A small collection of human rights story from the FPB network and beyond:
And the clashes continue…
For those of you living under a rock (or just caught up in World Cup fever), Kyrgyzstan is currently in the midst of some of the worst ethnic violence seen there in years. As ethnic Uzbeks flee from the wrath of what appears to be ethnic Kyrgyz militias in that country’s southern region ahead of a constitutional referendum scheduled later this month, big questions are now being asked about what can and should happen next. Elina Galperin over on the Central Asia blog has been following events in Kyrgyzstan since the former government was ousted in April. Check out that coverage of the unrest and think happy thoughts for the people of Kyrgyzstan as news outlets report that Uzbekistan just closed their border to the thousands of civilians fleeing the violence.
When silence is louder than a prison sentence
Meanwhile Genevieve Long over on Media and Foreign Policy just posted the sad story of yet another Iranian journalist being silenced by the government. Sentenced last week to a year in prison for reporting on last year’s post election protests, the harsher part of the sentence for Jila Baniyaghoob comes in the 30 year ban on writing that the court also handed down.
Answering for the past
Thirty-eight years ago, several civil right protestors in Northern Ireland were killed by the British Army in an event known today as ‘Bloody Sunday.’ The event ignited growing tensions in the region, tensions that have only recently cooled with the implementation of the Good Friday Accord in 1998. Today, the final report of Lord Saville is expected to be released with many hoping that it will provide closure to this particular chapter in British history. However with nothing to report or comment on yet, for now people are content to speculate on what the consequences may be for both the families of the victims and human rights law in the UK.
The oft overlooked
Finally, Sean Murphy over on Global Film recently posted his review of Paragraph 175, a film that looks at the Nazi persecution of gay men from 1933 to 1945. The film’s title comes from the section in German law that made homosexuality illegal. Similar anti-sodomy laws were only overturned in the US in 2003 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas. That trajectory just goes to show that while some things may change, it can take a painfully and embarrassingly long time while victims of those prejudices are often left to suffer in the shadows.
