Crime Archive

Indonesia has witnessed a wide-ranging crackdown on LGBT people in recent months. In March, vigilantes in Aceh province raided the apartment of two men in their 20s who were later put on trial and sentenced to a public caning—a sentence that was administered on May 23. In Jakarta, the capital, more than 100 men were detained during a police raid on a sauna on May 21 and accused of hosting a sex party. And police in West Java province have announced plans for an anti-gay task force. In an email interview, Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch, discusses […]

Echoing the symbolic spark of the 2011 uprising, a Tunisian vendor set himself on fire on Wednesday in the town of Tebourba outside Tunis, after police had instructed him to close his fruit stand. Riots ensued, and a crowd of young men clashed with police as the vendor was hospitalized for treatment. The incident took place at a tense moment in Tunisia’s stumbling democratic transition, which entered its seventh year in January. Protests over economic marginalization have multiplied across the south of the country, and on Tuesday, Chafik Sarsar, the head of the country’s electoral commission, resigned—refusing, he said, to […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the potential for Donald Trump to succeed where so many other U.S. presidents have failed in brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. For the Report, Jeffrey Smith and David Rice talk with Peter Dörrie about the need to balance justice with reconciliation as Gambia moves on from more than two decades of rule by brutal dictator Yahya Jammeh. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles: To Ensure Its Democratic Transition, Gambia Will Need Justice—and Reconciliation Can Abbas Use His White House Visit to Preserve […]

In December 2016, the people of Gambia elected an opposition presidential candidate for the first time in the country’s history. The outcome caught virtually everyone by surprise, including the incumbent, Yahya Jammeh, who had brutally ruled the small West African nation as a veritable mafia state for more than two decades. Despite initially conceding defeat on national television, Jammeh reversed his position a few days later, declaring the election null and void after claiming he had personally discovered “voting irregularities” in the final results. Jammeh’s attempt to defy the will of the Gambian people sparked a two-month-long crisis, provoking an […]