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Crackdown in Xinjiang: China and the Islamic World’s Achille Heel
A disagreement between major Indonesian religious leaders and the government on how to respond to China’s crackdown on Turkic Muslims raises questions about the Islamic World’s ability to sustain its...
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Reflecting on 70 Years of the Genocide Convention: Is It Effective?
On December 9, 2018, the United Nations commemorated the 70th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) which came into effect in...
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Amnesty International’s Iran Report Should be Followed by Action
After 30 years, Amnesty International published a 200-page comprehensive report on the massacre of political prisoners in Iran. Its main focus is the dark days of the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political...
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Equality Reserved: Saudi Arabia and the Convention to End All Discrimination...
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s much-heralded liberalization drive came to a gruesome end with the torture, murder, and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The murder was not...
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Turkic Chinese Soup: A Barometer of anti-Chinese Sentiment
A heavy soup made of pulled noodles, meat, and vegetables symbolize Central Asia’s close cultural and/or ethnic ties with China’s repressed Turkic and Hui Muslims. It also explains growing Central...
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Support without Stigma
Speaking on the BBC’s Today program just before the turn of the new year, actor and humanitarian, Angelina Jolie, seemed unperturbed by the trappings of the slow news season in her bid to shed light...
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The Two Faces of Iran
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian who is currently being detained by the Iranian regime, is on hunger strike after interrogators asked her to become a spy. Zaghari was arrested along with...
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On Human Rights and Religious Liberty in China. A Conversation with...
Marco Respinti is an Italian journalist and lecturer on religious, political and literary issues. He is also the director-in-charge of Bitter Winter, a daily online magazine on religious liberty and...
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Sri Lanka: Time to Set-up a TRC?
Is Sri Lanka on the path to establishing its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)? The answer, at least if Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is to be believed, is ‘yes.’ Speaking at a...
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Strangers in a Familiar Land: The Dangers of Revoking Citizenship
The recent UK decision to withdraw the citizenship of Shamima Begum and the U.S. decision to bar the return of Hoda Muthana, two women who left their home countries to join ISIS, are reflective of a...
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The Cure for Human Rights Violations is Global Marketplace Trade
Intense economic pressure to maintain open trading relationships is the key to peacefully protecting human rights around the world. Isolationism is not. Military intervention is not. Orchestrated...
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Turkmenistan, the Laggard in the Exciting Revival of Eurasian States
Question: What do Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have in common? The answer is that, after slow and painful reforms, each of these emerging and forward-looking Central Asian economies are...
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Soviet Jews: The Answer to the LGBTQI Chechen Crisis
In 2017, Chechen authorities detained, beat, tortured, and even killed gay Chechens. In 2019, it’s happening again. This is a stark reminder of how the Soviet authorities, in the 1960s (early 1960s...
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Syariah Matters: The Kingdom of Brunei’s Stoning Affair
From time to time, celebrities recoil and, in anger, seek to march for a change to the status quo. Much of is never intended to alter much, but they can count their names among the indignant...
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From Guatemala to Sweden: The Power of Young Women’s Voices
When fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg decided to “school strike” in front of the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm a few months ago, nobody could foresee the movement she would kick start: A movement...
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On Human Rights in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan has long set its sights on joining the world’s elite. Yet there’s a huge gap between their rhetoric and their deeds. Until the government addresses its abject human rights record and the...
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Sri Lanka’s C.V. Wigneswaran on the Easter Bombings and More
C.V. Wigneswaran is the Secretary-General of the newly created Tamizh Makkal Kootani (Tamil People’s Alliance), a political party. He was the Chief Minister of the Northern Province from 2013 to 2018....
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The Modern Tragedy of Child Marriage
“And just like that, my mother was married to the village chaiwala when she was 14!” I distinctly recall my grandmother saying as we sat together on the front porch, warmed by the mid-summer breeze....
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Suffering in Silence: Women of Iraq’s Prisons
Suspected ISIS militants and sympathizers are packed into prisons across northern Iraq. Most are men, but some are women: often wives or female relatives of ISIS militants. While almost all prisoners...
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Help Wanted: A Call for More Malalas, Kissingers Need Not Apply
The United States has consistently failed to consider human rights in foreign policy as an integral part of U.S. security, economic stability, and international political wellbeing. U.S. leadership,...
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