As Amnesty releases its annual report and highlights the “politicisation of international justice” – Israel and Sri Lanka are on their hit list -these issues have direct connection to Australia and the Labor government’s refusal to legally manage refugees from countries at war: RACHAEL BROWN: Last month Australia’s Immigration Minister Chris Evans announced the situation…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
What was Ban Ki Moon doing while Sri Lanka died?
The rights and responsibilities of the UN is constantly under scrutiny, as it should be. Its role in Sri Lanka last year, during the government massacres against Tamil civilians, is rightly challenged: Louise Arbour, the head of the International Crisis Group, called for an internal review of the U.N.’s conduct during Sri Lanka’s bloody 2009…
The Taliban bleed, too
Actions that will be discussed for years to come. Although humanitarian bodies must remain politically neutral, the truth remains that in a war zone situation such distinctions are hard to make. And shouldn’t everybody be given care when injured, no matter who they are? The Red Cross in Afghanistan has been teaching the Taliban basic…
Restricting Palestinian movement (and most Israelis say nothing, as usual)
A press release from a leading human rights group: Hamoked – Center for the Defence of the Individual served a petition to the HCJ, along with 15 other Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, regarding the practice of expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip solely on the basis of their…
End the mad siege on Gaza, says Haaretz
An editorial in Haaretz that highlights the ways in which both Israel and the Zionist Diaspora manages the conflict, through spin and PR, rather than actually addressing real suffering of the Palestinians: We will soon mark five years since Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, but Gaza refuses to disengage from Israel. Border incidents continue,…
Why Beijing is the new ruler of the brutalised world
Sri Lanka one year after the end of armed hostilities remains a hostile place. Peace is but a distant dream, especially for the Tamils, investigative journalists or anybody else who dares seriously challenge Colombo’s rule. And how did Sri Lanka win the war? One answer: China.
Please block Palestinian freedom of movement, it’s a really good look
Those “shared values” the West enjoys with Israel: Israel’s defense establishment is not permitting residents of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Sa’ad, southeast of Jerusalem, to leave the town in their cars. There are even restrictions on walking out of the village, a privilege reserved for residents with Israeli identity cards. To its west, Sheikh…
Hands up the New Zealanders who want to hear more about Israel and Palestine?
Two weeks after the New Zealand magazine The Listener published a feature on my work and then last week two letters discussing the Middle East, more letters in this week’s edition. This is the kind of open debate we need far more of: Antony Loewenstein was paraphrased as saying, “Israel is racist and brutal if…
Sipping that cocktail in Sri Lanka should wait til the blood is removed
Sri Lanka is desperate to lure tourists back to the country after decades of fighting (and most of the Western, corporate press seem oblivious to the gross human rights abuses still taking place in the north and east). But anybody with an ounce of decency would seriously re-consider visiting a nation plagued with violence and…
Voices of dissent deep inside Myanmar
The underground political group Generation Wave (GW) are documenting the brutality inside Burma: GW itself was formed after the “Saffron Revolution” in September 2007 when rising fuel prices provoked thousands of monks to take to the streets in protest. Civilians joined the movement, but the military junta cracked down, leaving hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned.…