Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, has been grappling with severe stomach pain in jail that could be the result of slow-acting poison, a close ally said on Friday. Ruslan Shaveddinov said an ambulance was called last week to the maximum security IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, about 155 miles (250km) east of Moscow, where he is being held. “His situation is critical, we are all very concerned,” Shaveddinov told the Guardian in a phone interview….

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The New York Times reports: Two of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers were sentenced on Monday to 14 years and 12 years in prison, some of the lengthiest such sentences in recent years and an indication of how the space for expression has evaporated under China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The lawyers, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, had been charged with subversion for promoting what they called a “New Citizens Movement,” which encouraged ordinary Chinese to exercise the rights such…

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Michelle Goldberg writes: Anthony Comstock, the mutton-chopped anti-vice crusader for whom the Comstock Act is named, is back from the dead. Comstock died in 1915, and the Comstock Act, the notorious anti-obscenity law used to indict the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, ban books by D.H. Lawrence and arrest people by the thousands, turned 150 last month. Had this anniversary fallen five or 10 years ago, it barely would have been worth noting, except perhaps to marvel at how far…

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The 2023 edition of Freedom in the World from Freedom House reports: The global struggle for democracy approached a possible turning point in 2022. The gap between the number of countries that registered overall improvements in political rights and civil liberties and those that registered overall declines was the narrowest it has ever been through 17 consecutive years of deterioration. The most serious setbacks for freedom and democracy were the result of war, coups, and attacks on democratic institutions by…

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Erin Clare Brown reports: After a fortnight of political arrests and detentions, Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, has now unleashed a racist campaign targeting Black migrants in his country, with conspiracies that echo the “great replacement theory” and police raids in popular quarters across the country where many migrant workers live. In an address to his National Security Council on February 21, Saied claimed that “there is a criminal arrangement that has been prepared since the beginning of this century to…

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The New York Times reports: An engineer strode onstage at an event in Tehran, wearing tight pants and a stylish shirt, and clutching a microphone in one hand. Her long brown hair, tied in a ponytail, swung freely behind her, uncovered, in open defiance of Iran’s strict hijab law. “I am Zeinab Kazempour,” she told the convention of Iran’s professional association of engineers. She condemned the group for supporting the hijab rules, and then she marched offstage, removing a scarf…

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The New York Times reports: One day in November 2015, Saad Almadi typed out a 14-word post on Twitter about Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince. “Mohammed bin Salman has taken over the economy, defense and everything under the king,” he wrote, replying to a professor who is a fierce critic of the kingdom’s monarchy. A Saudi-American dual citizen living in Florida, Mr. Almadi had little reason to believe his post would attract attention. He was a retired project manager, not…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country. In states led by Republicans, conservative lawmakers have introduced or passed dozens of laws that would give religious exemptions for discrimination against transgender people, prohibit the use of bathrooms consistent with their gender identity and limit access to gender-affirming care. In lashing out against L.G.B.T.Q. people, lawmakers in at least eight states have even…

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