Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]
Search Results for: 2006-02-03
Nigeria must comply with recent high court judgment to protect journalists' safety: CPJ
Nigerian authorities must comply with a recent federal high court judgment ordering them to investigate and appropriately punish all attacks against journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Thursday. The landmark judgment, delivered on February 16, could have significant implications for Nigerian journalists, who are frequently monitored, arbitrarily arrested, attacked and killed. However, the [...]
UK criminal court hands down sentence in landmark female genital mutilation case
The UK Central Criminal Court handed down its sentence Friday in the landmark female genital mutilation (FGM) case against defendant Amina Noor for carrying out an FGM procedure on a UK citizen oversees, sentencing Noor to 7 years imprisonment. The victim of the crime, under the alias of Jade for her protection, was three years [...]
Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman on US Supreme Court, dead at 93
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the US Supreme Court, died Friday. According to an announcement from the court, O’Connor died of “complications related to advanced dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, and a respiratory illness” at the age of 93. O’Connor was appointed to the court in 1981 by then-president Ronald Reagan. During her [...]
Sexual Assault in the US Coast Guard: A Coverup and a Call for Justice
Sexual assault in the US Armed Forces is a very real and prescient issue for all service members. In April 2023, the US Department of Defense (DoD) reported that in 2022 there had been “a roughly 1% increase in overall reports of sexual assaults” with all the service branches having seen an increase in reported [...]
For years, Sri Lanka has occupied the international spotlight for one of its contentious laws—the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The PTA was introduced in 1979 during the Sri Lankan Civil War using the emergency law provisions in Part II of the Public Security Ordinance. While similar laws exist in other nations, showing widespread acceptance [...]
Red Cross delegate: Guantanamo inmates show signs of 'accelerated aging'
A top International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegate Friday said that inmates held by the US at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center are experiencing “symptoms of accelerated .” Patrick Hamilton, the head of the ICRC’s US and Canada delegation, visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in March and says that the inmates’ symptoms are consistent with [...]
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. (Matthew 5:9) South Sudan, Africa’s youngest nation, has been struggling with civil strife, armed conflict and a deplorable state of human rights and the rule of law before and after its independence in 2011. South Sudan came to international attention in the early [...]
In October 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to avenge the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and remove the Taliban government that had harbored the attacks’ mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Since then, the Taliban have been fighting the U.S. to free their homeland from occupation. For nearly 20 years, the U.S. narrative of “national [...]
Congress needs to act to restore the balance of power and prevent future administrations from undermining legislative intent and wreaking havoc on the lives of so many Americans that depend on a functioning immigration system. This means taking back the power of the purse when it comes to immigration benefits and creating Article I courts [...]