Democracy & Civil Society

Advertisements on buses linking Adolf Hitler with “Islamic Jew-hatred” are now running in Washington DC, with the First Amendment protecting the advertisements, and almost guaranteeing that they will run for quite some time. The 15-foot-long ads are on the broadsides of twenty buses in the DC metro area. They feature a photo of Adolf Hitler seated with his “staunch ally” …

Palestinian activists on Tuesday were critical of Pope Francis’ plans to visit the tomb of Zionist founder Theodor Herzl. Omar Barghouti, a member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement called the planned visit “nauseating”. “Laying a wreath on the grave of the founder of Zionism, a patently racist ideology that has served to enable and justify the ethnic cleansing …

On Monday, Refat Chubarov, a leader of the minority Muslim group the Crimean Tatars, said that the new Russian leadership had threatened to prosecute them “for extremism”. Chubarov, who leads the ethnic minority’s assembly, said that the Chief Regional Prosecutor on Sunday gave him an official warning to stop “extremist activities”. During the weekend, hundreds of pro-Ukraine Tatars clashed with …

On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that he has enough support to form a coalition government after the election, held on Wednesday, but reiterated that he would leave his post if need be. Maliki is seeking a third term in office, following the first elections in Iraq after the withdrawal of US troops. He faces significant opposition from …

Syrian opposition condemned Monday’s announcement of the presidential election to be held on June 3rd, expected to keep President Bashar Assad in power despite the several thousand deaths in anti-regime revolts since 2011. Speaker of the Parliament Mohammed al-Lahham had announced that the election would be held on June 3 and that Syrians living outside the country can vote on …

Several rights groups led by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said on Wednesday that sexual violence against women in Egypt has been abundant since the 2011 uprising and that women protesters had been the target of sexual attacks with impunity, they said. In their report, the groups said that “successive Egyptian governments have failed to address violence against …

On Wednesday, over 50 Bollywood actors, writers and filmmakers signed an appeal which urged Indians not to vote for nationalist hardliner Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the ongoing general elections in the country, and choose a “secular” party instead. Critics fear that if the BJP comes to power, it would set off religious tensions in the country. Some …

The New York Police Department has abandoned their secret program which dispatched plainclothes detectives to Muslim neighbourhoods to snoop in on conversations and build detailed files on where people prayed, shopped and ate, the department said. The decision from new NYPD Commissioner William J. Bratton comes as he tries to distance himself from the post-9/11 intelligence-gathering methods used by his …

On Monday, Pro-Russian insurgents covered even more Ukrainian separatist territory, as the new western-backed government in Ukraine looked for a way out of the international crisis by seeking UN help and proposing a referendum. Russia added a perilous tone to the escalation, saying that President Putin had received “a lot” of requests from the Russian-majority rust belt in Ukraine, “to …