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: 2006-09-06
Hong Kong singer given 26-month sentence for sedition and money laundering
Hong Kong District Court judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung handed down a judgment Thursday sentencing Tommy Yuen, a former Cantopop boy band member, to 26 months of imprisonment. Yuen was convicted of “doing acts with seditious intention” and “dealing with property known or believed to represent proceeds of an indictable offence.” Lin found that Yuen made [...]
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 [...]
'Widespread democratic backsliding' an obstacle to African governance, report finds
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation (MIF) Wednesday released its 2022 Index of African Governance, noting that governance across the African continent has “flatlined” since 2019. The report cited deteriorating security and movements to undermine the rule of law as reasons for the stagnation, and warned the lack of progress could seriously jeopardize the African Union’s Agenda [...]
Turkey’s New Disinformation Bill: Disturbing Trend Toward Digital Authoritarianism
In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey, defeating Kemalist hegemony, there was a glimmer of hope in the West for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. However, the experience of Turkey over the past 20 years is one descending into an authoritarian regime with clampdowns [...]
Israeli Nuclear Deterrence Against Broad Spectrum Attacks: Strategic and Legal Considerations
“Deterrence is not just a matter of military capabilities. It has a great deal to do with perceptions of credibility.” – Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984) Abstract: Theoretic assessments of Israel’s nuclear strategy – especially ones concerning a prospective shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure” – generally [...]
The United States has a long history of anti-monopoly sentiment. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fighting big business was a major issue in politics, with leaders across the political spectrum promising to take on large corporations. Fed up with child labor, dangerous working conditions, low wages, political corruption, and ruthless business practices, [...]
On leafing through Indian Family Law readings in law school, one can’t help but feel disgruntled with the ubiquity of sexism making its way into legislative enactments. The difference in the minimum marriage age for men and women in India is a testimony to that fact. Currently, several personal laws prescribe ages 18 and 21 [...]
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 [...]
From Criticism to Contempt: Twitter and Free Speech in India
Justice H.R. Khanna from the Supreme Court of India once observed ‘Judges should not silence criticism with threat of Contempt of Court but should remove the weakness and drawback that crept into the judicial system.’ Administration of justice and upholding the majesty of law is undoubtedly a herculean task but not a cloistered virtue. Recently, [...]