human rights

In "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields", the film broadcasted yesterday on Channel 4 a team of reporters have tried to piece together an account of what happened in the closing weeks of Sri Lanka's civil war.

Britain has renewed calls for Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of war crimes after video footage apparently showing the summary execution of naked and bound prisoners was broadcast on UK television, in the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Field.

Could the situation in Libya become any more complicated? The conflict which opposes Col Gaddafi to the rebel fighters and Nato is now threatening to turn into a real legal quagmire as all parties are accused to trespassing the law in a way or another

A spokesperson for the Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, an activist coalition that organizes protests and documents the government crackdown, announced on Friday morning that there was heavy gunfire in al-Sarmaneyah, a village located five miles from the town of Jisr al-Shoughour and added that people had fled from both towns and much of the surrounding countryside.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has announced that Turkey will not close its doors to Syrians fleeing unrest in their country.

As ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo yesterday announced that the ICC is investigating accusations that Gaddafi is using rape as a weapon in the conflict, Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance would continue its campaign in Libya for as long as it takes to defeat Col Gaddafi's forces.

Just like the Gaddafi regime, The Mugabe government has long feared that Britain and its Western allies would ally to work out a plan that would force him out of power. Both men were liberation fighters and saw themselves, at the beginning of their mandate, as the true voice of the people.

After last Sunday's protests in the Golan Heights, tensions are mounting between Syria and Israel. As the Israeli authorities, backed by the U.S., accused the demonstration of being an enterprise backed by the al-Assad regime, according to the Associated Press, a Syrian government newspaper warned on Tuesday that more Syrians and Palestinians plan to march to the Israeli border. In what seems like a propaganda attempt, the newspaper reportedly warned: "Israel the day will come when hundred...

With strict sanctions imposed against the country, most of his assets frozen and many of his top government officials defecting, how does Gaddafi still manage to hang on to power?

South Korea's Ban Ki-moon said he will run for a second five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations."It has been an enormous privilege to lead this great organization," Ban, 66, said yesterday at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. "If supported by the member states, I would be deeply honoured to serve once more."Ban said he expressed his intention in a letter to the governments of the 192 UN member nations and would meet with their envoys with...

As the people and the state are locked in a stand-off it seems that nothing can stop Syria from further spiralling into violence thanks to President al-Assad decideding to cling on to power no matter what the cost. While the protests first surfaced in the provinces, they have now spread to the big cities, making it harder for pro-Assad supporters to pretend that the protestors are just a bunch of pro-Islamists and violent thugs.

As Yemen is facing rapid and unprecedented changes, the country that was a year ago accused of being a haven for terrorism is not the number one priority of the U.S and the West anymore. So what happened to all the Yemeni Al-Qaeda fighters that are supposed to be in hiding on the country's territory, have they fled to Libya?The slowness and reluctance of the International community to confront the fragile political situation in Yemen should make us question the efforts that were made to p...

Libya's official opposition movement, the Transitional National Council (TNC), was formed rapidly as it was officially established only a week after the initial uprising began in Benghazi. The group is headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil. The council was created to provide a structural and organised base for the rebel movement on the ground. However most of its most important positions are filled with regime defectors, not by people from the opposition.

41 years ago, the Corrective Revolution put Hafez al-Assad, father of current president Bashar al-Assad, in control of Syria, a country he would rule for three decades.

The protests in Syria initially started after a group of 15 young boys, all under 18, were arrested in the city of Daraa, located in the southern part of Syria, after they were accused of writing graffiti slogans against the government on a wall. On March 18, on Friday prayer, thousands of protesters marched the streets demanding the release of the children, calling for greater political freedom and accusing the government and its institutions of corruption. The security forces originally respo...

Amnesty International has been fighting torture and illegal imprisonment from its beginning. Since 1962 the group has denounced countries throughout the world where people are being detained and imprisoned arbitrarily without a fair trial, thus facing torture or other forms of ill-treatment while many are held in conditions that are so poor that these amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights no-one may be subjected to arbitrary ...

British lawyer Peter Benson began the movement that led to the establishment of Amnesty International in May 1961 by issuing an "appeal for amnesty" on behalf of two Portuguese students who had been imprisoned for raising their glasses in a "toast to freedom".

As Zimbabwe's next elections, originally planned for 2011, are now called into question, the media in the West as well as in Africa announce that "divisions are re-surfacing in Zimbabwe's constitutional-revision process as the ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe has accused the Movement for Democratic Change of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of dragging out the process to postpone elections."

South African President Jacob Zuma yesterday confirmed that with the Libyan rebels and NATO setting Gaddafi's departure as the main condition for a ceasefire and with Gaddafi still refusing to leave, the talks initiated by the African Union did not lead to any breakthrough.

After UN Resolution 1973 was passed, coalition leaders promised "better days ahead for Libya" and pledged to "continue to act to help protect the Libyan people from the brutality of Gaddafi's regime" as well as to " support and stand by them as they seek to take control of their own destiny."

Democracy has in the last few months seen its popularity soar in all corners of the planet. With Egypt and Tunisia both managing to chase their dictators out of town and Gaddafi still insisting that Libya is the only democratic country on the planet, masses and leaders alike have been fighting to grab a piece of the democratic pie. Last week it was the turn of rising giant China to take us all by surprise as the country made a push for democracy...in the IMF.

The first death penalty following the revolution that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, has been handed down as a police officer found guilty of killing protesters was sentenced to death.

Yesterday in his latest major speech on the Middle East, President Obama pledged American support for pro-democracy uprisings in the region. However, in the Gulf, commentators are criticising what they see as a safe choice. They insist that the speech didn't cover new ground, was short on policy prescriptions, and that the president missed a chance to apologise for America's history of supporting the dictators people revolted against. Has Obama then missed the chance of opening "a new c...

Obama's speech was of broad scope, with the US leader tackling different issues in different countries while using this as an opportunity to give the US response to the Middle East uprisings and regime changes. He pledged international economic support for countries undergoing democratic change, notably Egypt and Tunisia and warned Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to lead transition in his country, or to "get out of the way".

US President Barack Obama’s discourse, yesterday marked a “new chapter" in diplomacy after the Arab Spring uprisings, the leader explained. Talking from the state department, shifting from a military to a diplomatic emphasis, Mr Obama insisted on the interrelated nature of the US-Middle East relationship: “ though these countries may be a great distance from our shores, we know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security; history and faith”, he said.

The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has ruled out introducing a new privacy law to deal with issues around superinjunctions and gagging orders, following a meeting with the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, on Thursday - The Guardian reports.

In comparison to other regions in the world, the Middle East attracts a relatively large part of US foreign policy time and has often presented it with its most enduring challenges. In the last decades, protecting the US interests within the region has become a complicated tasks as America has had to deal with the rise of Iran as a regional and influential power in the region and its illegal nuclear activities, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and his regime, invade Afghanistan, try to fight...

US President Barack Obama yesterday introduced sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad and six of his deputies as the regime continued to impose oppressive measures against its own people. The announcement came a day before President Obama is due to make a major policy speech on the recent developments in the Middle East and northern Africa. The sanctions are largely symbolic as Assad has few assets in the US and is unlikely ever to visit the country but come as a reinforcement of pre-ex...

Another Premier League football player has taken out an injunction to keep details of an affair from being reported.

A UK parliament report has questioned whether Osama bin Laden’s death was legal under international law. IBTimes summarises the report here…