Stories about Human Rights from April, 2007
Japan: Pre-election protest party
Amamiya Karin writes in Magazine 9 [Ja] about protest parties held in Koenji last weekend organized by Suginami Ward Assembly candidate Matsumoto Hajime. Although Matsumoto finally lost the election, the party was a great success, featuring live music, dancing, and plenty of stage-diving. Matsumoto, one of the youngest contenders, pushed...
Japan: Abe apologizes to US media, not Asian people
On the apologies made by Abe in an interview last weekend with Newsweek, Amaki Naoto, a former Japanese diplomat who resigned protesting Japan's involvement in the U.S. attack on Iraq, comments that in apologizing about the Comfort Women issue Abe was “putting aside his political belief” in order simply to...
Syria: Human Rights Lawyer in Jail
Syria Comment blogger Joshua Landis reports that Anwar al-Bunni, Syria's leading human rights activist and lawyer, was sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday – for spreading false information.
Zimbabwe: police brutality against activists
Police brutality against members of Zimbwabean women's civic movement, WOZA: “By 7pm on Tuesday, all 56 members arrested on Monday at the Kuwadzana ZESA sit-in had been assualted in police custody and forced to pay admission of guilt fines to ‘buy’ their freedom. Lawyers served police with orders to allow...
Poland: A View on VT Tragedy
A Polish view on the Virginia Tech tragedy – at Warsaw Station: “Minutes after the tragedy on Monday, Polish news programs were running headlines like: “W Ameryce można kupić broń w supermarkecie” Translation: “In America one can buy a gun in a supermarket” Everyone else sees it. Why don't we?”
Poland: Bigotry, Not Homophobia
The beatroot writes about Krakow's gays and their opponents: “So not Campaign Against Homophobia – it should be Campaign Against Bigots.” (36 comments to this post so far.)
Bangladesh: The Politics of Exile
The Bangladeshi blogosphere heated up reacting to the drama of the process of exiling the two powerful lady politicians of Bangladesh. Sheikh Hasina Wazed and Begum Khaleda Zia crowned the center stage in Bangladesh politics in the past few decades. They spearhead two different ideologies in Bangladesh, which instead of...
Algeria: From Armenia to Islam
Algerian blogger Nouri provides links which discuss why the Armenian genocide should not be called a genocide and who is a moderate Muslim.
Colombia: Al Gore's Snub
President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia has been attracting a lot of criticism for his alleged ties with paramilitary forces in his country. Because of these unclear links, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore officially dropped out of an environmental conference where Uribe would be in attendance. The Colombia Herald writes about...
Egypt: Worldwide Free Kareem Rallies
World-wide rallies to pressure the Egyptian government to free jailed Egyptian blogger Kareem Nabeel Sulaiman are being planned on April 27, announces Free Kareem. “While we appreciate the support provided by organizations worldwide, everyone is participating first and foremost as a civilian, not necessarily as a member of a particular...
China: Blame Canada?
Google seizes up before any results appear in a search for 'Celil,' 'Canada' (in Chinese) and '2007,' fitting given that a proxified search turns up no Chinese language media reports from websites that can be readily viewed within China. It's a different story, as usual, for a Google search which includes the word blog.
Touring Libyan Blogs: more blogger meet ups, education, proud to be a Libyan and a handwriting contest.
From Libyan bloggers getting to meet each other face to face to the ugly face of the crisis of the Libyan children infected with Aids in Benghazi, the Libyan blogosphere is thriving with fresh and new ideas this week.
Tunisphere and the French elections:
Tunisia's love-hate relation - more love than hate - comes to life with the extensive coverage Tunisian bloggers provided in the run up to the French elections. France's impact on Tunisia is both historic and present - it has colonised the latter for a good 75 years and is today its foremost economic partner.
Colombia: Putumayo YouTube Videos
“In early 2004, colleagues at the Colombian human-rights group MINGA gave us a very interesting, and potentially useful, CD. It contained several videos of interviews with peoplein the southern Colombian department of Putumayo – farmers, indigenous leaders, teachers, health workers, alternative-development workers, a mayor. MINGA gave us the CD three...
Iranian Women's Movement Beyond Gender and Age
Thanks to Kosoof, a leading photoblogger, we can discover some important moments of this movement in photographs from the last two years. Here are six photos chosen to display that in the struggle there is no question of gender or age. We see old and young men and women taking part in the demonstrations as well as female police repressing women activists.
Online Freedom for All: Some cases worth supporting
In my last article, “Lessons from the Free Kareem campaign”, I talked about campaigning and why some jailed and persecuted bloggers and online writers are winning sympathy, while others have difficulty attracting the attention of the public. I also discussed the logic behind the success or the failure of campaigning,...
Martinique: Stories of Slavery
Karucrea points to Paroles d'Esclavage (Fr), an online collection of the stories of Martiniquean slaves, as told by their grandchildren.
D.R. of Congo: the crime of being born a woman
Trailblazer on the plight of women in D.R of Congo: “They may feel that the only crime they have committed was being born into this world as a woman. What’s even a worse, a Congolese woman. Instead of being able to proudly walk this earth, provide for themselves and their...
Russia: “Protesting the Protesters”
Scraps of Moscow links to a few anti-opposition pieces and observes: “Of course this is not a real, capable, popular opposition. Of course Putin is supported by the majority of Russians, with some justification given Russia's recent economic good fortune. But none of this means that people engaged in a...
Russia: “Extremists”
Sean's Russia Blog writes about the people viewed as “extremists” by the current regime.
Greece: The Roma
Romania International Media Watch links to a blog on discrimination of the Roma population of Greece – The Roma Series, by Devious Diva: “Unfortunately, there is seems to be very little tolerance in the Greek society for Roma people or/and especially for people like DD who have been writing about...