on any subject, including human rights and democratization, so long as there are no preconditions. Sec. of State Hillary Clinton today said that 50 years of US policy toward Cuba have “failed” to bring about the changes sought, and hinted the Obama administration would be looking to a new era of engagement and negotiation.
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April 5, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: Comments Off
A new Personal Status Law designed to govern family relations in the Afghan Shi’a community is being widely assailed as subjecting married women to sexual slavery at the hands of their husbands. The law specifies that married men have a right to sexual activity with their wives at least once every four days and that women may not leave their homes on any occasion without the explicit permission of their husbands.
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March 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Trials of those guilty of unspeakable atrocities in the campaign of terror waged by the ultra-totalitarian Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia are finally underway, 30 years after the crimes of the killing fields were committed.
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March 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The government of Sudan, based in Khartoum, and under the rule of Pres. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has expelled more than a dozen international aid organizations from the country, charging that their activities in Darfur helped agents for the International Criminal Court (ICC) develop their war crimes case against Bashir. Bashir has been indicted on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, and a fierce crack-down on dissent, press and international visitors, has been underway since.
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March 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The best thing China’s ruling Communist party can do for itself, for its people and for the stability of the nation, is take seriously all petitions for redress of grievances, investigate all claims of official corruption, negligence or assault, give weight to collective or individual property claims by punishing officials who steal property, blaze a path toward transparency in banking, ban government cover-ups and establish a zero-tolerance policy for public officials who use their power to punish or intimidate citizens who come forward seeking justice.
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December 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Communist party government of China has resumed blocking some websites it had unblocked as a gesture of good will, after foreign reporters complained during the Olympics that certain foreign information sources were not available to them. The BBC and Reporters without Borders (RSF) report their sites being blocked, and the Chinese government says sites that contain information sympathetic to Tibetan or Taiwanese independence movements cannot be allowed to be read in China.
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