"We have a great opportunity in our movements to learn how to be opponents without being enemies," says Tanuja Jagernauth. This perspective emphasizes the importance of maintaining respect and understanding even amidst conflict.
Once upon a time, adding official to an announcement served a purpose. It distinguished fact from rumour, press release from pub chat. Sensible. Helpful. Civilised. But in recent years, the word has gone rogue. Nothing can simply happen anymore. It must be officially announced.
It has been suggested by government representatives that these matters rest solely with the independent judiciary. This is not fully true. While decisions on bail are rightly made by the courts, we understand that the attorney general or the director of public prosecutions could notify defence counsel that should a fresh application for bail be made, the government will cooperate in bringing it promptly before the high court and will not oppose a grant of bail.
Under relentless pressure from US President Donald Trump, and persistently undermined by China and Russia, the rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders have come to rely on to advance norms and protect freedoms. To defy this trend, governments that still value human rights, alongside social movements, civil society, and international institutions, need to form a strategic alliance to push back.
A 16-year-old was among protesters sexually assaulted in custody by the security forces in Iran during the nationwide uprising that has left thousands dead, according to a human rights group. Two people, one of them a child, detained in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) that they were subjected to sexual abuse by riot police during their arrest. During the transfer, security forces touched their bodies with batons.
Along with using his wife's pregnancy announcement as proof that he gets action (shudder), Vice President JD Vance used his speech at the March for Life rally on Friday to announce a devastating expansion of the Trump administration's global gag rule. The rule, which already blocked federal funding for global organizations that even dare utter the word "abortion," will now include any organization that the administration deems as promoting transgender rights or diversity inclusion initiatives.
Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme broadly called Internet Freedom funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, who built grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024.
