Human Rights Archive

Nowhere does Russia’s policy of protecting its “compatriots”—Moscow’s loosely defined term for the Russian diaspora and Russian-speakers residing in the former Soviet republics—spell as much concern for the current post-Cold War order as in the Baltic states. All three Baltic states have significant numbers of Russian-speakers that are concentrated in territories close to the Russian border. In Lithuania, Russian-speakers make up 15 percent of the entire population; in Latvia 34 percent; and in Estonia the number might be as high as 30 percent. This has been a major source of worry for the Baltic states, because in the recent past […]

The story out of San Pedro Limon keeps changing. First, Mexican soldiers had killed 22 gang members in a late June shootout in a warehouse in the rural town some 95 miles southwest of Mexico City, according to the army’s official account. Then the Associated Press sent reporters to San Pedro Limon, where they found evidence not of a shootout but a massacre. A witness said that all but one of the gang members had actually surrendered before they were executed. Months passed before an official government investigation in mid-September, after which the Mexican Defense Department arrested an army officer […]

Critics of democratic South Africa have long argued that the country maintains a Janus face toward the rest of the African continent. On one level it sees its future as inextricably bound up with that of the continent and it considers the promotion of stability, prosperity and conflict resolution in Africa as central pillars of its foreign policy. Yet on another level South Africa is viewed by its critics in Africa as a state that draws upon the language of interdependence and cooperation while ruthlessly pursuing its own narrow interests, often with scant regard for African sensitivities. This ongoing debate […]

In August, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was about to embark on a trip to Myanmar for a set of regional meetings, more than 70 lawmakers drafted a letter to him warning that disturbing developments in the country called for a “significant recalibration” in U.S.-Myanmar ties. Coming more than two years after the Obama administration eased sanctions in response to historic reforms, the incident is just the latest episode revealing ongoing frictions among the White House, Congress and other actors over evolving U.S. policy in Myanmar. Since the transition from a military dictatorship to a nominally civilian government […]

Yesterday, the Egyptian judge who sentenced more than 1,200 alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death earlier this year was unexpectedly removed from his bench. Judge Said Youssef was transferred from the criminal judiciary to the civilian judiciary, according to reports. His court, which investigated and tried terrorism cases—mostly against the Brotherhood—has been “dismantled,” he told The Associated Press. Could the judge’s demotion have wider significance in the yearlong crackdown against the Brotherhood under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi? Given the scale of repression, any sign of an easing, like dismissing the internationally criticized judge responsible for so many convictions, bears […]