From a brief moment of being a region that looked like it might fully transform and embrace human rights, the nations of ASEAN are having a bad time with them now. Brunei has announced the intent to stone people for being LGBT.
Read moreTwenty Five Years After Tiananmen
The Tiananmen Square Massacre occurred 25 years ago, with troops moving into Beijing and the Square by late on the morning of June 3 and with a full assault going on by the early hours of June 4. Estimates of deaths range from the hundreds well into the thousands, with many more injured.
Read moreOn a Human Rights Attitude and Advocacy: The Gregory-Chappelle (or Angelou-Baldwin) Doctrine
Having lost Maya Angelou only a few days ago, I'm reminded of her indefatigable commitment to not merely embrace the world but to wrestle with its problems and not let them go until the world became better for everyone.
Read moreTruth, Justice, and Accountability: The Luck of the Irish?
To many outsiders, and the vast majority of Americans, it is difficult to imagine how truly grimly awful the period of discord known as The Troubles was to those in Northern Ireland. Sited mainly there, with plenty of spillover to both the Republic of Ireland and also across the sea in England, the conflict between the late 1960s and late 1990s involved over fifty thousand casualties in the part of Europe that Americans usually think of primarily as "like America."
Read moreAn American Retreat from Human Rights
In an ideal world, we'd need no military, no war, and no violence. But we do not yet live in an ideal world, and even the most peace-minded among us would appreciate that there is a need for a military to defend the United States. But what are we doing with the military we have? Are we treating the soldiers themselves with anything resembling dignity or are we treating them like insensate property?
Read moreSunflowers, Symbols, and Nukes: A 2014 Taiwan Primer
Taiwan is the little island that has both disappeared from the political stage and is everywhere present in the everyday lives of people throughout the United States. It is not mentioned in any meaningful way in discussions of policy in the halls of our political institutions or media and it is not discussed as anything other than an afterthought in discussions of the People's Republic of China (PRC). But it is far too easy to dismiss Taiwan without a closer look. While the People's Republic of China has over 60 times the population, it is Taiwan that clocks in with a GDP four times as large per capita, a vibrant multiparty political system, religious and press freedoms that are among the best in Asia, and provisions for national healthcare that place it on par or even ahead of the EU.
Read moreTwisting Honor, Twisting Human Rights: America and Torture
There was a time when the American public demanded something like consequences for leadership failures that transgressed ethical and moral lines. The Watergate scandal brought down the Nixon presidency, but the sense in the country was that it was an indictment of failed policies ranging from Kissinger's brutal wars in Southeast Asia to the roughshod trampling of public opinion that was really what brought him down. In the Reagan era, there was a massive loss of confidence in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra Scandal and there were extensive and publicly televised hearings on this issue. Now? Now the Bush presidency involved running riot over international agreements and the very foundations of the United States and virtually nothing happened. Could things be worse? Yes. The Obama presidency has seen these policies continued or extended with both implicit and explicit statements that there would not be any pursuit of justice against those who offended it so deeply.
Read moreCounting Down: Burma's Race to the Bottom for Human Rights
As someone who has been long-interested in the struggle for the peoples of Burma to earn for themselves the full promise of human rights and real democracy, I waited with the world for the promise of reform and transition. Having been a founder of theUS Campaign for Burma, a deep advocate for the cause of all ethnic nationalities there, and the leadership of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to lead her country from the darkness of authoritarian abuse to the brightness of an empowered future, I watched and held my breath in the so-called thaw in Burma.
Read moreTaiwan's Straits: Democracy at a Crossroads
Taiwan is situated at a crossroads culturally and geographically. With linguistic roots in common with Southeast Asia, contemporary cultural influences from Northeast Asia, and impacts felt internationally in technology and business, the island straddles a number of tectonic plates that make it seismically active.
Read moreThe Torture of the Torture-Excusers
Once upon a time, I recommended that we find an attorney general who would pursue the former administration for torture, disappearances, and secret prisons. Doesn't having the nation come to terms with these formative and basic violations of the principles set forth in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (both letter and spirit) and our very own Constitution seem like a good way to have begun to move forward?
Read moreOf Padraig and Principle: Why Americans Got Saint Patrick's Day Wrong Again
Yesterday was another St. Patrick's Day. While most Americans seem to think that it's an excuse to drink heavily throughout the day and to ape the worst caricatures of "Irishness," the Feast Day of St. Patrick is a cornerstone of the nation of my own heritage and a cornerstone of a people who have been able to come back from terrible colonization and abuses both at home and abroad. While the Irish now might seem integrated into American life, the time wasn't so long ago that the Irish were reviled around the world as unfit for civilized society. It is another personal reminder of the frailty of respect unless there is vigilance, another lesson in the imperatives that we all must act upon to expand and preserve the principles laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Once again, with some exceptions here and there in the form of protest, the American pop culture machine mostly renders St. Patrick's Day without inspiration and with a lot of rowdiness. The Obama administration has, again, failed to use this holiday and Feast Day as a lesson to teach and learn.
Read moreFirst Ladies, First Principles, and Foundational Documents
In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady, took examples of the dregs of history and aimed for a better ever after. With clarity, power, and consensus, she shepherded the creation and ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The resulting document has become the bedrock for international human rights work around the globe and across cultures.
Read moreBurma is at a Crossroads? Again?
Ever more often these days, people are asking again about whether to use the term "Burma" or Myanmar" to refer to the country between Thailand and Bangladesh, bordering India, China, and the sea. Not long ago, those asking were usually keen to discern the lingo to identify themselves as members of the "okay" crowd, those interested in political and social evolution in the nation. They were determined to avoid the sense of alliance to the oppressors, whether out of a genuine concern for human rights or a market sensibility to avoid any choices in language that might haunt one for years to come.
Read moreSpring in the Horse Year: Free Chen Shui-bian
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou has just sent a representative to meet with a high-ranking member of the Chinese government in Beijing. Given the proximity of Taiwan to the People's Republic, among other things, this should be neither unusual nor a source of criticism. But President Ma is a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), the party of Chiang Kai-shek that has governed Taiwan after losing the civil war in China, and "relocating" to Taiwan and the horrors they visited upon the ten thousand or more killed in the 2/28 Incident.
Read moreNo Left Left in the United States
President Clinton always struck me as an arrogant narcissist. Those qualities are present in many politicians and forgivable in some, but his transformation of the Democratic Party into the "liberal" branch of the GOP can not go unnoticed. He and former Fox commentator Dick Morris, who thought that Romney won the last election, engineered it.
Read moreSanta Lists and Peace on Earth
Last week was Christmas and it was time to make sure to ask for your gifts. Americans have begun to "go big" with their wish lists and to ask for and expect all manner of things to be given to them without regard to cost or possibility.
Read moreDesmond Tutu: HRAC's Person of the Year
During the Carter Administration, due to the inexplicable appearance of the luck that befalls one once in a while, I was appointed to be country director of the Peace Corps in Lesotho. I say lucky, because it remains perhaps the best job I ever had. The day I landed in Africa was the day of Steve Biko's funeral. For four and a half years, a guiding notion for volunteers was to promise little but deliver lots. It was a strange eddy current in American policy.
Read moreAbusing Power: Is Ma's Taiwan the Unbeautiful Island?
Since 2012 visit made by the Human Rights Action Center, much has changed for Chen Shui-bian and the people of Taiwan. After visiting in 2013, while the material conditions of his detention have been improved, and that is an important step to have achieved, he is still incarcerated. In his recent words, "no matter how nice things may appear, a prison is a prison is a prison."
Read moreImportant Transitions: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, and Hopes for Democracy
When a popular democratic leader takes over the reins of government from a previously despotic government, they are transformed from the sacred to the profane. Icons don't govern, people do. They do so as politicians, and both people and politicians are necessarily messy. South Africa's Nelson Mandela escaped much of this by virtue of his singular story, eschewal of political life after only one term, and by attempts to avoid the excesses of politics in favor of moral leadership.
Read moreBelieving in Mandela, Believing in His Circle, Believing in Human Rights
A great luck befell me years ago when I got to have some time to meet Nelson Mandela in person. We ended up in the same bathroom and a camera crew asking both of us to stay in the bathroom till the shoot was over. I asked him what he would have done if there had been no apartheid. He answered simply: a boxer.
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