Human Rights

Dr Ramzy Baroud RamzyBaroud ( Middle East Monitor ) – Remarks on 24 May by China’s Ambassador to the UN on the situation in Occupied Palestine were impeccable in terms of their consistency with international law. Compared with the position of the US, which perceives the UN and the Security Council in particular as a […]

Gay rights

Israeli Protesters fear for the Future of their Country’s precarious LGBTQ Rights Revolution

The Conversation

By Orit Avishai, Fordham University | – Demonstrations against the Israeli government’s efforts to radically overhaul the country’s judicial system have become a weekly occurrence. Often rainbow pride banners pop with color amid the sea of blue and white national flags. LGBTQ allies are hardly the only groups protesting the new government: Secular Jews, liberals […]

censorship

Iranian Journalists Who Broke Mahsa Amini Story Stand Trial Behind Closed Doors

Golnaz Esfandiari

I’m RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari. Here’s what I’ve been following during the past week and what I’m watching for in the days ahead. The Big Issue ( RFE/RL ) – A revolutionary court in Iran this week began the trials of two female journalists who helped break the story of Mahsa Amini’s death. Amini’s death […]

Climate Crisis

Looking for Home in an Overheating World: If Emissions continue, Will We all be Migrants Someday?

Tomdispatch

By Jane Braxton Little ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Greenville, CA — Pines and firs parched by a three-year drought had been burning for days on a ridge 1,000 feet above my remote mountain town. On August 4, 2021, the flames suddenly flared into a heat so intense it formed a molten cloud the color of […]

Gay rights

Pride Month 2023: Erasing LGBTQI+ People is a Crime against Humanity

Pennsylvania Capital-Star

By Susan Dicklitch-Nelson ( Pennsylvania Capital-Star ) – Twenty-five years ago, at the Christmas table, my uncle suggested that “all gay people should be sent to a desert island, covered with fertilizer, and set aflame.” His proposed method may have been novel, but he certainly was not the first person to suggest the extermination […]

Bahrain

Saudi Arabia Executes Two Shia Bahrainis on Terrorism Charges in “Grossly Unfair” Trial

Human Rights Watch

By Leila Saad | – ( Human Rights Watch ) – Two Bahraini Shi’a men have been executed in Saudi Arabia following what Amnesty International described as a “grossly unfair trial” on terrorism-related charges. Jaafar Sultan and Sadeq Thamer were arrested in May 2015 and held incommunicado for more than three months, according to Amnesty International. […]

Climate Crisis

Increasing Heat is already a Factor in human Migration – New Study

The Conversation

By Rita Issa, University of East Anglia | – It was getting hotter. Frank May got off his mat and padded over to look out the window. Umber stucco walls and tiles, the colour of the local clay… [he] took a deep breath. It reminded him of the air in a sauna. This, the coolest […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey: what to expect from Erdoğan, his ultranationalist Alliance and their ‘Family Values’ Pledges

The Conversation

Balki Begumhan Bayhan, Coventry University | – (The Conversation) – After a bitter and hard-fought campaign that went to a second run-off vote, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has retained the Turkish presidency in an election that some deemed as “free but not fair”. Having first won power in 2003, Erdoğan has been able to extend his […]

Death Penalty

“Don’t Let them Kill Us:” How the Ayatollahs’ Iran became the Execution Capital of the World

Fariba Amini

Newark, Delaware (Special to Informed Comment) – Under the previous Iranian Penal Code or IPC, which was in force until 2013, the charge of mohareb, “Waging War (on Islam,” was frequently used against political dissidents and people with connections to opposition groups abroad, even if they were non-violent. The new Penal Code has provided for their punishment […]