Human Rights

A journalist in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 50 lashes in public and two months in prison for reporting on a protest against power cuts. The sentence was handed down on October 26 to Fahd al-Jukhaidib, a correspondent for national daily Al-Jazira, by the General Court in Qubba in northern Saudi Arabia, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Al-Jukhaidib's article, describing the problems faced by Qubba residents as a result of frequent power cuts, was published on September 7, 2008. The...

The outrage in the Western world over the Sakineh Ashtiani issue increasingly seems like an outrage that is directed more at Iran, than any real concern over human rights. US President Barack Obama, who only the other day, lectured India on human rights, so far has not been able to utter a single world against a similar case in Saudi Arabia, where another young woman is on a death row. Last month, the Supreme Court in Riyadh endorsed the death sentence imposed on Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek...

The Japanese journalist detained for illegally entering Myanmar (Burma) has been deported. Toru Yamaji, a journalist with the video and photo agency APF News, had been arrested during Sunday's election in Myawaddy on the eastern border with Thailand. An unnamed official told Agence France-Presse (AFP), "We released him and deported him. We did not take any action against him because of the complicated situation." Yamaji, who had initially be charged under the Immigration Act, crossed over back...

An undercover reporter has found that clothing on sale in high street stores is being made in Britain in dirty, dangerous and appalling conditions. Workers are frequently threatened over production targets and have to work for a pittance. An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatch programme found that top fashion chains are producing clothes in factories where workers are treated like slaves. According to the reporter who worked at a clothing factory in Leicester for three months, employees are...

Amnesty International and Mexican actor Gael García Bernal have launched a series of films depicting the plight of irregular migrants in Mexico. The four films are being called The Invisibles (Los Invisibles). The premiere of The Invisibles, which record the journey of hundreds of migrants from the border between Guatemala and Mexico on their way to the United States, coincides with the start of this year’s Global Forum on Migration and Development, taking place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The...

A second reporter who wrote about a controversial road-building project outside Moscow has been badly beaten up by unidentified assailants. The assault came two days after another leading journalist was attacked in a savage assault. Anatoly Adamchuk was attacked by men outside his newspaper's office and was being treated for head trauma at a hospital, according to colleagues at the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper where he is employed, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The paper is based in...

The Singapore High Court on Wednesday found a British author guilty of insulting the city-state’s judiciary in a book on the death penalty in Singapore. Alan Shadrake, 75, would be sentenced for contempt of court next Tuesday. The Briton is likely to face a possible jail term, a fine or both. "This is a case about someone who says among other things the judges in Singapore are not impartial... (and are) influenced by political and economic situations and biased against the weak and the poor,"...

Human rights organisations that posted on their websites clips of the shocking video of Indonesian soldiers torturing Papuan tribal people have been coming under heavy cyber attack. On Tuesday, the Asian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) reported that its website has been subjected to a concerted “cyber-attack” since October 28. Computers with hidden locations and identities have been used to flood the website’s servers with fake requests, in order to overload it, the organisation said. The...

India has been found to rank 27th among 35 countries in providing civil access to justice, according to the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, a new tool designed to measure countries’ adherence to the rule of law. Strengths in open government and other areas were also found. Formally unveiled for the first time in Washington, Thursday, the Index provides new data regarding a variety of dimensions of the rule of law—such as whether government officials are accountable under the law, and...

The decision of the University of Mumbai to drop the Booker-nominated novel of Rohinton Mistry Such a Long Journey from its BA syllabus following objections from the Shiv Sena students’ wing sets a dangerous precedent. This not the first time that the rightwing party has managed to armtwist someone into complying with its chauvinistic assertions, but this episode sends out portentous signals in being an exemplar for many things that are not right. On September 14, the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena...