“In a desperate attempt to crush the uprising, Syrian forces have executed people in cold blood, civilians and opposition fighters alike. They are doing it in broad daylight and in front of witnesses, evidently not concerned about any accountability for their crimes.” - Human Rights Watch

According to this report, over 100 civilians have been killed by Syrian security forces. 

Click here to read the whole article. 

(AP Photo)

Khalid, 7 years old, sits outside of the medical tent of a US military base after elders from a village claimed he was injured from a bomb dropped by the Americans near his home. American forces admit to dropping a bomb in the area, and say the boy was most likely injured in the attack. Civilians throughout Afghanistan have been victims of both Taliban and US attacks.

(via androphilia)

theatlantic:

Born in the Gulag: Why a North Korean Boy Sent His Own Mother to Her Death

Nine years after watching his mother’s hanging, Shin In Geun squirmed through the electric fence that surrounds Camp 14 and ran off through the snow into the North Korean wilderness. It was January 2, 2005. Before then, no one born in a North Korean political prison camp had ever escaped. As far as can be determined, Shin is still the only one to do it.

He was 23 years old and knew no one outside the fence.

Within a month, he had walked into China. Within two years, he was living in South Korea. Four years later, he was living in Southern California.

Stunted by malnutrition, he is short and slight — five feet six inches, about 120 pounds. His arms are bowed from childhood labor. His lower back and buttocks are scarred with burns from the torturer’s fire. The skin over his pubis bears a puncture scar from the hook used to hold him in place over the fire. His ankles are scarred by shackles, from which he was hung upside down in solitary confinement. His right middle finger is cut off at the first knuckle, a guard’s punishment for dropping a sewing machine in a camp garment factory. His shins, from ankle to knee on both legs, are mutilated and scarred by burns from the electrified barbed-wire fence that failed to keep him inside Camp 14.

Shin is roughly the same age as Kim Jong Un, the chubby third son of Kim Jong Il who took over as leader after his father’s death in 2011.

Shin was born a slave and raised behind a high-voltage barbed-wire fence. His mother beat him, and he viewed her as a competitor for food. His father, who was allowed by guards to sleep with his mother just five nights a year, ignored him. His older brother was a stranger. Children in the camp were untrustworthy and abusive. Before he learned anything else, Shin learned to survive by snitching on all of them.

Love and mercy and family were words without meaning.

Read more. [Image: AP]

A chilling account of the only person born into a North Korean prison camp and escape. It’ll leave you speechless.

(via nickturse)

Human Rights Watch recently released a report based off of 58 interviews done in detention centers in Afghanistan. Approximately 400 women are imprisoned there for ‘moral crimes’ - in other words, fleeing forced or abusive marriages or sex outside of marriage due to rape.  

Interviews were conducted in three juvenile detention centers and three prisons. It was found that almost every girl in the juvenile centers were there for ‘moral crimes’ while around half in prison were there for the same. 

Human Rights Watch claims the report sheds light on the future of women’s rights in a country where the international community less and less present. Although the fall of the Taliban in 2001 saw progress, the issue still has a long way to being solved. 

Click the link at the bottom of this post to get more details from the Human Rights Watch website. 

(Photo: Copyright by Farzana Wahidy) 

LINK to Human Rights Watch

kohenari:

Whenever I write about intervention, people who identify as pacifists assume I’m advocating for hundreds of thousands of American soldiers invading a foreign country and brutalizing those they were purportedly sent to save. Another group, who generally seem to be isolationists in disguise rather…

heaveniswheretheheartis:

Don’t Stereotype Me——University of Mary Washington Islamic Student Association campaign against stereotyping and judging on campus. This campaign was inspired by the Trayvon Martin case. Stereotyping essentially killed Trayvon Martin so we wanted to raise awareness about the negative effects of stereotyping. 

(via androphilia)

Just a quick update for anyone following the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case: Sanford police chief, Bill Lee, Jr., temporarily stepped down today.

His department, in my opinion and the opinions of countless others, committed a human rights abuse by intentionally not investigating the cold blooded murder of Trayvon Martin. Whether race factors in or not, my position stands because a deep investigation of any shooting of this sort is a right to the victim and their loved ones, as well as for the community.

Click here for a link to the New York Times article.

(Photo by: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

According to Newser, George Clooney and his father were arrested during a protest earlier today just outside of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington DC. He was arrested with several other demonstrators. 

The protests are against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in regards to allegations made that al-Bashir stirred up a humanitarian crisis and blocked vital aid from reaching border areas between Sudan and the newly sovereign nation, South Sudan. 

President al-Bashir was also a primary perpetrator of the Darfur genocide which still continues in the form of displaced refugee camps in the region. 

(Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

LINK

fading-revolutionary:

George Clooney arrested in planned protest at Sudanese embassy

Actor intended to be arrested in Washington, DC demonstration to plea for action against human rights abuses in Sudan

(via come-start-a-revolution)

News outlets such as CNN and Newser reported a massacre in Syria late yesterday that left 45 or more women and children dead. The killings in the city of Homs were perpetrated by government forces, according to opposition activist groups called the Syrian Revolution Council and the Local Coordination Committees of Syria. The latter was quoted by CNN as declaring it a “massacre orchestrated by the regime.”

The government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has been brutally cracking down on opposition protest since the Arab Spring began last February, and recently an organized opposition has formed. A large base of that opposition is reportedly in the town of Homs where this latest massacre has taken place.

These tragic events occurred the same day that UN special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, said he was “optimistic” about conditions in the country.

In their article, CNN reported that they could not “independently confirm reports of casualties or attacks in Syria because the government has severely restricted the access of international journalists.”

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

ARTICLE LINK