The verdict against these five people confirms that Ethiopia's anti-terrorism law is being used to crush independent reporting and peaceful political dissent. The Ethiopian courts are complicit in this political witch-hunt. Getting a fair trial in a political case in Ethiopia today may be impossible. The prosecution should drop the charges against these defendants and instead investigate their allegations of torture.

Ethiopia's anti-terrorism law has faced consistent criticism since being passed [JURIST report] in 2009. Most recently, in December, two Swedish journalists were convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison for supporting terrorism and entering Ethiopia illegally. There, the court did not find credible the journalists' argument that they entered into the country with a terrorist group in order to gain access to an area restricted to journalists. In response, HRW argued that the law is being used to suppress journalists [JURIST report], that the trial was unfair and that the Swedes should be released immediately [press release]. Similarly, in August, JURIST guest columnist and former executive director Abigail Salisbury argued that the Ethiopian government is using the law to suppress journalists and opposition groups in order to maintain its hold on power [JURIST op-ed]. In July, HRW called on the government to stop using the law to repress free speech [JURIST report].

These proceedings reflect an ongoing struggle between the government and the courts in Pakistan. Last month, the Supreme Court formed a judicial committee to investigate a secret memo [JURIST report] sent from an unknown Pakistani source to US Admiral Mike Mullen in May asking for help in preventing a suspected army coup. Zardari and former Pakistan ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani have been accused of writing or having knowledge of the memo, and both have denied these allegations. In October 2011, the Supreme Court issued a judgment urging political parties to stop financing criminal groups [JURIST report] responsible for increased violence in the city of Karachi. The decision stated that militant groups have gained strength because of support from local political groups and order the Pakistani government to help address the corruption. The Court struck down the NRO in 2009, which was signed [JURIST report] by former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] in 2007.

This is the third time in a month that a dissident has been sentenced for subversion. Chen Xi was sentenced to 10 years [JURIST report] in late December for publishing political essays online. In that same month a court sentenced Chen Wei to nine years in prison [JURIST report]. The sentence came as a response to charges that stemmed from written essays critical of the Communist Party, which Chen published on overseas Chinese websites, avoiding the national Internet censorship firewalls. Earlier this week dissident Zhu Yufu was charged with subversion for writing and publishing a poem on the internet that urged people to act in support of freedom [BBC report]. Two longer sentences for subversion convictions belong to Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], who has been serving an 11-year sentence [JURIST report] since 2009, and Liu Xianbin, who was jailed for 10 years in March 2011.

The consultations the Panel undertook were a reminder of how far Australia has come since the nation's legal and political foundations were laid down in the late nineteenth century. Then, in line with the values of the times, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were excluded from the deliberations that led to the adoption of the Constitution. The text of the Constitution excluded them. It was not until two-thirds of the way through the nation's first century that the exclusion was removed and the Constitution shifted closer to a position of neutrality. The logical next step is to achieve full inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution by recognising their continuing cultures, languages and heritage as an important part of our nation and by removing the outdated notion of race.

In recent years, the Australian government has recognized the long history of discrimination and disadvantage among its native citizens, although its efforts have not always resulted in better conditions. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard [official website] announced a national referendum [JURIST report] that sought to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the Australian Constitution in November 2010. In August 2010, Amnesty International Australia (AIA) criticized the racial discrimination [JURIST report] that exists in Australia, which, according to AIA, violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [texts]. In June 2010, the Australian government reinstated its previously suspended Racial Discrimination Act [JURIST report] in the Northern Territory, which allows governmental authorities to regulate how welfare money is spent by the indigenous people of the country. In March 2010, UN special rapporteur James Anaya condemned the law [press release], calling it problematic from a human rights point of view. Australia endorsed [JURIST report] the aforementioned Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which reversed the position held by previous Australian governments. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd championed the cause of improved living conditions for and relations with Australia's indigenous population during his term in office, and offered and official apology on behalf of the federal government in February 2008 for past mistreatment to the nation's indigenous population.

Allegations of war crimes and human rights violations have been widespread during the conflict in Libya. In September the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) [official website] vowed to investigate allegations of human rights after Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] published a report [JURIST report] alleging that both sides of the Libya conflict are responsible for human rights abuses and warning the NTC to act quickly to investigate these allegations. In August, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) [advocacy website] reported [text, PDF] Libyan troops used children as human shields [JURIST report] to deter attacks by NATO. Also in August, Libyan Prime Minister Al Baghdad Ali Al-Mahmoudi requested that the UN create a "high-level commission" to investigate alleged human rights abuses [JURIST report] by NATO.

[This committee] has long questioned the legitimacy of legislative intervention in the field of history—whereas the adoption of resolutions and organizing commemorations were probably more appropriate ways to express the solidarity of the Nation with the suffering of the victims. It considered that the creation of a criminal offense ... recognized by law incur[s] a high risk of being at odds with several principles recognized in our Constitution—in particular the principle of legality of crimes and sentences, the principle of freedom of opinion and expression and the principle of freedom of research.

The Armenian genocide is also a contentious issue in US law and politics. In November the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] decided to revisit a case [JURIST report] to determine whether a California law declaring Armenian genocide in Turkey conflicts with US foreign policy. In August 2010 a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] unanimously dismissed a lawsuit [JURIST report] challenging the exclusion of materials questioning the Armenian genocide from a school curriculum. In March 2010 the Obama administration announced its opposition to a resolution [JURIST report] labeling the World War I-era killings as genocide. The announcement came after the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs passed the resolution [JURIST report] by a vote of 23-22. Erdogan condemned the resolution, and the Turkish government recalled its ambassador to the US.

The court also considered Vartelas v. Holder [transcript, PDF; JURIST report], to decide whether Rosenberg v. Fleuti [opinion text] should be applied to plaintiff Panagis Vartelas instead of current immigration law that repeals the law settled in Fleuti. Rosenberg v. Fleuti held that a permanent legal resident can make "innocent, casual, and brief" trips abroad without being denied reentry. But this interpreted law was changed by 8 USC § 1101(a)(13)(C)(v) [text], which holds that a permanent resident can be denied reentry if he has committed a crime of "moral turpitude" in the past. Vartelas pleaded guilty to a crime before the law was ratified and then left the US briefly and was denied reentry. Vartelas' attorney argued that the statute does not mandate retroactive application explicitly, as well as the relative fairness of the statute: "Covered lawful permanent residents could not visit their parents abroad without being forced to abandon their children here. They would be removed from the country or else confined here. Either way, they would lose an ability they had under pre-IIRIRA law based on pre-IIRIRA offenses. Thus applying the subsection to them would be impermissibly retroactive." The attorney for the Solicitor General argued that the law applied regardless, because Vartelas took the trip after the law was promulgated, and thus had constructive notice. Chief Justice John Roberts argued with the Solicitor General's lawyer about the peculiarity of the law itself: "Counsel, I have to—I just don't understand this statute. This is somebody we would not allow into the country. And yet the only thing we say is: You can't leave. I just don't understand how that—how that works. [...] [A]nd I understand that there is a limitation on actually deporting the person. But here I think the one thing you want the person to do is leave. Maybe for a particular event, but maybe he will decide to stay in Greece if once he's there for the—but it seems very odd to say: We are going to show you how much we don't want you here; we are not going to let you leave."