Crime Archive

The leaders of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. are gathering today for the final so-called Three Amigos summit of Barack Obama’s presidency. While clean energy targets and other issues will be high on the agenda, so too will the longstanding challenge of reining in the violence associated with transnational drug trafficking, particularly in Mexico. Cooperation with the U.S. on this issue has been a source of tensions under the administration of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who distanced his country’s security forces from their American counterparts. That trend was partly reversed in the high-profile January 2016 arrest of Joaquin “El […]

A series of gruesome attacks on bloggers in Bangladesh has shocked the country and the world. But they are only one element in a years-long cycle of mounting violence. Large-scale political repression has created a climate of injustice that extremist groups have easily exploited in their war against secularists and liberal thinkers. Unfortunately, political violence is nothing new in Bangladesh. Much of it is the result of the unrelenting, intense rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the governing Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has a bone to pick with Taiwan’s new president, Tsai Ying-wen, who took office late last month. Xi and other top Chinese leaders believed they had pushed forward unification with Taiwan during the presidency of Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou of the long-time ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Although Ma failed to go nearly as far as they would’ve liked, at least in Beijing’s view, some tangible progress was made. Now, Xi doesn’t want to see those gains lost with a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president in power. Chinese officials correctly perceive that a DPP administration will […]

Since late May, Kem Sokha, vice president of Cambodia’s opposition party, has remained in the party headquarters to avoid arrest over charges that he procured a prostitute. The case is the latest in what the European Union has condemned as a campaign of “judicial harassment” against the opposition. In an email interview, Stuart White, the national news editor at the Phnom Penh Post, discusses Cambodia’s current crackdown on the opposition and the prospects for reform. WPR: What is driving the current crackdown on Cambodia’s opposition, and what explains Prime Minister Hun Sen’s decision to end the truce represented by the […]

On June 5, the Maldives’ former vice president, Ahmed Adeeb, was convicted of attempting to assassinate its president, Abdulla Yameen, the latest politically motivated court case against the opposition. In an email interview, New Delhi-based journalist Vishal Arora discusses the state of democracy and rule of law in the Maldives. WPR: What is the state of democracy and rule of law in the Maldives, and how has the space for political dissent been reduced since the 2012 resignation of former President Mohamed Nasheed, his subsequent arrest and trial, and the legal proceedings against other opposition leaders? Vishal Arora: While democratic […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. When NPR reporter Louisa Lim brought the iconic photograph of “Tank Man”—the young Chinese man who stood before a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, just one day after the massacre at Tiananmen Square—to the campuses of four prestigious universities in Beijing, only 15 of the 100 students she randomly interviewed could identify the picture. In her book, Lim wrote: The students I spoke to are the crème de la crème, […]

Last month, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines agreed to begin coordinated patrols to improve maritime security after an increase in kidnappings at sea by the Filipino militant group Abu Sayyaf. In an email interview, Collin Koh, a research fellow at the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, discussed maritime security cooperation in Southeast Asia. WPR: How extensive is maritime security cooperation among Southeast Asian nations, and what efforts are underway to expand cooperation? Collin Koh: Maritime security cooperation among Southeast Asian countries remains primarily bilateral, which makes sense since countries in the region […]

Last week, El Salvador’s president, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, celebrated two years in office. El Faro, the country’s premier online investigative news source, acknowledged the milestone with a feature titled, “Seven Years of Governing Like ARENA.” It was a pointed commentary on the policy similarities between Sanchez Ceren’s left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and its rival party, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which were also foes on the battlefield during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. Since assuming office, Sanchez Ceren, a former leftist guerrilla commander, has continued the hard-line policies on gangs that go back to ARENA-led governments […]