ALEXIS CRUZ WRITES- Immune to accusations of bribery, human rights abuses, and having really hot weather, Qatar intends to host the 2022 World Cup as planned, come what may. Such immunity can make anyone cocky, and at a New York Times art conference in Doha, the Emir’s sister Sheikha Al…
JAMES ROYCE WRITES — A bad day of surfing might be better than a good day of working, but Australian surf wear brand Rip Curl is experiencing neither of these pleasures after admitting to using factories in North Korea, where work conditions are reminiscent of slave labor, to create the…
SABRINA VERDUZCO WRITES – The United States and South Korea displayed a new desire to cement a lasting relationship between the two countries on October 16. Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye demonstrated an eagerness to strengthen the US-South Korea alliance on October 16. In a statement from the White…
MARY GRACE COSTA WRITES– Is killing journalists an act of war? Associated Press president Gary Pruitt believes it is. Last week at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, Pruitt suggested changes to international laws that would make killing journalists or taking them hostage a war crime, punishable under the 1948…
TRISTAN WILLENBURG WRITES– Western ideas clash yet again with Middle Eastern realities. Saudi Arabia will no longer issue or renew the visas of Swedish nationals and has withdrawn its ambassador from Stockholm in response to the comments of a senior Swedish official. An arms deal between the two countries has also fallen apart over the…
RYAN LIPPERT WRITES – Shin Dong-hyuk, whose experiences in a North Korean concentration camp are chronicled in 2012’s “Escape from Camp 14,” announced last week that parts of the story portrayed in the book are not completely true. He stated, for example, that most of his time in the camps…
RYAN LIPPERT WRITES – Certainly a country with the title “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is all about freedom and equality…right? Earlier this year, the United Nations published a report on the state of human rights in North Korea. It found that the country has one of the worst human…
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES – Has India elected a dangerous man? The media failed to answer this question. As Narendra Modi becomes leader of the world’s biggest democracy, his role in the killing of a thousand Muslims in 2002 remains murky. The 2002 Gujarat riots, a pogrom against Muslims, happened on Modi’s watch. His…
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES – For years, news anchor and journalist Hamid Mir has been fighting for the cause of a free press in Pakistan. Now he’s fighting for his own life. Still recovering from an unsolved assassination attempt April 19, Mir, undaunted, issued a statement accusing the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)…
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES – The Pakistani wing of the Taliban wants to do the seemingly impossible: Win public sympathy through improved PR. Surprisingly, it’s working. Since the election of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last year, the Taliban has retooled its communications ops to project the image of an embattled and…
RYAN LIPPERT WRITES – It’s now even safer to assume that North Korea is not the utopia its leaders would like the rest of the world to believe. Recently, the United Nations published the findings of an inquiry on the state of human rights in the country. The report contains…
ARACELI PALAFOX WRITES – There’s something fishy about the recent murder of journalist Suon Chon, and it’s not his series of reports on illegal fishing. Earlier this month, The Phnom Penh Post reported the death of the forty-four year old Cambodian, who wrote for The Meakea Kampuchea Newspaper. It said Chon…
YVONNE EPPS WRITES — We’re already familiar with Vietnam’s war on peaceful protest and “Internet dissent.” But really: Is it wise to attack a journalist en route to a UN human rights review? Vietnamese authorities kept independent journalist, civil society advocate and prospective UN speaker Pham Chi Dung from leaving…
AUSTIN SZABO WRITES – Though they’ve reported on floods, bombings, wars, and protests in some of the most dangerous places in the world, female journalists in Pakistan and India are still threatened and mistreated at home. Despite repeated calls for change from groups ranging from the United Nations to the Women’s…
AHMAD ALKHUZAM WRITES – One would assume that civilization has come a long way since the injustices of apartheid. But Negev Bedouins face the reality of being forced to pack up and leave. The Israeli government will finalize the parliamentary bill for the Prawer plan, which will forcibly relocate up to 70,000 Negev…
ELODIE INTROIA WRITES – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is exposing the world to the suffering of the Burmese Rohingyas. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority that represent 4% of Myanmar’s population. Though they’ve lived in Myanmar, also called Burma, for many generations, the country’s most recent Constitution denies them…
