Around the world, millions are effectively punished before they are tried and many are subjected to violence and even torture—at great social cost and although alternatives are available.
Students shot dead by police, others “disappeared”, mass graves located … the absence of the rule of law and trampling on human rights in Mexico is sparking widespread protest.
Attacks by US drones have often been presented as forensic, yet only one in 25 victims in Pakistan were identifiably associated with al-Qaeda.
Much of the analysis of the US-led attacks on IS has been from the American end of the telescope. But how does it look from that of its Arab allies?
Developments in Kenya show what happens when “counter-terrorist” police and other security forces are not subject to public accountability.
Militarisation of the police is a developing phenomenon, spreading into nominally democratic societies as the bonds of popular consent to the status quo weaken.
The military-backed authorities in Egypt refused entry this week to two top officials of Human Rights Watch, seeking to launch their report on the massacre a year ago in Cairo. They blocked the messengers but they may have more trouble blocking the message.
In a ruling described by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as “landmark”, the European Court of Human Rights has passed excoriating judgment on the US “war on terror” following the attacks of 2001.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, sent a frisson across the EU with his boast last weekend that he is building a “non-liberal” state, like in China, Russia or Turkey, free of “western European dogma”—but then his steady destruction of liberty in Hungary has gone largely unchallenged.
As the Islamic State has consolidated its hold in Mosul, those who do not share its extreme fundamentalism have been subjected to brutal treatment—for which those who visited the war on Iraq bear an historic responsibility.
“Terrorism” has become a formulaic term in political discourse, often deployed as a device sustaining a US informal empire. Time to unpack it—and develop a more secure multilateral order.
The UK home secretary has pushed legislation through Parliament which allows her to strip individuals of their citizenship, even if they are rendered stateless—but the case on which she drew turns out to have a Kafkaesque quality.
