One might forgive Middle Eastern and African dictators for finding a great deal of confusion in the messages they receive these days from the West. How would the West — that part of the world that loudly proclaims its devotion to human rights, due process of law and democratic freedoms — respond to a government-ordered detention, framing and torture of half-a-dozen visiting medical workers? The answer, of course, came through from Libya last week, and was heralded as a major victory for European diplomacy. The West, as it has done for centuries, is speaking loudly to the developing world. But […]

WASHINGTON BLOCKED AFGHAN KING — Did the Americans foist Hamid Karzai on the Afghan people even though Zahir Shah, the former king of Afghanistan who died this week at 92, would have been the far more popular choice? Yes, says Ishak Shariar, Afghanistan’s first ambassador to the United States following the 2001 defeat of the Taliban. At the December 2001 U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn to plan Afghanistan’s future and appoint an interim government, the two main Afghan political blocs were the so-called Rome group, which supported the king, and the Northern Alliance of mainly smaller ethnic groups that had spearheaded […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. WORLD’S UNIONS RALLY FOR IRANIAN LABOR LEADER — Labor unions from around the world have joined forces with human rights groups to protest the detention of Mansour Osanloo, head of the Union of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, who was reportedly abducted as he stepped off a bus on July 10. Osanloo had previously been held in Tehran’s Evin for most of 2006 for organizing a bus driver walkout in December 2005. The union […]

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — In the fading light of a summer’s evening, the three-story yellow building, standing in the middle of a cozy yard of coniferous trees in the north of this city, seems warm and inviting. It has the allure of a new house. But the high walls topped with concertina wire, the metal doors, and bars on the windows remind visitors it is a prison — albeit a very special kind of prison. A man who introduces himself as foreman Sasha emphasizes that the prison “fully meets all international standards.” He offers a tour of the facility his team […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. DETAINEES APPEAR ON IRANIAN TELEVISION — Two detained Iranian-Americans appeared on Iranian television Wednesday and Thursday evenings in a program apparently aimed at building a case they had traveled to Iran to foment regime change. Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Middle East Program, and Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant for the Open Society Institute, were seen on the program “In the Name of Democracy” speaking in heavily edited […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column on the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. MEDICS’ DEATH PENALTY CONVICTION UPHELD — The Libyan Supreme Court decided Wednesday to uphold earlier convictions of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor on charges of intentionally infecting over 400 Libyan children with the HIV/AIDS virus. The court’s ruling was widely expected and — as it signals the official end to the appeals process — paves the way for an out-of-court settlement to financially compensate the children’s families and bring an end to the […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff and appears every Friday. ICRC BREAKS SILENCE OVER BURMA — In an extremely rare move, the International Committee of the Red Cross June 29 issued a harsh public censure of the Burmese government over systematic human right abuses of civilians and detainees, including forced relocations, arbitrary detentions and murder. “The ICRC has repeatedly drawn attention to these abuses but the authorities have failed to put a stop to them. . . . The continuing deadlock […]