On 1 March the Bahraini government requested that the UN special rapporteur on torture delay his visit – meant to investigate the allegations of torture uncovered in the BICI report – from March to July…
While Chinese petitioners and dissidents hold protest rallies every day in defiance of unaccountable officials, few of them question the necessity of upholding a strong executive authority. Thoughts on revolution and reform by a Chinese student in Cairo.
How shall we deal with these fanatics? I say that it is up to the youth, including me, to answer these questions and to take action. But how?
Syrian diplomats have been expelled and the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has explained that his priority is ‘to provide for the end of all violence’ amidst waves of public revulsion at the growing atrocities in poor Syria. Isn’t this cynical manipulation and hypocrisy?
Egyptians are now forced to choose the lesser of the two evils: Mohamed Morsy and Ahmad Shafiq. Which one? The question is a forcible reminder of the debates and discussions that took place in Iran during the fateful days of the 1979 revolution.
Obstructing your wife, sister or daughter from voting is utterly unacceptable and an infringement of her newly-found liberties. The NTC, NGOs and society must face this challenge together.
Key to attracting tourists and business is Dubai’s cultivated perception as ‘westernised’, compared to other Middle Eastern cities. Yet this must sit alongside Emirati values
Prior to the Egyptian revolution, the US democracy-promotion strategy helped consolidate the power of an authoritarian regime and today, the course adopted by its funding bodies is facilitating the marginalization of alternative social forces.
The regime’s strategy is clear: gain the support of the silent majority and you don’t have to care about revolutionaries or their foreign contacts. The regime’s tactics are also clear: create chaos, blame it on the revolutionaries and claim that support of the regime is the only way back to stabil
If voters are unable to make an informed decision, due to lack of information concerning the candidate, the process or the role those elected will play, then they will either not vote, or vote but without feeling responsible or accountable for the vote they cast.
A series of potentially incendiary events have brought new headlines, blog posts, status updates and tweets proclaiming that Lebanon is slipping into Syria’s war.
Media reports emphasizing the “violent” dimension of “salafism” miss an important point: the Tunisian salafist landscape is highly heterogeneous and makes little room for violent avatars. Making this more complex, not everybody claiming to be a “salafist”, or denounced as such, actually is a salaf
