People near the military-controlled diamond fields in Marange live in constant fear and in abject poverty, benefiting little from the diamond riches that surround them. The beneficiaries of this diamond wealth are largely members of the military, government-appointed corporate entities, and officials in President Robert Mugabe’s inner circle.
Cover story. Haideh Daragahi interviews Parvin Ardalan — women’s rights activist, journalist from Iran.
LGBT people in Uganda live under threat and fear. Ugandan homophobia, ironically, doubles as an expression of resistance to the West while being stoked and funded by conservative leaders and church clergy from the very same West. Report by Ariel Rubin.
India is the second largest arms importing country in the world, just after China. Pakistan has been, for a long time, a standing customer of European arms, making it the eleventh largest arms importer in the world. Given this, the region is indeed a lucrative market for the arms industry to engage in. Armed conflicts between the two nations have been used by eager European arms producers, aided by their governments.
Parvin Ardalan – Iranian women’s rights activist and journalist, and cover person of January/February 2010 issue of Independent World Report – on the civil resistance against the Iranian regime.
True story of how the UK and the US conspired to illegally evict thousands of Chagossian islanders from Diego Garcia in the 1960s to make way for a US military base. Graphic reportage by Dan Archer.
There is a world of difference between sexists and bigots who believe religion gives them the go ahead to think that gays are perverts and unveiled women whores and a state that puts those beliefs into laws, under which gays are executed and badly veiled women are fined, imprisoned or have acid thrown in their faces by Hezbollah and Basiji thugs. When this is the case, speaking of personal beliefs is at best misleading.
A journey in the war-torn heartland of Turkish Kurdistan. Kurds in Turkey faced one of the most brutal of oppressions, after the military coup of 1980. Hundreds of Kurdish people, among them a large number of intellectuals, were tortured in Diyarbakir – recognised as the capital of the Kurds – prison. By Shirvan Nuray Sarikaya.
After dedicating decades of their labour in unventilated rooms full of fumes and solvent; enduring forced overtime and below-minimum wage pay; incurring injuries and lung diseases; and undergoing the abuse of their managers, these workers found themselves padlocked out of their factory. It turned out that Cort had moved its operations overseas, for much cheaper and non-unionised labour in Chinese and Indonesian factories.
Mahmood Mamdani has chosen to act as an apologist for the Sudanese regime, to stifle progress towards justice, and to stand up for some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. One wishes he could have used his intellect in the service of a better cause. Book review by Joshua F Leach.
