Media Coverage

France has opened its first trial into officials from the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad with three top security officers tried in absentia for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Paris Criminal Court was on May 21 hearing the cases against the officials for...

The leaders of Norway, Ireland and Spain have said their countries will formally recognize Palestine as a state next week for the sake of “peace in the Middle East,“ prompting Israel to immediately recall its envoys. Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said on May 22 that a two-state solution...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s newly-created “super body” will not succeed in addressing the human rights issues in the country because it will be composed of agencies that contributed to the problem. In a joint statement on Tuesday, May 21, civil society organizations said that “the...

José Rubén Zamora has spent nearly two years locked in a dark 16 by 13-foot cell in a Guatemalan prison, allowed only one hour a day in the sunlight. The journalist’s money laundering conviction was tossed out, and last week a judge finally ordered his conditional release to await a new trial. But...

A Russian playwright and theatre director accused of “justifying terrorism” have told a Moscow court that they are innocent on the first day of their trial over the staging of an award-winning play. The arrest of director Yevgeniya Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petriychuk in May last year sent shock...

Palestinians are marking 76 years of dispossession on May 15, commemorating their mass expulsion from what is today Israel, as a potentially larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza where over a quarter of the population has been displaced by fighting in the last few days alone. Israel has been pressing...

Switzerland’s top criminal court has convicted a former interior minister of the Gambia for crimes against humanity during repression by the west African country’s security forces against opponents of its longtime dictator, a legal advocacy group said on May 15. The trial that began in January was...

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias killed “at least thousands of people” in West Darfur state, an international rights group has said, in what it called apparent “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” In a report published on May 9, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said...

Police in Vietnam have arrested a senior official involved in talks with international organisations on labor reforms, state media said on May 9, adding that the action was linked to disclosure of classified information. The detention of Nguyen Van Binh follows months of arrests of prominent experts...

At least 200 people were arrested at UCLA on May 2, bringing the nationwide total of arrests to more than 2,000 at dozens of college campuses since police cleared an encampment at Columbia University in mid-April, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Demonstrations—and arrests—have occurred...