Elie Wiesel stood for solidarity, not neutrality
“We must always take sides,” said Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who passed away last week. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence… Read more »
Search Results for: Dissident
Putin’s ‘prelude to a purge’?
The arrest on June 24th of Nikita Belykh (above), the liberal-minded governor of the Kirovsk region, was headline news on Russian state television. It even preceded the report on… Read more »
Cuba ‘open for business’, closed to dissent
Cuba may be open for business, but it remains closed to dissent, according to a retired career American diplomat. “Despite President Obama’s best intentions, no improvement on the human rights… Read more »
Russia opens first criminal case under ‘foreign agent’ law
Russian authorities have launched their first criminal case against a rights activist for failing to comply with Moscow’s controversial “foreign agent” law, the activist told AFP on Tuesday: Valentina Cherevatenko,… Read more »
Will new Archbishop transform Cuban Church?
In the mid-1970s, a recently ordained priest trekked the Cuban countryside, defying the communist government by distributing hand-printed religious pamphlets to townspeople bold enough to open their doors, The New… Read more »
Russia’s election countdown: opposition pressured by Kremlin
Russia’s liberal opposition has been subjected to all kinds of pressure in the last few months, from leaked clandestine sex tapes to dubious court cases and physical violence. As parliamentary… Read more »
Internal discord over India’s NGO curbs
Days after the Home Ministry put three influential American donors under the “prior permission category” for allegedly funding NGOs in India not registered under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA),… Read more »
HK booksellers’ case shows China’s authoritarian expansion
One of the five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared into Chinese custody last year has defied the mainland police, discussing his dramatic detention at the border with the mainland in October, his… Read more »
27 years after Tiananmen, an opportunity for a political opening
Tens of thousands of people gathered in a Hong Kong park on Saturday evening to do what people across the border in mainland China could not: commemorate the anniversary of… Read more »
Azerbaijan court frees campaigning journalist Khadija Ismayilova
A top Azerbaijan investigative journalist, in jail since December 2014, has been freed on the order of the country’s supreme court, the BBC reports: Khadija Ismayilova‘s seven-and-a-half year sentence… Read more »