The current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. To recover our freedom and restore democracy, we must reduce surveillance to the point where it is possible for whistleblowers of all kinds to talk with journalists without being spotted. To do this reliably, we must reduce the surveillance capacity of the […]
Since Xi Jinping was anointed as China’s new president, reports of official repression of dissent have hardly abated. But, while criticism of China’s human rights record clearly has merit, it is important not to lose sight of the extent of genuine political change in China. Read Here – Project Syndicate
For too long, women were viewed as victims — of discrimination and illiteracy, of violence, and confined to deferential positions in society because of once-unbreakable cultural and religious traditions. But as the tide of democracy sweeps the globe, women are becoming a growing force on the world stage. We are seeing a new voice of activism […]
Recent developments in Russia have evoked memories of a famous line by Vladimir Lenin: “The courts should not do away with terror … but should give it foundation and legality, clearly, honestly and without embellishments.” In just the six months since he reseated himself as president,Vladimir Putin has been busy creating a legislative framework that might make Lenin proud. Under the Soviet legal system, the court […]
Chen Shin-chi smiles through his dentures and drops down to the dusty floor of a jail cell to do a push up. He looks up at the crowd watching him, smiles again, and flips on his back to perform sit-ups, his body stretching almost the entire length of the three-by-two-meter cell. In 1968, he lived […]
In 2006 Egyptian human rights activist Wael Abbas posted a video online of police sodomizing a bus driver with a stick, leading to the rare prosecution of two officers. Later, Abbas’s YouTube account was suddenly suspended because he had violated YouTube‘s guidelines banning “graphic or gratuitous violence.” YouTube restored the account after human rights groups informed its parent company Google that Abbas’s posts were a […]
looking beyond borders 