Hong Kong’s Extradition Protests: A Fight for Hong Kong’s Sovereignty? Cheryl Pui Yau Ip, Foreign Correspondent in Hong Kong, provides an analysis of the extradition protests in Hong Kong and what motivated people to take action. The driving force behind the protests is that the extradition bill could allow suspects from Hong Kong to be […]
human rights
“There is still a lot for us to do” – An interview with the director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen
Amnesty International UK (AIUK) could not have chosen a more youthful location for their head offices. Nestled in amongst the street art and hipster coffee bars of Shoreditch is the Human Rights Action Centre, the organisation’s hub of operations, from which they research, document and challenge human rights abuses across the world. It is here […]
Femsoc working to #ShutDownYarlsWood
O ver the next few weeks, Exeter is going to be a prominent centre for the movement called #ShutDownYarlsWood. Unknown to many, Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre is a detention centre found in Bedfordshire, but plays host to almost postapocalyptic, Orwellian narratives. Holding over 400 women, often against their will, often illegally, and with over […]
The reaction in Turkey: security, democracy, stability
Turkey is not alien to a coup d’état. There have been four such seizures of power since the 1960s at various intervals. And July’s coup attempt has notably stung this divided and hurting country, threatening to drag Turkey off course and back to the wounds of its troubled past. Perhaps what is stinging more is […]
Obituary: Elie Wiesel
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time. The above words, from Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical work Night, perfectly […]
Bias and the law: an interview with Lord Neuberger
“Good lawyers know the law; great lawyers know the judge.” It’s a famous – albeit anonymous – quote, yet one which encompasses all the cynicism which has surrounded (and somewhat defined) the legal profession over the past decades. Accused of being bureaucratic, money-oriented and elitist, for many, it would be easy to assume that the […]
“Islamism is a vast killing machine” – An interview with Maryam Namazie
When I first sit down to interview Maryam Namazie, I notice how calm she seems. It’s her bodyguards who seem nervous; they barrel back and forth through the building’s doors. When Namazie goes to the bathroom, one bodyguard waits five minutes before rushing after her, his colleague pacing across the lobby. Iranian-born Namazie is, after […]
North Korea and the hypocrisy of humanitarian intervention
In the ‘new world order’ of the 21st Century, western states sell wars as the takedown of tyrants in the name of morality. George W Bush called for war in Iraq to remove the “homicidal dictator” Saddam Hussein and “liberate the Iraqi people”. Obama justified intervention in Libya to stop the “colonial crusader” Gaddafi, who […]
Rights, representation and referenda
Tim Woolley reflects on the importance of referenda in securing civil rights, in light of the recent vote in favour of same sex marriage in Ireland. Right, rights. On one side of the Irish sea, the recent referendum marks a momentous day for all we hold dear: democracy, expressing the will of the people in […]