This week, Slovokia cozies up to Taiwan. This is dangerously close to the Czech Republic. Formerly, the two were “Czechoslovakia” until 1993. Pacific Daily Times has some dark information about Taiwan’s poor treatment of a Czech citizen. As calls to… Read More ›

Human Rights
U.S. Senate passes bill to ban all products from China’s Xinjiang because of forced labour
The U.S. Senate passed legislation on Wednesday to ban the import of products from China’s Xinjiang region, the latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what U.S. officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups…. Read More ›
US sanctions Chinese solar firms for Uighur human rights abuses
The United States on Wednesday restricted exports to five Chinese companies that it said were implicated in Chinese human rights violations, including large producers of polysilicon for the solar panel industry. The companies were listed over human rights violations and… Read More ›
G7 Meeting: Global parliamentary alliance calls for reform of supply chains over forced labour issue in China
Amid the ongoing Group of Seven (G7) summit in UK, a cross-party Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) has called on G7 leaders to reform global supply chains in light of widespread forced labour abuses in Xinjiang region. Parliamentarians from Canada,… Read More ›
Uyghur ‘people’s tribunal’ opens in London to investigate allegations of genocide, rights abuses in China
A “people’s tribunal” set up to assess whether China’s alleged rights abuses against the Uyghur people constitute genocide has opened in London, with witnesses alleging inmates at detention camps are routinely humiliated, tortured and abused. Chairman Geoffrey Nice said more than… Read More ›
Council of Europe, Human Rights Instruments and Citizens
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 ›
Mongolians in China Face ‘Cultural Genocide’ as Language, Culture Swept Aside
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 ›
Trinity for Scrutiny: Council of Europe, Human Rights instruments and Citizens
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 ›
No Human Rights without Right to Know
“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 ›
Traumatized women recount alleged gang rape and ‘sadistic’ torture in China’s concentration camps
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 ›
Criminal Law in the EU and the Right to a Fair Trial Internationally
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 ›
Stop erosion of human rights in Europe
“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 has more than 100 journalists behind bars amid ‘total control’ of media
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 ›
U.S. imposes sanctions on Chinese officials over Hong Kong crackdown
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 ›
An occasion for the European Union to reaffirm its standing on security policies and human rights
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, September 14, 2020
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 ›
Privacy, European Union and human rights 75 years after WWII
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, August 3, 2020
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 ›
Claims China is forcibly harvesting organs of Uighur population
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, May 18, 2020
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, April 13, 2020
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 ›
China’s government is like something out of ‘1984’
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 ›
China bars Human Rights Watch director from entering Hong Kong
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 ›
How Taiwan’s elections remind the world – and Hong Kong – that Chinese culture and democracy can co-exist
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 ›
Hong Kong protesters tell mainland Chinese traders to leave
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 ›
China must answer for Xinjiang cultural genocide in court
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 ›
US House approves bill that calls for sanctioning Chinese officials over Muslim detainment camps
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 ›
Leaked documents reveal China’s mass incarceration of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang
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 ›
China’s Holocaust of Children
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 ›
State-sanctioned organ harvesting in China
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, October 14, 2019
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 gather outside Hong Kong’s high court to demand release of activist
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 ›
China accused of genocide over forced abortions of Uighur Muslim women
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 ›
China’s new weapon of choice is facial recognition
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 ›
Fears of China’s reach fuel Hong Kong protesters’ use of masks
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 ›
Hong Kong leader imposes colonial-era law to ban masks at protests
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 ›
Hong Kong protesters say they’re prepared to fight for democracy ‘until we win or we die’
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 ›
China’s crimes are against humanity, not U.S. economy
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, September 30, 2019
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 ›
China is accused of live harvesting tens of thousands of organs from Falun Gong
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 ›
‘Horrific campaign of repression’: U.S. slams China’s treatment of Muslims
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 ›
The people of Hong Kong will not be cowed by China
“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 ›
China paid Facebook and Twitter to help spread anti-Muslim propaganda
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 ›
Some Muslim countries shamefully joined China in defending its cultural genocide of Uighurs
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 ›
Cadence Column, Asia, July 8, 2019
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 is creating concentration camps in Xinjiang. Here’s how we hold it accountable.
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia, November 12, 2018
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 ›
Cadence Column: Asia May 29, 2017
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 ›