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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Josh Rogin writes: The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case. Many dictatorships unjustly imprison Americans. But while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure…

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‘It was a massacre’: How security forces cracked down on protesting worshipers in southeastern Iran

‘It was a massacre’: How security forces cracked down on protesting worshipers in southeastern Iran

The New York Times reports: Some of the wounded tried to crawl away to escape the gunfire. Others bled to death on prayer mats as people tried to drag them to safety. But the snipers and officers kept pulling their triggers, firing bullet after bullet into men and young boys at a worship area where Friday Prayer had been underway. The horrific scene unfolded on Sept. 30 in Zahedan, a city in southeastern Iran that is home to the ethnic…

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How Moscow abducts Ukrainian children and forces them to become Russian

How Moscow abducts Ukrainian children and forces them to become Russian

The Associated Press reports: Olga Lopatkina paced around her basement in circles like a trapped animal. For more than a week, the Ukrainian mother had heard nothing from her six adopted children stranded in Mariupol, and she was going out of her mind with worry. The kids had spent their vacation at a resort in the port city, as usual. But this time war with Russia had broken out, and her little ones — always terrified of the dark —…

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Protests in Iran spread, including to oil sector, despite regime’s violent crackdown

Protests in Iran spread, including to oil sector, despite regime’s violent crackdown

The New York Times reports: Defying a lethal crackdown in cities across Iran, protesters demanding the ouster of Iran’s Islamic Republic have driven their uprising into a fourth week, with workers from the country’s vital oil sector going on strike this week and activists calling for further work stoppages and protests on Wednesday. Despite efforts by Iran’s security forces, including the feared plainclothes Basij militias, to crush the protests, they have only widened. Some have turned into chaotic street battles,…

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The #WomanLifeFreedom uprising has brought Iran to a turning point

The #WomanLifeFreedom uprising has brought Iran to a turning point

Robin Wright writes: The girls and women of Iran are just bitchin’ brave, flipping the bird at its Supreme Leader in a challenge to one of the most significant revolutions in modern history. Day after dangerous day, on open streets and in gated schools, in a flood of tweets and brazen videos, they have ridiculed a theocracy that deems itself the government of God. The average age of the protesters who have been arrested is just fifteen, the Revolutionary Guard’s…

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In Russian-occupied Izyum, she was raped and tortured

In Russian-occupied Izyum, she was raped and tortured

The Washington Post reports: Soon after Russian forces took her prisoner, the 52-year-old woman picked up a nail and carved her name into a brick wall. A-L-L-A, she wrote. Below, she scratched how many days she had been held in the shed outside a medical clinic in her hometown. Above, she wrote in simple words what she had endured in captivity: ELECTRICAL SHOCK. UNDRESS. PAINFUL. She hoped the markings would one day serve as clues for her son about what…

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‘It’s like a war out there.’ Iran’s women haven’t been this angry in a generation

‘It’s like a war out there.’ Iran’s women haven’t been this angry in a generation

Azadeh Moaveni writes: On Monday, the 18th day of Iran’s intense protests against oppressive clerical rule and its numerous failures, schoolgirls with backpacks and black Converse sneakers joined the revolt. They marched down a street in a suburb of Tehran, the capital, waving their school uniform veils in the air. They jeered a male education official off school grounds in the same suburb, chanting the Persian word for lacking honor: “Bisharaf! Bisharaf!” They blocked traffic in the southern city of…

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Woman, Life, Liberty: A slogan one hundred years in the making

Woman, Life, Liberty: A slogan one hundred years in the making

Nahid Siamdoust writes: Of all the videos to surface from the Iran protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16th, one in particular has caught the public imagination. In this short clip, we see a large gathering of people around a bonfire when a young woman dressed all in white enters the circle energetically, whirls toward the fire almost joyously and halts in a dramatic pose before throwing her headscarf to the flames. The crowd cheers ecstatically….

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A whole generation revolts against Iran’s oppressive regime

A whole generation revolts against Iran’s oppressive regime

Kim Ghattas writes: “From Beirut to Tehran, one revolution that does not die,” people chanted on the streets of Beirut during a wave of protests against Lebanon’s corrupt politicians in October 2019. It was catchy, it rhymed in Arabic, and it was an expression of a surprising new sense of solidarity among members of a young generation connected across borders. The protesters were not chanting in support of the revolution that turned Iran into a theocracy in 1979, but against…

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‘Women, Life, Freedom’

‘Women, Life, Freedom’

The Observer reports: The messages, printed on scraps of paper, were thrown on doorsteps across Iran overnight by protesters determined that an online crackdown would not stop their movement. “The Islamic Republic is falling. Join the people,” said one handed out in northern Rasht city. In southern Ahvaz organisers gave an address and time for protest, and a broader call to action. “If you cannot come, spread the message so other people come,” it urged readers. Hours later a video…

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Ten torture sites in one town: How Russia sowed pain and fear in Izium

Ten torture sites in one town: How Russia sowed pain and fear in Izium

The Associated Press reports: The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end. Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how…

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The ‘Talibanization’ of Iran has sparked a revolutionary feminist backlash

The ‘Talibanization’ of Iran has sparked a revolutionary feminist backlash

Nader Hashemi writes: The story of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was killed by Iran’s morality police for improperly wearing her hijab, has gone global. No one could have predicted when she left her home in Iran’s northern Kurdistan province earlier this month to visit relatives in Tehran that her death would lead to national protests, rocking the Islamic Republic to its core while generating massive international media coverage. The fact that Amini’s death occurred during the annual meeting of heads…

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Four years after Khashoggi’s murder, assaults on press freedom are getting worse

Four years after Khashoggi’s murder, assaults on press freedom are getting worse

David Ignatius writes: On the fourth anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, we should demand accountability from Saudi Arabia, louder than ever. But we should also denounce, as Khashoggi would have, the assaults against press freedom in so many other countries that continue unabated — and often go unremarked. Khashoggi’s last column, received by The Post the day after he went missing, was about the need for “free expression,” not just in Saudi Arabia but everywhere that authorities try to suppress…

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For Iran’s protesters, the fight for women’s rights is now synonymous with a desire to end the rule of the ayatollahs

For Iran’s protesters, the fight for women’s rights is now synonymous with a desire to end the rule of the ayatollahs

Roya Hakakian writes: No one can predict how a revolution starts. Nor can anyone know when one injustice will be what causes a people’s fury to overcome their fear. In 2011, in Tunisia, a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, sparked an uprising by setting himself on fire. In 2022, in Iran, the death in police custody of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, has brought Iranians onto the streets in every corner of the country. Amini and her brother had traveled from…

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How a secretive far-right network attacks abortion rights across the globe

How a secretive far-right network attacks abortion rights across the globe

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports: Things were tough enough for Nelly Munyasia, the executive director of Kenya’s Reproductive Health Network. Then came a surge of hateful propaganda targeting her and others working in reproductive health. Munyasia says that as she saw her face appear on social media posts calling her a killer, she and her fellow targets were able to identify the strange driving force behind this sudden tide of hostility. CitizenGO is an online community that claims to…

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When migrants become political pawns

When migrants become political pawns

Jelani Cobb writes: The calcified cruelty, malignant politics, and questionable legality of the decisions by Governors Greg Abbott, of Texas, and Ron DeSantis, of Florida, to transport dozens of migrants in Texas to unsuspecting locales in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., reiterate the point—often made in recent years—that the only check on the behavior of the current Republican Party is the limits of its own imagination. Most of the migrants reportedly came from Venezuela, a country so racked with discord that…

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