By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 21 January 2025 (IDN) —The West, the US especially, has got itself into a fretful mood over the rise of China. Quite unnecessarily so. The Chinese growth rate is slowing. As a BBC commentator said recently, reviewing this week’s government-issued statistics, China never will hit double digit growth again. […]
Human Rights Watch Takes Stock of 2024: A Year of Reckoning
By Jan Servaes* BANGKOK, Thailand | 18 January 2025 (IDN) — The Human Rights Watch Report 2025 was recently launched in Bangkok under the title “2024: A Year of Reckoning”. The press conference, which can also be followed via YouTube, started with a video message from Tirana Hassan, HRW Director General, who tried to put […]
Myanmar Four Years After the Coup
By Jan Servaes BANGKOK | 15 January 2025 (IDN) — Almost four years after the February 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar, the military junta’s widespread and systematic abuses against the population—including arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings and aerial bombardments of civilians—amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes. For ordinary citizens, the human rights situation […]
Will Putin and Trump Meet in Budapest?
By Fehér Péter* BUDAPEST | 12 January 2025 (IDN) — Vladimir Dzhabarov, the first deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s upper house committee on international affairs, mentioned in an interview that he considers Hungary an ideal location for a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. This was the first specific indication that the Hungarian […]
Why 2024 Was the Deadliest Year on Record for Reporters
By Kristin Skare Orgeret* OSLO, Norway | 9 January 2025 (IDN) — The past year has been the deadliest for journalists since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began tracking fatalities in 1992. Since 7 October 2023, at least 146 journalists have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon, though the actual numbers […]
The Next UN Secretary-General — Must be the Turn of a Woman
By Dr Palitha Kohona Former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN and Former Ambassador to China COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 8 January 2025 (IDN) — With Antonio Guterres’s term of office tapering off, there is increasing chatter in the corridors of the United Nations in New York regarding his potential successor. The interest in […]
Is the World Ending War — Despite Ukraine?
By Jonathan Power* LUND, Sweden | 7 January 2025 (IDN) — An ugly cloud of pessimism hands over many parts of the world. War that seemed to be in retreat, has returned with a vengeance with the second largest military in world, Russia’s, battling a very under-resourced neighbour, Ukraine. It’s getting a lot of people […]
Liberal Democracy Shrinks in India, Turkey and the US
By Rahul Mukherji and Berk Esen* HEIDELBERG, ISTANBIL | 5 January 2025 (IDN) — The elections in India, Turkey and the US in 2024 point to the rapidly shrinking liberal political space in democracies. Despite the enormity of the threat to a secular and inclusive vision of politics, the elections in India and Turkey, however, […]
Israel’s Attacks Have Devastating Impact on Gaza’s Hospitals
By Volker Türk* GENEVA | 4 January 2025 (IDN) — A human rights catastrophe continues to unfold in Gaza before the eyes of the world. Israel’s means and methods of warfare have killed tens of thousands of people, inflicted vast displacement, and laid waste to the territory. This has raised utmost concerns about compliance with […]
Now It Can Be Told . . . After All the Harm Has Been Done
By Norman Solomon* SAN FRANCISCO, USA | 26 December 2024 (IDN) — This week, the New York Times reported that the U.S. government made war in Afghanistan while helping to “recruit, train and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities.” Those militias “tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, […]