May’s Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar’s southwestern coast in the deadliest natural disaster in that country’s history. The storm left over 100,000 dead or missing, while millions more suffered injuries or other damage. Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta region remains affected by flooding and food shortages. The Myanmar government’s initial refusal to allow sufficient foreign aid workers into the country, like its harsh approach to last year’s democracy demonstrations in Myanmar, again underscored the problems this obnoxious military regime presents for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Its members continue to confront the issue of dealing with an unapologetic authoritarian government at […]

MELBOURNE — Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will attend the opening ceremony of August’s Olympic Games in China, a move seen by some as a victory for economic common sense in bolstering relations with this country’s largest trading partner. But his decision is again highlighting the double standards Australia risks espousing on human rights and raising concerns over how his team has managed perceptions of his new government’s relationship with China. Rudd’s decision came just days ahead of Australia-based Rio Tinto announcing a massive rise in iron prices after signing a deal Monday with China’s Baosteel. Prices will almost double, […]

ABECHE, Chad — As the world marked U.N. World Refugee Day June 20, a new humanitarian emergency was quietly brewing next door to a far more widely known crisis. In southern Chad, just a few hundred miles from camps housing a quarter-million Darfuri refugees, some 60,000 displaced persons from Central African Republic, having fled a growing civil conflict in their own country, have been moved to a cluster of new U.N. camps. The Central Africans’ plight is widely overlooked as a result of the intense focus on the five-year-old civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region and the hundreds of thousands […]

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Sultanahmet courthouse, in the heart of medieval Istanbul, is a drab 1960s building, with the pedestrian look of a place where unexceptional bureaucratic business is conducted. The courtroom, with its peeling gray walls, looks like a dusty schoolroom. But the courthouse’s unremarkable appearance belies the importance of the decisions being weighed there. It was there, in May, that members of a leading Islamist creationist organization, the Science Research Foundation (SRF), were sentenced to three years in prison on charges of engaging in illegal threats and creating a criminal organization. The protracted trial, bookended by the 1998 banning […]

NAIROBI, Kenya — “We hurriedly buried the seven in the shallow grave and fled due to fears of attacks,” explained cattle farmer Joseph Mwangi-Macharia last month as armed police accompanying him went through the motions of unearthing the bodies of his entire family, unwitting victims of the violence that followed Kenya’s disputed December 2007 election. “This was my lovely wife. They decapitated her when she pleaded that they spare her 18-year-old granddaughter,” said the 52-year old Mwangi-Macharia amid sobs, “Why in God’s name did they have to kill her in this fashion?” As the seven bodies were interred in Kenya’s […]

The situation grows more perilous by the day in the small nation of Yemen, on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Every day come new reports of mosque bombings, attacks on Western embassies, regrouping of terrorist organizations, and rebel advances towards the capital, Sana. In the face of such threats, the government has toughened its stance — against journalists. Yemen has been freeing convicted terrorists, while imprisoning journalists. The most troubling case involves the respected Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani, an outspoken advocate of democracy and press freedom, who faces a possible death sentence when he returns to court on June […]

Any celebration of Eritrean independence stands as a contradictory exercise. One of Africa’s newest countries, the recent 17th anniversary of independence serves as an important reminder of the prolonged struggle for statehood. Eritreans first shrugged off a host of distant occupiers, including the Turkish, the Italians and the British. Then the international community, particularly the United States and the United Nations, falsely promised them a chance to vote for independence after spending a decade in a federation with Ethiopia, which saw their country as its own. When Ethiopia annexed Eritrea by force, the desire for freedom led to a 30-year […]

FORMER CONGO OFFICIAL ARRESTED ON ICC WARRANT — Belgian authorities arrested former Democratic Republic of the Congo Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba May 24 on an International Criminal Court warrant. Bemba is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for the actions of troops under his command in the neighboring Central African Republic in 2002-2003. Bemba’s subordinates were responsible for mass rape and torture, according to human rights groups. The 45-year-old has conceded the events took place but argues he is not responsible because he did not specifically order his troops to commit the abuses. Human rights advocates have called […]