Attention to the Unseen

Jezebel reports: Imagine campaigning for a Democratic politician—a thankless, low-paying job, especially at the state level—because you believe in what they stand for. The candidate gives powerful speeches about abortion rights that make you proud. You’re in a purple state, where every single seat in the legislature is critical to protecting abortion access. So you join the fight, help them win, and continue working for them in the legislature. Then inexplicably, in the middle of their term, that politician does…

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Bradley Jardine writes: In a display of China’s growing political influence in the Islamic world, leaders from 32 Muslim-majority countries flew to Xinjiang last year, in northwestern China, for a conference showcasing the region’s supposed economic and social development. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the attendees expressed that “freedom of religious belief and various rights of Muslims are duly guaranteed” and that the reality in Xinjiang “is completely different from what some Western media reported,” a veiled reference…

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The Washington Post reports: Human rights groups and politicians in Britain are criticizing the law enforcement response to King Charles III’s coronation, following the Metropolitan Police’s arrests of dozens of demonstrators during Saturday’s pageantry. Republic, an anti-monarchy group that organized a protest in central London during the coronation, said police arrested six of its members, including leader Graham Smith, and seized hundreds of placards even before its event began. Smith, who said he was released from police custody later that…

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The Washington Post reports: Tunisian security forces arrested the leader of the main opposition party Monday night and shuttered its headquarters, escalating a crackdown on the president’s critics in this formerly authoritarian North African country, which is veering again toward one-man rule. About 100 plainclothes police officers raided the home of Rachid Ghannouchi, the 81-year-old head of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, on Monday evening, as he was sitting down with family to break the Ramadan fast, his daughter Yusra…

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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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