by Shardool Kulkarni, a law student at the University of Mumbai
This January, an eight-year-old girl hailing from a minority shepherding family in India was abducted, gang raped and brutally murdered in the Kathua region of Jammu and Kashmir. In the subsequent months, the incident generated polarized reactions in India and around the world, with public outcry juxtaposed against the response from individuals in authority and alleged politicization of rape owing to the victim’s minority status. The ensuing public discourse has placed the ruling dispensation headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi under intense scrutiny, particularly in relation to the government's stance and policies regarding child rape.
In April 2018, the Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 2018 was promulgated. The said ordinance brought in several changes to the existing legal framework pertaining to child rape in India, the most significant being the imposition of the death penalty as punishment for rape of a girl below the age of twelve years. The move, while hailed by...
By Olivia Heffernan, a master’s candidate at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
On November 14, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University hosted a lecture titled “Understanding the Rohingya Crisis.” Panelists addressed the historical roots of ongoing violent conflict in Myanmar, including the “othering” of the minority Rohingya Muslims and escalating fear of Islam, as well as the responsibility of the international community to respond to the country's human rights crisis. The lack of response raises questions about the international community’s commitment to protecting peace and precipitates another interesting discussion: What does an ethnic cleansing overseen by a Nobel Peace Prize winner mean for the credibility of the award itself?
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader and first state counselor, was conferred the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her admirable fight for democracy in Myanmar during 15 years under house arrest as a political prisoner. However, actions speak louder than words. Aung San Suu Kyi’s complicity to the killings...
By Malcolm Katrak, a guest blogger and judicial clerk to Justice S.N. Variava
The Asian News International (ANI) tweeted on September 5th, “There has been a shootout at Gauri Lankesh’s house this evening; she is no more. Body found in the veranda.” Another tweet swiftly followed, “This is a cowardly act, she is just a writer & journalist, not a terrorist or a naxalite.”
Gauri Lankesh, a senior journalist from Karnataka, had been portrayed as a critic of Hindu right-wing extremism by journalists and news outlets around the country after she was shot dead in Karnataka, India. A total of seven bullets were fired, four missing the target and three hitting Lankesh. The Chief Minister of Karnataka termed the murder as brutal and further stated that this was an “assassination on democracy.”
Freedom of press and protection of free speech has long been debated in the halls of parliament and the corridors of the judiciary in India. Be it the First Amendment in...
By Sameera Uddin, graduate student of Human Rights at Columbia University
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"In Bangladesh, 65% of girls are married before they turn 18." (UNICEF)
"She was withdrawn, quiet, and appeared very sad throughout the entire day," said Allison Joyce, an American photojournalist who documented the wedding of 15-year-old Nasoin Akhter to a 32-year-old man, in her blog. The international community greeted Joyce’s photos of Nasoin’s wedding with shock and disappointment.
According to UNICEF, nearly one-third of Bangladeshi girls are married by the age of 15, the highest rate for that age group in the world. South Asia is home to almost half (42 per cent) of all child brides worldwide, and India alone accounts for one-third of the global total. Currently, it is illegal for girls to get married under the age of 18 in Bangladesh, yet the statistics suggest that the reality is otherwise.
Why is it that a country often highlighted as a development success story is facing these challenges? Bangladesh has reduced...
By Marina Kumskova, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University
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Between March 2002 and July 2004, eight individuals of Chechen origin were “arrested by groups of armed and masked men in a manner resembling a security operation”. Pointing guns at the family members, the soldiers took men away in military carriers. Similarly, on April 28, 1991, Jeremías Osorio Rivera was officially detained by a military patrol when he went to the village of Nunumia to take part in a sports event. He was accused of making a terrorist threat for carrying an officially registered gun and explosives materials.
None of these men have been seen or heard from since, despite their families’ tireless efforts to find them. In both cases, the males were abducted and detained by armed men without arrest warrant, held in solitary confinement under mortifying circumstances for unidentified periods of time, and deprived of legal assistance or any other contact with the outside world. In both cases, after the abduction of...
By Daniel Golebiewski, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University
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On March 8, 2014, Columbia’s School of the Arts, in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR), screened Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary, The Act of Killing. This film was shortlisted for a 2014 Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary. On this evening, the audience had the chance to see the Director’s Cut and ask Oppenheimer questions regarding trauma, memory, and the power of filmmaking.
In 1965, Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry—Indonesian “gangsters” deriving their label from the English “free men” meaning to live on without punishment from the criminal justice system—accepted their role as leaders of the most well known killing squad in North Sumatra. In The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer invites these two gangsters and their comrades to reenact their assassinations of Chinese communists. They seem eager to create a film that uses humor and romance, as well as inspiration from their favorite movie genres like...
By Erica Bower, student at Columbia College
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The following Photo Essay is an excerpt from a post I wrote on my blog while studying abroad through Cornell Nepal Study Program (CNSP) in the spring of 2013.
Our stay in Chitwan National Park was truly a once in a life time experience—a scene straight from the discovery channel.
However, as incredible as this experience was from the perspective of a tourist, as a student of Human Rights and environmentally-induced displacement, Chitwan has an incredibly dark side.
In many ways, the case of Chitwan is the inverse of most instances of the environment-displacement under study in Nepal given that efforts for environmental protection, rather than environmental degradation, have caused massive displacement.
The brutal reality is that in order to create such a pristine National Park, the Nepali government has forcibly removed all of the Indigenous communities in the district.
The Tharu peoples have lived in the Chitwan region for hundreds of years, and have a rich cultural history...
By Michelle Eberhard, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University
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Burma is complicated. Not only is it also known as Myanmar, the name it was given following a 1988 coup d’état that ushered in two additional decades of military rule, but this Southeast Asian nation is home to a population of over fifty million people belonging to more than one hundred and thirty-five different ethnic groups. Rather than embracing the diversity of its citizens, however, the Burmese government has instead systematically exploited ethnicity for economic gain and facilitated the creation of destructive divisions between peoples in order to further its own agenda. A particularly vivid example of this is found in the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law, which permits the government to “decide whether any ethnic group is national or not,” thus condoning arbitrary discrimination against peoples it would prefer to marginalize. While the international community has praised the progress Burma has made in recent years, specifically following its 2010 democratic...
By Hal Levy, undergraduate student at Columbia University
The White House moved with uncharacteristic speed to announce a surprising foreign policy initiative two days after President Obama’s reelection. He was going to Burma and it was happening right now, less than two weeks after the votes were counted, and because he decided that everything would happen so quickly it was far too late to haggle over his itinerary, which by the way was already in place. “Why scrutinize this?” was the implicit message to human rights activists, “because we don’t want your input this time.”
However, this landmark engagement with the current Burmese regime warrants scrutiny and at the very least revision if it is to go forward. Burma is finally opening to Western investment, but Obama must not abandon America’s responsibility to protect potential Burmese workers in favor of geopolitical games and economic opportunity. Fraudulent elections held in 2010 transferred power to a mixture of civilians and military-appointed candidates in name...
By Laura Reed, M.A. in Human Rights Studies Candidate at Columbia University
“I am deeply honored and moved to be here today, given the opportunity to speak. I realize that this is a privilege made available to a few, especially compared to the numbers of families that suffered under the Khmer Rouge regime.”– Rob Hamill, in the opening statement of his testimony at the trial of Comrade Duch in Cambodia.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/26093819[/vimeo]
Brother Number One, featured at the 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York, is a powerful documentary film that explores the legacy of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Directed by New Zealand filmmaker Annie Goldson, this film depicts the personal journey of Rob Hamill as he travels to Cambodia to testify in the recent trial of former Khmer Rouge leader Duch at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal.
A film about this period in Cambodian history, relayed through the story of a New Zealand family’s experience, is bound to raise some eyebrows...
