A student protest in central London reveals the ugly face of an unaccountable government and the angry one of an alienated young generation, finds Delwar Hussain.
A new generation’s protest is part of a deeper political sea-change in Europe. But a London student demonstration - and witnessing a democracy that seeks to protect itself from its own young children - convince Bronwyn Hayward that this movement needs older people too.
For women seeking asylum in the UK the tales of persecution, flight and exile, of children and families left behind, and months and often years lost in the bureaucratic cruelties of the asylum system continue
Journalist Oleg Kashin was recently brutally beaten up. To ram the message home, the fingers on his writing hand were broken, as well as his jaw and shins. He had been active in protesting the building of a highway through the Khimki forest nature reserve. Now he reflects on the authorities’ handl
We now have the image that will define this age of retrenchment and rebellion, splashed across all the frontpages this morning. Even Grosvenor Square '68 can't compete with that kind of iconography. But the real images of the night were not of the violent black-flag brigade, nor of the middle clas
Russian human rights activists routinely put themselves in danger’s way, but are largely unappreciated and mistrusted by their compatriots. In times of despair, Anna Sevortian is brought back to one thing: idealism.
The second week of December promises to be highly symbolic for all those interested in human rights in Russia. Today is Human Rights Day, and in five days time the verdict in the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be handed down. Simon Cosgrove looks forward, reflects back and salutes the c
The presidential election in December is unlikely to usher in a new president, young people feel no link to their Soviet past, and the wolf Lukashenka isn’t about to turn vegetarian. European Poet of Freedom Uladzimier Arlou is a towering figure in Belarus; here he talks to Ingo Petz.
The contest between rival “Soviet” and “European” discourses fuels a dead-end debate about Belarus’s elusive national identity. It is time instead - whoever wins the presidential election on 19 December 2010 - to change the question, and find what Belarusians have in common. A shared archetype is
A powerful Chinese political elite fears those citizens who raise their voice against it. The case of a political prisoner in Inner Mongolia, as much as that of the Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, reveals the distance it has to go to temper strength with justice, say Kerry Brown & Natalia Lisenko
Multiculturalism has failed to create an inclusive society, while the ghettoisation of Britain is hindering cultural and intellectual fusion. Afshin Shahi argues that we must look again at the balance of rights and responsibilities of minority groups.
The student movement in Britain against the government’s tuition-fees and spending policies faces inescapable political questions over the character and limits of democratic protest, says Martin Shaw.
