The Asian Human Rights Commission appreciates and welcomes the announcement by the new government of Pakistan to commute death sentences to life imprisonment. The AHRC hopes that the government of Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani will abolish the law which allows capital punishment by hanging...
Marking World Refugee Day on Friday 20 June, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said that providing protection for refugees today is vastly more challenging than when his office began work in 1951 trying to find solutions for Europeans uprooted in the aftermath of World War II.
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On the 12 June 2008 the US Supreme Court recognized, in the case of Boumediene v.Bush, the right of those detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. Amnesty International described the ruling as an essential step towards restoring the rule of law to the USA’...
By Gore Vidal
On June 10, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberti...
Reporters Without Borders is worried about the kidnapping of leading cyber-dissident Huang Qi, the founder of the human rights website 64Tianwang (http://www.64tianwang.com). He and two other activists were forced to get into a car by three unidentified men at around 7 p.m. on 10 June in Chengdu, th...
Thonglin was 13 years old when she was sold into prostitution. "My aunt asked if I would like to come with her to Thailand to find a job so that I could earn money for her family, and I agreed,"...
“I've been living away from home for three years," says Alfredo, a boy in prostitution who was working as a dancer in a club in Acapulco, Mexico. "I had many problems because my dad drank a lot...
Two guys were taking chemistry at the University of Louisville. They did pretty well on all of the quizzes, midterms, and labs, and had a solid "A" going into the final. They were so confident...
By Pat Buchanan
Freedom of the press is on trial in Canada.
The trial is before a court with the Orwellian title of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The accused are Maclean's magazine...
In its effort to fight terrorism, France routinely arrests and prosecutes people for being associated with possible terror suspects, undermining international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch said...
We have put together the most awesome video about Canada. We show the world what kind of country we have become and you will love the stunning color.
Please take 1 minutes and 30 seonds to have...
As a person who has spent his lifetime in advocating peace and civil rights it is time to write. The subject of Iran needs to be addressed in a definitive way.
In order to put this in some order,...
German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung confirmed on Tuesday that Germany is planning on increasing the number of troops stationed in Afghanistan by 1,000, later this year.
The Asian Human Rights Commission appreciates and welcomes the announcement by the new government of Pakistan to commute death sentences to life imprisonment. The AHRC hopes that the government of Prime...
Marking World Refugee Day on Friday 20 June, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said that providing protection for refugees today is vastly more challenging than when his office began work...
On the 12 June 2008 the US Supreme Court recognized, in the case of Boumediene v.Bush, the right of those detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. Amnesty International...
By Gore Vidal
On June 10, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution...
Reporters Without Borders is worried about the kidnapping of leading cyber-dissident Huang Qi, the founder of the human rights website 64Tianwang (http://www.64tianwang.com). He and two other activists...
The extradition of Colombia's top paramilitary leaders to the United States increases the odds they will serve substantial prison sentences for some of their crimes, yet the extradition could undermine local efforts to investigate human rights atrocities and paramilitary infiltration of the political system, Human Rights Watch said today.
Colombia on the morning of May 13 announced the extradition of 14 individuals, including several top commanders of the drug-running paramilitary death squads that are responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities in Colombian history. These include notorious crime bosses, Salvatore Mancuso, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (a.k.a. "Jorge 40"), and Diego Fernando Murillo (a.k.a. "Don Berna").
The extradited commanders had been participating in a "demobilization" process in which Colombia's courts had ruled that, in exchange for dramatically reduced prison sentences, they would be required to provide full and truthful confessions about their human rights abuses and other crimes, and to disclose information about their paramilitary groups' operations and accomplices.
"The good news is that these paramilitary bosses could now face serious jail time for some of their drug crimes," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The bad news is they may no longer have any reason to collaborate with Colombian prosecutors investigating their atrocities against civilians and their collaboration with high-ranking government officials."
The extradition comes three weeks after Colombian prosecutors ordered the arrest of President Álvaro Uribe's cousin and close political ally, Mario Uribe, for allegedly conspiring with paramilitaries. He is one of more than 50 congressmen from the president's ruling coalition to come under investigation in the last two years for alleged links to paramilitaries, as part of what is known as the "parapolitics" scandal. These investigations have begun to break Colombia's long history of impunity for paramilitaries and their accomplices in the political system.
"Just as local prosecutors were beginning to unravel the web of paramilitary ties to prominent politicians, the government has shipped the men with the most information out of the country," said Vivanco.
More than 100,000 victims have approached Colombian authorities in recent years seeking justice for paramilitary abuses.
"The big losers with this extradition are the victims who may never have a chance to confront their tormentors in a Colombian court," said Vivanco. "The big winners may be the local politicians whose secrets are being kept by the extradited paramilitary bosses."