According to recent reporting, “the European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday heard complaints from Ukraine about Russian involvement in the military coup and subsequent Russian annexation of Crimea. From Feburary 27, 2014, Russia has exercised control over the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Ukraine alleges that there was a practice of killing Ukrainian military and [...]
In apparent response to US President Donald Trump’s unilateral American withdrawal from the July 2015 Iran Pact (JCPOA), the Islamic Republic has seemingly reinvigorated its active nuclear program. In turn, this has led to a more-or-less continuing cycle of threat and counter-threat between the two adversarial countries, and has been reinforced by both US Secretary [...]
In the wake of Special Counsel Mueller’s largely uneventful testimony Wednesday, no-one can envy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment dilemma. Presented with ample evidence of offenses justifying President Trump’s removal (the appalling violations of immigrants’ human rights are sufficient on their own) she also knows that no matter what he has done and no matter [...]
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), a political party that has ruled the country off and on in the past three decades, has released an audio-video montage claiming that the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) judge, who convicted and sentenced former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for owning unexplained properties in London, delivered his decision under coercion. The video [...]
Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China concluded a boundary agreement in 1963 ceding a substantial territorial part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) to China. Pakistan also believes in the self-determination of the people of J&K, while India denies this and claims that the entire territory of the J&K is an integral [...]
On June 27, 2019 during the second Democratic Primary Debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders proposed rotating United States Supreme Court Justices with judges from lower federal courts. This solution was offered in response to the “court packing” occurring under President Trump’s administration, leading to the growing conservatism of the Court. Additionally, the nomination and appointment [...]
Nearly 120 years after Hong Kong made sodomy punishable by a possible life sentence, a recent court ruling marks a further step toward completely decriminalizing same-sex relations. In 2007, Hong Kong scrapped its British-era sodomy law. But, for over a decade, several remaining provisions in its Crime Ordinance continued to single out male same-sex relations, [...]
June 26 is a day designated by the United Nations as International Day in support of victims of torture. The General Assembly resolution creating the date imagined this as a day stakeholders – member states and their citizens – would unite in support of those that have endured torture and cruelty and recommit to ending [...]
I. American Border Concentration Camps and the Family Separation Policy as a Crime Against Humanity As noted by Ben Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg Prosecutor, the intentional and unnecessary suffering under the family separation policy can easily be viewed as a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal [...]
When John Okada wrote “No-No Boy” in 1957, no one cared. An obscure novel published by a Japanese press, it told the story of a Japanese-American man who chose to resist the draft and go to prison, rather than fight for a country that had forced his family and friends into concentration camps. But today, [...]