The subtleties – and limits – of China’s soft power
The Chinese government has been trying to sell the country itself as a brand—one that has the ability to attract people from other countries in the way that America does… Read more »
Category: Human rights
Cambodia’s Communist comrades now capitalist cadres
For years, Tep Khunnal was the devoted personal secretary of Pol Pot, staying loyal to the charismatic ultracommunist leader even as Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge movement collapsed around them in the… Read more »
Turkey heading for dictatorship, exposing underlying ideology
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Europeans on Wednesday that they would no longer be able to walk safely in the street if Western politicians continued with perceived provocations against Turkish… Read more »
Russia’s anti-corruption protests ‘likely to be large’ as ‘Laundromat’ highlights kleptocratic rule
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny today declined Moscow city authorities’ proposal to hold an anti-corruption rally on 26 March in the Lyublino or Sokolniki districts of the capital, instead calling… Read more »
Reality check: life in a Cuban jail
Stephen Purvis loved Cuba and his job as development director with one of several small foreign firms that were setting up as the country sought international partners following the collapse… Read more »
Colombia peace deal gives way to rights activists’ killings, UN says
A new U.N. report found that dozens of civil society and human rights activists were killed in Colombia, the BBC reports. The report coincides with growing concerns that a historic… Read more »
Legislating authoritarianism in Egypt
Egypt’s new authoritarian regime is rapidly closing the public space—cracking down on autonomous civil society and independent political parties, asphyxiating the practice of pluralist politics, and thwarting citizens’ peaceful and… Read more »
Crimes of a Belligerent State: North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses
Pyongyang is the world’s worst human rights violator, and yet, the Kim regime’s behavior at home cannot be dismissed as an isolated threat far from America’s shores, as North Korea’s… Read more »
How to keep the human rights high ground
The U.S. is threatening to withdraw from the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council if it does not undertake “considerable reform,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned a group of nine… Read more »
‘Normalised’ Cuba kills dissident in civil society crackdown
At least 482 arbitrary arrests” of peaceful dissidents took place in Cuba in the month of February, says the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN). The figure was… Read more »