Human Rights Archive

The France-based non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders recently released its Worldwide Press Freedom index, which ranks Russia as 147th on a list of 168 countries in terms of protecting journalists and media expression. Russia’s 147th ranking is five spots behind the Democratic Republic of Congo, the site of the bloodiest conflict in the world, and just a few spots ahead of Iraq, where 85 journalists have died violently since 2003. Russia even allegedly lags nineteen spots behind Kazakhstan, where President-for-Life Nursultan Nazarbayev erected a golden statue of himself and whose government has threatened to sue the British comedian Sacha Baron […]

In late 1979 Craig Etcheson was an impressionable 23-year-old who divided his time between rock concerts and first year Ph.D. studies in mathematical models of war at the University of Southern California School for International Relations. The Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple and The Grateful Dead were his bands of choice. Then Vietnam invaded Cambodia and lifted the veil on the true scale of carnage committed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Images from the Killing Fields shocked the affable Etcheson. The slaughter of about one third of Cambodia’s population in the previous three-and-a-half years was something the young mathematician found […]

ACCRA, Ghana — The name Robert Kabushenga probably languishes in obscurity in the West. Knowledge of the man is limited to Ugandans and anyone, be they diplomats, aid workers or journalists, with an interest in Uganda. That’s a shame, for Kabushenga is a strident foe of the free press, not unlike Zimbabwe’s disgraced, ex-information minister Jonathan Moyo. His zealotry manifests itself in his evangelical belief in the unrivaled brilliance of Uganda’s 20 years-and-counting president, Yoweri Museveni. In his rhetoric and his actions, Kabushenga has frequently crusaded against those reporting and documenting the realities of Uganda and the direction his patron […]

Last February wasn’t a good month for Terry Semel. Not only was the Yahoo! Chairman and CEO in the middle of an ambitious overseas expansion project, but his web search company had been called before Congress to testify about its involvement in a high-profile international incident. Bad news for any businessman, but for U.S. foreign policy it was a sudden and unsettling introduction to the reach of the information age. The trouble for Yahoo started with the jailing of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist who had been convicted of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities” after an email he […]

In the latest human rights blow to a Central Asian nation dominated by Soviet-style oppression, Uzbek officials are proposing tougher measures against Uzbek citizens practicing their religion. Under a proposal revealed by the Uzbek government’s Religious Affairs Committee in August, massive fines and imprisonment will await anyone who shares religious convictions with another person outside of an officially sanctioned house of worship. Under the new plan, through which officials say individual religious leaders will be held accountable for the actions of those in their congregations, a first offense would earn the guilty party a fine between 200 and 600 times […]