MANAGUA, Nicaragua – A government probe of political dissidents and journalists has caused violent clashes in Nicaragua and concern abroad as the country heads into municipal elections Nov. 9. A statement by U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood criticized Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s verbal attacks against opponents, as well as police raids against two non-governmental organizations in what Ortega’s critics say is a wide-reaching “witch hunt” against the opposition. The European Union, a group of former presidents of the Americas led by Jimmy Carter, Human Rights Watch and the Paris-based Reporters without Borders all released statements in recent weeks expressing [...]
In early October, news and rumors spread through the city of Mosul in northern Iraq that insurgents were targeting the area’s Christian population. The attacks were apparently aimed at driving the Christians out of town — a sort of “religious cleansing.” The anti-Christian campaign reportedly began in September, with “death threats through letters, SMS and e-mails,” according to Mustafa Gundogdu, a researcher from the U.K.-based Kurdish Human Rights Project. (Iraq’s minority Kurdish population, concentrated in self-governing Kurdistan, includes many Christians, although not all Iraqi Christians are Kurds.) Gundogdu told World Politics Review that the threats were signed by a group [...]
A high-profile trial of a shadowy Turkish ultra-nationalist organization dubbed Ergenekon, after the mythic birth place of the Turkic race, got under way in the Silvri Prison Complex near Istanbul on Monday amid fervent demonstrations. The Turkish press has long anticipated the commencement of the trial, which is the culmination of a 16-month investigation and 2455-page indictment that has divided opinion in the country. The Islamist ruling AK Party has long championed the case as the first crackdown in Turkey on “the deep state,” an alleged covert, nationalist cabal of military officers, intelligence agents and policemen acting outside the judicial [...]
