Human Rights Archive

The firestorm of controversy battering the Catholic Church shows no sign of dying down, as the institution and its leaders continue to endure scorching new accusations of pedophile priests abusing young children, and of Vatican officials covering up their actions. Amid all the fury, the Vatican made a bold move: In a reversal of a decades-old pronouncement, the church forgave the Beatles for having deemed themselves more popular than Jesus. Reading praise of the Beatles’ music in the church’s official L’Osservatore Romano, one could almost hear the sound of the Vatican fiddling as it burned. Perhaps the piece by Vallini […]

In Egypt, political opposition has reached a fever pitch as concerns surrounding the twilight of the Mubarak regime mount. In early March, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Germany, where a team of surgeons removed his failing gall-bladder along with a benign growth. Three weeks later, the president was back on Egyptian soil to resume his recuperation in the coastal city of Sharm-el-Sheik. That the deeply insular leader would announce his poor health was sufficient cause for concern. But if his homecoming ended wild speculation surrounding the president’s condition, Egyptians are now faced with the impending likelihood of life after […]

The Obama administration’s break with the policy of isolating the world’s worst regimes has just suffered another defeat. Efforts to alter the behavior of Iran and Syria through engagement have gone nowhere. Now, it seems clear that the change in policy has failed, as well, in Burma, the Asian country also known as Myanmar. On Monday, the National League for Democracy, Burma’s main opposition party, announced that it will not participate in an obviously rigged election that the ruling military has been preparing to stage this year. The elections would have marked a milestone in what the world has long […]