Showing all posts tagged human rights
Don’t see Iran as freedom fighters
While Hugo Chavez shamefully embraces Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and utterly ignores Tehran’s horrific human rights record, Nasrin Alavi highlights the struggles inside Iran that deserve global support: The Iranian state has to come to terms with the reality that, a generation after the revolution, no hardline Islamic student group is (or has been) able…
A one-eyed view of Sri Lanka
My following article appears today in ABC’s The Drum Unleashed: A Western journalist visits the Sudanese capital Khartoum to interview President Omar al-Bashir. The reporter, after calling him “controversial” due to his “bloody” record in fighting terrorism, gives the leader a platform to explain his views and tactics. The only other voice featured in the…
Myopic Jews berate IAJV for caring about human rights
Following the Australia-wide advertisement by Independent Australian Jewish Voices (IAJV) calling for a more open debate over Israel/Palestine, the following letters have appeared in the Australian Jewish News over the last weeks: What a dismay to find Independent Australian Jewish Voices’ advertisement in last week’s AJN. We do live in a democracy where anyone has…
Mike Leigh, a Jew of integrity, says no to Israeli racism
A man of principle who dares to take a stand when saying and doing nothing (and getting a free trip) is so much easier: Bafta-winning film-maker Mike Leigh has pulled out of a teaching trip to Israel due to his concern over the country’s proposed loyalty oath bill. Leigh said he was not prepared to…
Colombo needs a legal slap-down
From today’s Australian newspaper: Governments around the world are studying the “Sri Lanka method” for dealing with internal conflicts, but the prospect should fill us with alarm. Respected independent observers including the US State Department and the International Crisis Group have drawn attention to credible allegations of war crimes against both the Tamil Tiger rebels…
This is what our asylum seeker policy looks like
While Australia releases some families from immigration detention into the community yet builds more facilities to imprison refugees, a foreign journalist visits the country and finds a privatised and largely unaccountable system away from the prying eyes of average citizens. Just as the government wants it to be.
Hungry for a kinder regime
My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald: THREE FAMINES Tom Keneally Knopf, 324pp, $49.95 History is littered with catastrophic examples of government-induced disasters. A new book by the University of Hong Kong’s Frank Dikotter, Mao’s Great Famine, claims that 45 million people were killed between 1958 and 1962. Mao achieved this by…
Keeping kids behind bars has become the Australian way
With news that Australia may soon release a number of families and children from immigration detention to live in the community while their claims are processed, Mary Crock, Professor of Public Law at the University of Sydney, says how isolated our policy really is: What strikes me is how unaware we are of what other…