While Donald Trump has come out in support of the Saudi regime, several European nations are taking action to hold the murderers of Jamal Khashoggi accountable. On Monday, November 19, the German government issued a travel ban on the 18 Saudis implicated in the murder and halted previously approved arms exports to Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Welle reported. The decision was made in close consultation with France and Great Britain.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
As it slowly becomes clear that Saudi Arabia is behind the disappearance and killing of journalist and Saudi regime critic Jamal Khashoggi, the U.S. government and its allies must consider how to respond to this horrific act that defies the core values of democracy and, indeed, of humanity itself. Under growing pressure to act against the Kingdom, President Donald Trump has already declared the United States would be “punishing itself” by scrapping the $110bn U.S.-Saudi arms deal. “If they don’t buy it from us, they’re going to buy it from Russia or they’re going to buy it from China,” Mr. Trump said, according to Sky News.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
In socially conservative Poland, a new museum opened this summer: the Polish LGBTQIA Museum. The museum aims to preserve the history of non-heteronormative people in Poland by documenting their stories. Its collection includes a variety of archival materials — from posters, photographs, flyers, leaflets, and magazines to DIY zines and film clips. The museum is virtual and therefore accessible from anywhere in the world.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
Two new executions have reportedly taken place in Belarus, according to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Aliaksei Mikhalenia and Viktor Liotau were killed in secret in May. Information about the impending executions were withheld from family members, as well as the public.
Read further in Muftah Magazine.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With this quote, article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, opened the first issue of A Chronicle of Current Events. The Chronicle was one of the longest-running samizdat publications in the Soviet Union.
Read full blog in Muftah Magazine.
Latvia’s recent amendment to its education law, which eliminates Russian language instruction, is part of a larger trend in post-Soviet states. As a result of the amendment, Latvia’s system of bi-lingual secondary education will end by 2021. The government introduced the reforms despite opposition from the Latvian Russian Union, members of the opposition Harmony party –which represents the country’s Russian-speaking minority– and proponents of bi-lingual education. Russians make up about half of the 641,000 inhabitants of Riga, Latvia’s capital.
Read full blog in Muftah Magazine.
Last Friday, April 13, Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis approved a request to prosecutea former president and prime minister on charges of crimes against humanity for their roles in the country’s bloody 1989 revolt against its communist dictatorship.
Read full blog in Muftah Magazine.
Ukraine’s parliament is slated to pass a law entitled “On Measures to Protect National Interests, National Security of Ukraine and Keeping Human Rights Abusers Accountable.” If passage occurs, Ukraine would become the seventh country to adopt this so-called Magnitsky legislation, named after the Russian accountant and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who was found dead in his Moscow jail cell in 2009, after having been tortured and denied medical treatment.
Read full text in Muftah Magazine.
In a recent book, Paths to Postnationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2011), professor Heller shows how hegemonic discourses of language, identity, and the nation-state are destabilized under new political and economic conditions. These processes, Dr. Heller argues, put us on the path to post-nationalism. She examines the notion of “francophone Canada” from the 1970s to the present through sociolinguistic practices in workplaces, schools, community associations, NGOs, state agencies, and sites of tourism and performance across francophone North America and Europe.
Dr. Heller sat down with us to discuss language choice as a political strategy, post-nationalism, and her current research project on language and identity in Canada and Europe.
Full article published on the Global Migration Research Institute’s website on 4 May 2016.
Yesterday I moderated a roundtable discussion on the role of the media in reporting on armed conflict. Panelists were Anne Bennett (Executive Director, Hirondelle USA), Roy Gutman (Middle East Bureau Chief, McClatchy Newspapers) and Charlie Sennott (Executive Director of The GroundTruth Project and Co-founder of the GlobalPost). The event also introduced HREA’s new self-directed e-course Reporting Conflicts: International Humanitarian Law for Media Professionals.
The panelists shared different perspectives on how media professionals should cover conflict situations, how journalists should report on violations of human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL), and how journalists working in conflict zones can be protected.
“Reporting accurate news and information really contributes to the protection of populations that are caught up in conflict,” said Anne Bennett of Hirondelle USA. An understanding of IHL, she added, helps journalists “ask the right questions.”
Like any story, armed conflict “needs to be explained. It needs to be understood,” said Roy Gutman, who reported on the Bosnian wars in the 1990s. “Wars happen…but what we can do is monitor how they’re being fought.” He called IHL a “yardstick” or “toolbox” that the media can use to highlight violations of human rights and of the laws of the war.
Former Boston Globe foreign correspondent Charlie Sennott compared IHL to the “ground truth,” the human measurements NASA uses to calibrate satellite measurements. Just as the ground truth determines if satellite data is accurate, IHL helps media professionals and the public assess violations of the laws of war. He described journalists’ role in conflict situations as “bear[ing] witness to the dramatic human failure that is war.”
You can watch the recording of the event.
