For as long as the humanitarian impulse to rescue the desperate and the destitute is trumped by Europe’s focus on border control, the death toll will rise inexorably.
Daily life in the Donbass region can be described as follows: ‘If there is a Ukrainian flag, there is life. If there isn’t – you are on your own.’
Past injustices inflicted on the last outpost of empire need to be acknowledged – and redressed.
The UK government makes it easy for the super-rich to harm their domestic employees. One small amendment to the Modern Slavery Bill could make a big difference, but ministers seem strangely reluctant.
The US-led campaign against Islamic State isn’t working. It won’t unless it addresses Shia sectarianism in Iraq and Assad’s atrocities in Syria.
A mother of seven is facing charges of treason in the Russian town of Vyazma. Her alleged crime? Phoning the Ukrainian embassy to warn about Russian troop movements.
As the trial of an extreme Russian nationalist organisation continues in Moscow this month, the parents of one of their victims try to come to terms with what has happened. Русский
‘National security’ is often the card played by states denying human rights. With the North Korean dictatorship next door, in South Korea it is a regular trump.
Nine years after a series of coordinated attacks on government and military installations in and around Nalchik, Russia, 58 men have been convicted in a show trial worthy of the Stalin era.
The CIA’s ‘deep interrogation’ and the Guantánamo detention camp came to symbolise the US ‘war on terror’. Yet it turns out that most individuals subjected to the first weren’t thought to merit transfer to the second.
Recognising there are political elements to any campaign of militant violence makes it less ‘terrifying’ for society and is crucial in developing measures to constrain it.
