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Update

Zimbabwe - Political Standoff Continues The situation remains tense in Zimbabwe after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai temporarily withdrew from the governing coalition on October 16th. Following the 10-day standoff, Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) boycotted Tuesday’s cabinet meeting since the party’s outstanding complaints with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party have yet to be addressed. The initial catalyst for the disengagement of the MDC was the temporary detainment of one of its senior members, Roy Bennett, by government forces.  The MDC has continued its boycott on the basis that Mugabe is still not fully implementing arrangements of the Global Political Agreement, that…

October 27, 2009

Update

Ohio's botched and failed execution of Romell Broom, which has led to the postponement of all the Buckeye State's execution plans – at least for this year – has created another problem for the state.  It seems that when you are doing something morally repugnant, like putting a human being to death with lethal chemicals, those with ethics don’t want to help you.  So, as Ohio looks for ways to improve its ability to kill prisoners without embarrassing mishaps, it is not surprising that they are having a hard time finding a respectable member of the medical profession who is…

October 26, 2009

Update

This week is the anniversary of the death of Brad Will, a US video journalist who was shot and killed in Mexico on October 27, 2006. When he was killed, Bradley Roland Will was in Oaxaca City, in southern Mexico, filming a clash between members of a local protest movement (Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca, APPO) and supporters and officials of the local governing party. Three years later, Amnesty International believes that the truth about Brad Will's death has still not come out. Juan Manuel Martínez, an APPO sympathizer, has been detained pending trial since October 2008 for Will's murder.…

October 26, 2009

Update

A dramatic disconnect between principles and policies has hampered current U.S. health care reform efforts. This became obvious when candidate Obama declared health care to be a right and then proceeded to treat it as a commodity when negotiating with insurance companies a requirement for individuals to buy a commercial health insurance product. Similarly, early on in the debate the president championed the principle of universality by promising some form of health coverage – if not necessarily health care - for 46 million uninsured people, only to lower the policy goal to 30 million American citizens in his speech before…

October 23, 2009

Update

Why is the Iranian government so afraid of Kian Tajbakhsh? To all appearances, the 47-year-old Iranian-American is a mild-mannered social scientist who taught urban policy at the New School University in New York. He was living quietly in Tehran with his Iranian wife and baby daughter and working on a book when he was arrested on July 9. So why was he just convicted by a Revolutionary Court in Tehran and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison? Judging from the list of charges piled up against him and the long prison term imposed, one would think he was…

October 23, 2009

Update

The U.S. Department of State‘s Office of War Crimes Issues released its investigation into the final stage of the conflict in Sri Lanka today. Requested by Congress, the report (pdf) covers the period between January and May 2009 and consists of an overview of incidents that happened during the final stage of the conflict. It is based on a wide range of sources, including Amnesty International’s own reporting, and uses both traditional, and innovative evidence such as satellite imagery and aerial photographs. While the report "does not reach any legal or factual conclusions", it provides a disturbing overview of what…

October 22, 2009

Update

The Death Penalty Information Center released a new study today on the high costs, and lack of real benefits, associated with capital punishment in the United States.  The report, called Smart on Crime:  Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis, also includes the results of a poll of 500 randomly selected U.S. police chiefs who by a more than 2 to 1 margin reject the idea that the death penalty is a deterrent (an assessment confirmed by criminologists),  and, also by a greater than 2 to 1 margin, believe that the death penalty is used as a…

October 20, 2009

Update

What's Up This Week: Afghanistan: Elections Run-Off Angola: Humanitarian Crisis Upcoming This Week Afghanistan Elections – Take Two On Sunday, the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) announced the results from its fraud investigations regarding the August 20th Afghanistan presidential elections.  The commission’s conclusions invalidated nearly one million votes cast as fraudulent, with 210 out of the 350 polling stations marred by fraud.  As a consequence, incumbent President Hamid Karzai’s margin of victory has diminished to below the 50% vote threshold necessary for an outright win forcing him to concede to a run-off election against opponent Abdullah Abdullah on November 7th. …

October 20, 2009

Update

So it basically goes like this: Angola starts to kick out Congolese citizens living in Angola, almost 18,000 since July. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) says "for reals?" and shows a bunch of Angolan citizens to the door, well, border when it launches its own repatriation operation. So then Angola says "oh, yeah?" and increases the pace of expulsions of Congolese. The DRC says, "yeah," and sends more Angolans over the border, approximately 28,000 since August. Angola says...well, you get the point. Angola and the DRC have a long history of porous borders with refugees crossing back and forth escaping internal conflict,…

October 16, 2009

Update

Wednesday, Oct. 14, radio host Tom Joyner became the first person to obtain a posthumous pardon for unjust executions in South Carolina.  South Carolina is a typical gung-ho executing Southern state, so this achievement was no small feat.  Joyner obtained the pardon on behalf of two great uncles, Thomas and Meeks Griffin, who in 1915 were wrongfully put to death for the 1913 murder of a white Civil War veteran in Blackstock, SC.  Joyner only found out about this tragic episode because of his participation in African American Lives 2, a 2006 PBS show that traced the ancestries of prominent…

October 16, 2009

Update

Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan was on Democracy Now! this morning discussing her new book, The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights. Watch above or on the DN! site, which also has a transcript. Irene kicked off a two-week U.S. book tour last night in New York. Come out and see her at an event near you!

October 16, 2009

Update

Tens of thousands of protesters came together at a rally Sunday afternoon following a march through the streets of Washington DC.  The event, known as the National Equality March, was an enormous gathering of support for equal rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) citizens in the country.  While the demand for “equal protection in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states,” seems reasonable enough, the matter of whether LGBT citizens should be granted equal rights under the law has been a huge debate in recent years. Two major points of protest are, first, for the government…

October 15, 2009