Stories about Human Rights from November, 2019
Melanesian journalists decry growing threats against media freedom
"Melanesian governments cannot pay lip service to international conventions and commitments to democratic freedoms and in the same breath issue orders to clamp down on journalists' right to expression."
An interview with ‘Siamese Intellectual’ Sulak Sivaraksa on the future of Thailand's democracy and monarchy
"The monarchy must introduce some transparency into its workings if it wants to remain. It must be open to criticism."
Will the upcoming Taiwanese presidential election bring an end to the death penalty?
Taiwan has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that calls for the abolition of capital punishment, yet it has applied death penalty in 34 cases since.
Why is Central Europe leaning towards illiberal democracy? Interview with Czech author Radka Denemarková
"My biggest hope was that we would adopt the Western democratic values. Yet what we took from the West after 1989 was a model of consumerism and not a democratic lifestyle."
Victory for transgender students at Thailand's Chulalongkorn University
Prior to this development, Chulalongkorn University had no official protocol for transgender students wishing to dress according to their gender identity.
Iran protests: Flying bullets and internet shutdown
The current protests are more widespread, more diverse in terms of class, and characterized by a brutal government response that includes a near-total shutdown of the internet.