· August, 2007

Stories about Human Rights from August, 2007

Egypt: Complaining for Change

Something I love about Egyptian blogs is our tendency to complain. Firstly because we're Egyptian and its our nature and secondly because we have so much to complain about. Among our complaints this week: international scandals, intellectual persecution, the Egyptian Legal system (or lack thereof), the question of beauty and as usual, religious persecution rounding out the group, writes D.B. Shobrawy.

Mauritania : Ignorance and Tradition

  30 August 2007

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Generously endowed women are favored in Mauritania. The fatter the woman, the more beautiful she is thought to be. Being big is also a sign of wealth and the search for beauty and signs of exterior wealth leads to some unorthodox methods...

Japan: Life out of a Manga Kissa

  30 August 2007

Results of a survey just released by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has found that thousands of people across Japan bordering on poverty live their lives out of Internet cafes or "manga kissa". Bloggers this week reflected on the significance of the results.

Russia: Novaya Gazeta in English

  28 August 2007

Robert Amsterdam and Sean's Russia Blog link to Novaya Gazeta's recently launched English-language site featuring translations of some of their investigative stories. Sean wrote in a reply to a reader: “The more Russian media accessible to English readers the better.”

Kuwait: Crazy Week for Bloggers

Kuwaiti bloggers had a crazy week, which started with an earthquake, or rather a small tremor, early on Saturday morning. The next day a blogger was arrested for a comment an anonymous reader left on his online forum. The week culminated with a fire at a local hospital and the resignation of Kuwait's first female minister.

Sri Lanka: No return to my village

  28 August 2007

A poignant testimonial at groundviews of a family who were bombed out of their village, and lost a family member to a mine, and whose village was occupied by the Sri Lankan Army.

China: Citizen Not People

  28 August 2007

Lao Tuzaizi said he is a “citizen” not “people” because the meaning of “people” is very confusing in China. All government bodies claim to be People's institutes, however, no individual can represent “people”, in the end the definition of “people” is up to the authority (zh), while the concept of...

Uganda: Bloggers Respond to Controversial Daily Monitor Articles

  27 August 2007

Uganda’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community has gotten a lot of press recently in the form of a number of articles written by Katherine Roubos, a 22-year-old Stanford student from the United States. Most recently, Roubos covered the first ever LGBTI press conference, a story that prompted an anti-gay rally in Kampala.

Croatia: Gračac

  27 August 2007

Balkan Anarchist writes about his familial ties to and the recent history of Gračac, “a town and municipality located in the south of Lika,” which, before the war, had “a Serbian ethnic majority, the majority of which does not live there anymore.”

Russia: Arrests in Politkovskaya's Murder Case

  27 August 2007

Ten unnamed people have been arrested in connection with last year's slaying of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Sean's Russia Blog writes that she “as ‘political football’ has been dusted off and re-inflated just in time for a new season.” Robert Amsterdam doesn't think Russian prosecutors are capable of getting their jobs...