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: 2010-09-01
UN representative condemns attacks against peacekeeping mission personnel in DRC
UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General Bintou Keita in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) condemned a series of attacks targeting UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) personnel in a statement on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday. Keita said that “Weakening MONUSCO means strengthening the negative forces that it [...]
Nine California lawmakers sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta requesting that his office seek an official court opinion as to whether Donald Trump’s current 2024 presidential run is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, which prevents those who have committed “insurrection or rebellion” against the US while in office from seeking office again. [...]
The UN announced Friday that 43 people were killed during anti-UN demonstrations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Demonstrators in Goma were protesting against a UN peacekeeping mission when soldiers interfered, resulting in 56 injuries and at least 222 arrests. A religious sect attempted to host the rally against the the UN Stabilization Mission [...]
UN peacekeeper killed and another severely injured after helicopter comes under fire in DRC
A UN peacekeeper Sunday was killed and another injured after their helicopter came under fire in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The peacekeepers were part of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), which has been operating in the region since 2010 under a mandate [...]
Indonesia’s New Criminal Code and Article 411: A Step Backwards for Individual Liberties
Last month, Indonesia made headlines by passing a new criminal code known as the Rivisi Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana (RKUHP). The code includes a number of controversial provisions, including outlawing acts such as defaming the president and expressing views antithetical to state ideology. However, the provision that has received the most attention is the criminalization [...]
The White House announced Monday that a “small number” of classified documents were found in early November 2022 in an office formerly used by President Joe Biden during his vice presidency. Biden’s personal attorneys notified the US Department of Justice (DOJ) of the discovery after finding them in a locked closet at the Penn Biden [...]
Freedom House report accuses Rwanda of transnational repression
Freedom House released its complete report on transnational repression Thursday where it accused Rwanda of being one of the worst offenders. Transnational repression is a phenomena where a country will suppress dissent and target dissidents outside of its borders. The report documented the anti-repression policies of nine countries: Canada, Germany, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, [...]
Amid growing fears of war in Ukraine, Moscow slams US grasp of international law
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized his Western counterparts Friday for what he described as their selective interpretation of international treaties, and poured scorn on a former US Ambassador over his understanding of the 2015 Minsk Agreements. Since December, upwards of 100,000 Russian troops have massed along the Ukrainian border. Diplomatic negotiations between Moscow, Kyiv [...]
Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner Is Shameful
Samuel Moyn’s vicious and unprincipled attack on Michael Ratner, one of the finest human rights attorneys of our time, was published in the New York Review of Books (NYRB) on September 1. Moyn singles out Ratner as a whipping boy to support his own bizarre theory that punishing war crimes prolongs war by making it [...]