Building on the tasteful piece written recently by Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic, this article will endeavour to explore further why the Tromsø Convention (Norwegian International Convention on Access to Official Documents)[1], although adopted more than a decade ago, is in fact deserving… Read More ›
The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up policies in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, where protests erupted last year over plans to phase out Mongolian-medium teaching in schools, targeting the region’s ethnic Mongolians with TV shows emphasising… Read More ›
Building on the tasteful piece written recently by Commissioner Dunja Mijatovic, this article will endeavour to explore further why the Tromsø Convention (Norwegian International Convention on Access to Official Documents)[1], although adopted more than a decade ago, is in fact deserving… Read More ›
“People have the right to know what those in power are doing” Dunja Mijatovic Council of Europe, Commissioner for Human Rights. Access to information legislation was first seen in 1766 in Sweden, with parliamentary interest to access information held by… Read More ›
Chinese women, who allege they were inside China’s concentration camps, claim that “extremely sadistic” guards carried out gang rapes and brutal beatings. Qelbinur Sidik grew up in Xinjiang and spent 28 years teaching elementary school students age 6 to 13…. Read More ›
1. Introduction Trials are the way to avoid injustices, but the fairness of criminal proceedings will depend on what is meant by the concept of justice. The roots of rights in trials are, with other principles and values, as old… Read More ›
“2020 has been a disastrous year for human rights in Europe,” commented Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, at a speech in front of the Council of Europe at the end of last year. In an unprecedented… Read More ›
China was among the world’s biggest jailers of journalists in 2020, continuing a pattern of total state control over the media begun under ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “core” leader Xi Jinping. “China, which arrested several journalists for their coverage… Read More ›
The United States imposed travel bans and other sanctions on 14 high-level Chinese officials over the continuing crackdown on the opposition in Hong Kong, as the police in the Chinese territory arrested more pro-democracy figures on Tuesday. The U.S. State… Read More ›
Vice-President of the EU Commission Margaritis Shinas was a keynote speaker at this summer’s Diplomatic Conference in Vienna organised by the International Institute IFIMES, Media Platform Modern Diplomacy and their partners. High dignitary of the Commission seized the occasion to… Read More ›
It was only a matter of time. The stories are breaking about Taiwan’s inhospitality toward foreigners. Taiwan has the lowest birthrate in the world. They need people; they need talent; they need support. By denying dual-citizenship to foreigners who would… Read More ›
Early summer days of 2020 in Vienna sow marking the anniversary of Nuremberg Trials with the conference “From the Victory Day to Corona Disarray: 75 years of Europe’s Collective Security and Human Rights System – Legacy of Antifascism for the… Read More ›
If ever there were a time when two nations didn’t want to get along, it is now. If ever there were a time when a growing group of nations decided that a single other nation never wanted to get along,… Read More ›
Human rights activists are collecting evidence that people are killed for their organs For decades, the Chinese Communist Party depended on executed prisoners to bolster its organ transplant trade. Then it emerged that government leaders were relying on persecuted minorities to… Read More ›
It was a week of slap after slap in China’s face. Congress pokes at Human Rights in Xinjiang among other old-news grievances. China “warns” the US—again—about Huawei, apparently unaware that warnings require power or at least clout, of which China… Read More ›
The global case against China is marching forward in force. Typically the West doesn’t care about human rights violations—they care, but never enough to do anything until it involves themselves. Two million Uyghurs missing in Xinjiang doesn’t matter to the… Read More ›
The Chinese communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large. China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state. And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps… Read More ›
Hong Kong authorities barred the head of Human Rights Watch from entering the Chinese territory on Sunday, the advocacy group said. Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director, had planned to launch the organization’s annual world report in Hong Kong… Read More ›
When the islanders on the windswept Taiwanese archipelago of Matsu go to the polls this Saturday, Lii Wen, the enthusiastic young candidate for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, knows he has little chance of winning a seat. But he still… Read More ›
Police fought with protesters who marched through a Hong Kong shopping mall Saturday demanding mainland Chinese traders leave the territory in a fresh weekend of anti-government tension. The protest in Sheung Shui, near Hong Kong’s boundary with the mainland, was… Read More ›
International law is a vital part of fighting for the Uighur people. The substantial leaks to the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of internal policy documents of the Chinese Communist Party regarding the crackdown on… Read More ›
The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would require the Trump administration to toughen its response to China’s crackdown on its Muslim minority, demanding sanctions on senior Chinese officials and export bans. The Uighur Act… Read More ›
Hundreds of internal Chinese government documents obtained by The New York Times reveals striking new details about the execution of the country’s mass detention of ethnic minorities over the past three years in the Xinjiang region. The rare leak of… Read More ›
Using the aggressively bland term “one-child policy” is a bit like saying that 1942 Germany had restrictions on Jews. You may never have thought much about how a huge nation enforces a limit of one baby per family, but the… Read More ›
Having hepatitis C may very well have saved Jennifer Zeng’s life. In February 2000, she was arrested for being a Falun Gong practitioner and interrogated intensely about her medical history at a Labor Camp in China’s Da Xing County, she… Read More ›
You can’t bring a pot to boil forever. While the conventional narrative for Hong Kong warns, “Retribution is coming,” a better understanding would be, “The Chinese are coming if Hong Kong doesn’t level up.” The protests must either “level up”… Read More ›
Hundreds of masked protesters yelling “Revolution Now!” crammed the sidewalk in front of Hong Kong’s High Court and spilled onto the street in an impassioned show of support Wednesday for an activist appealing a six-year prison sentence for his part… Read More ›
The women have found refuge from Chinese authorities across the border in Kazakhstan, their ancestral homeland. But they remain haunted by the stories of abuse they carry with them. Some said they were forced to undergo abortions in China’s Muslim-majority… Read More ›
As China seeks ever more control over its population, it’s turning to one tool of particular note: people’s faces. On Sept. 27, the nation’s information-technology ministry announced that telecom carriers, from December, must scan the face of anyone applying for… Read More ›
Sportswear exporter Dennis Chan and his friends don’t use the word “protest” when messaging each about when and where they’ll next meet to join the massive anti-government demonstrations that have shaken Hong Kong and faith in its future. Instead, the… Read More ›
Defiant masked protesters rampaged, police fired tear gas, and a teen was wounded by gunfire hours after Hong Kong’s embattled leader banned masks at rallies, invoking rarely used emergency powers to quell four months of anti-government demonstrations. Challenging the ban,… Read More ›
They’re dressed in an all-black uniform, faces distorted behind gas masks, using umbrellas as shields, and following a sophisticated set of hand motions that act as their form of communication. For more than three months, millions of civilians have been… Read More ›
Everyone has heard about China as an economic superpower bent on world domination. Its trade surplus with the world, especially with the United States, is vulgar. And for some time, China has been the fastest growing economy in the world,… Read More ›
The Hong Kong law currently going through Congress essentially de-escalates, yet therefore intensifies the Hong Kong issue. Rather than prescribing punitive measures if China escalates Hong Kong into military conflict, the law reassesses the unique standing that made Hong Kong… Read More ›
Barely two months after Han Junqing, from Beijing, was imprisoned for practicing the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong, he died in captivity. When his family was briefly allowed to see his body, more than a month after he died, his… Read More ›
The United States led more than 30 countries on Tuesday in condemning what it called China’s “horrific campaign of repression” against Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang at an event on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly… Read More ›
“If we burn, you burn with us.” A famous line in the movie “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay” has been given a new life in Hong Kong’s summerlong protests: It has come to represent the spirit unleashed by hundreds of thousands… Read More ›
In China’s internment camps, Muslims are reportedly subjected to forced indoctrination, torture, and even death. Yet some paid ads on Facebook and Twitter would have you believe they’re wonderful places. The US-based social media giants have been enabling Chinese state-owned… Read More ›
At a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council this month, 22 mostly Western ambassadors joined in a letter expressing concern about China’s mass detentions in the Xinjiang region and calling for “meaningful access” for “independent international observers.” It was… Read More ›
China has been had. It has been had by Western freedom. It has been had by its own culture’s psychopathology. It has been had by the concept of a promise—something the Chinese can’t understand, let alone keep. It has been… Read More ›
China continues to see the uproar over its creation of concentration camps holding as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs and others as a public-relations problem. In recent days, the government issued another white paper claiming it is protecting religious… Read More ›
Xi Jinping announced yet another new policy for China: Blaming other countries is wrong, each country must deal with its own economic and environmental issues without the problem being someone else’s fault. While this 180° new direction should be welcoming… Read More ›
The situation in the Western Pacific grows more precarious. Muslims have taken over some territory in the Philippines. Martial law has been declared in those areas. The Philippines’ president, Duterte, has offered to resign if he can’t keep the peace. For… Read More ›
China lashed out at the United States for its “terrible human rights problems” in a report on Thursday, adding to recent international criticism of Washington on issues ranging from violence inflicted on minorities to U.S. immigration policies. The U.S. State… Read More ›
Chinese state media has said that a prominent Chinese rights activist had made up “fake news” of torture to grab international headlines, but his defenders said the accusations were a coordinated attempt to smear his name. State media said disbarred… Read More ›
A Chinese man has had his conviction for rape and murder overturned, 21 years after he was executed. Nie Shubin was killed by firing squad in 1995 at the age of 20 after being found guilty of killing a woman… Read More ›
I am writing on the eve of the expected judgement to be handed by the Hague Court which various international experts, pundits and scholars had already considered to be historic. This case concerns the bold and unprecedented act of the… Read More ›
A new report claims that China is still engaged in the widespread and systematic harvesting of organs from prisoners, and says that people whose views conflict with the ruling Chinese Communist Party are being murdered for their organs. The report… Read More ›
