Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs covers the world’s major human rights-related news and appears every week. Click here to browse past installments. NEW U.N. RIGHTS CHIEF TO BE NAMED — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week will name South African Judge Navanethem Pillay as the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, according to various press reports. Under apartheid, the Harvard-educated Pillay, who is an ethnic Tamil, was the first woman to establish an independent legal practice in South Africa’s Natal province in 1967. In post-apartheid South Africa, Pillay became the first woman named as a high court judge in [...]
On July 15, Indonesian and East Timorese leaders jointly accepted the findings of the Commission of Truth and Friendship, established in 2005, which blamed Indonesian security forces for committing “gross human rights violations” in a failed attempt to prevent the succession of East Timor from Indonesia in 1999. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta and East Timor Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao issued a joint statement that expressed “deep regret to all parties and victims, who directly or indirectly suffered physical and psychological wounds” due to the affair, in which hundreds of people died. At a time [...]
INTERNATIONAL BAR REPORT ON SINGAPORE — Singapore has achieved phenomenal economic development but still fails to meet international standards on freedom of assembly and expression, and an independent judiciary, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute said in a report released July 8. “As one of the world’s most successful economies, Singapore should be a leader in human rights and the rule of law, and should now have the confidence and maturity to recognize that this would be complementary, not contradictory, to its future prosperity,” institute Executive Director Mark Ellis said at its release. Singaporean authorities continue to restrict media [...]
