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: terrorism law
Ecuador officials deceptively obtain genetic data from prisoners: El País
An exclusive El País report published on Saturday revealed that Ecuadorian officials are obtaining genetic information from prisoners through deception, in a bid to curb the rampant gang-related crimes in the country. According to the report, officials obtain the genetic information of prisoners by telling them that the information is being stored so that their [...]
Russia detains Russian national on suspicion of pro-Ukraine terrorism
The Kaluga Regional Court said Friday that it kept a Russian national suspected of being a member of the “Freedom of Russia” Legion, a paramilitary group of former Russian soldiers who now fight on behalf of Ukraine, in custody for two months on suspicion of terrorism. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested the unnamed individual. [...]
The UK government released a new definition of extremism on Thursday in response to a rise in extremist threats across the country. Groups that meet the new definition will be automatically barred from receiving government funding. The statement outlining this definition noted that the change is due to the increasing pervasiveness of extremist ideologies in recent [...]
Peru Congress commission advances bill protecting alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity
The Constitutional Commission of the Peruvian Congress approved Tuesday the report of Bill No. 6951/2023-CR, which establishes that no one can be prosecuted, sentenced or punished for crimes against humanity or war crimes committed before July 1, 2002. As a result, emblematic cases from the period of internal violence in Peru between 1980 and 2000, [...]
Breaking Barriers: A Global Review of Legislative Reform on Women's Rights
The plight of women’s rights in various countries reflects a complex interplay of legal, cultural and societal norms that significantly disenfranchise women and girls, threatening their human rights and dignity. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, and Nigeria present challenging environments where women’s rights [...]
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk released a statement Friday condemning Israel’s latest expansion of settlements in the West Bank as well as the marked increase in “illegal” Israeli settlements over the last year, along with increasing extremist settler violence against Palestinians residing in the area. Türk stated, “The West Bank is [...]
The UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi raised the issue last month of Hong Kong’s new Article 23 national security proposals, which have been a subject of considerable controversy and debate in recent years. The Article 23 law in Hong Kong’s Basic Law stipulates that the [...]
UN announces record high number of complaints alleging human rights violations globally
The UN Human Rights Committee announced Thursday that it received a record-high number of individual complaints in 2023, with many raising issues of freedom of expression and the press, as well as concerns over the treatment of opposition leaders during elections. According to the announcement, there are currently 1,321 individual complaints under investigation by the [...]
Rethinking 'An Eye for an Eye': A Journey Towards Death Penalty Abolition
At its core, the death penalty feeds one of the basest desires known to humankind: the craving for revenge. The 3,200+ members of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty” — a group I co-founded — along with millions of other death penalty abolitionists across the world have demonstrated time and again in recent years how [...]