Anti-Slavery International has uncovered children as young as ten years old forced to take part in dangerous camel races in the United Arab Emirates. We were able to take photos to prove that children were involved in a total of twelve races at the Sweihan race track in Abu Dhabi on February 9, 2010.
These three children were lucky. Many children in the society who were accused of witchcraft never lived to tell their stories. They were tortured to death, bathed with acid, abandoned to die by the roadside or in the bush. Jane, Abigail, Godswill and hundreds of children in the Akwa Ibom camp carry the scars of the witch-hunting campaigns that have been going on across Nigeria and many other parts of Africa.
Despite their intimate ties to the land and the people of Iran, Bahais have been the constant target of state-sanctioned discrimination and violence for more than a century. Today, much of this intolerance stems from propagations by the Iranian government, that the Bahai faith is a wayward sect or cult whose members have deviated from Islam and are therefore apostates.
We hear a lot about how the internet has shrunk the world into one small global village. Online tools are seen as the great levellers of the age, and they may well be. But, consider this: while the worldwide transmission of news and ideas has indeed become easier for a large number of people across the globe, their physical bodies are all that is required by those seeking to punish such transmission or circulation of information and ideas.
A number of Eurasian countries, notably Kazakhstan, are adopting tactics very similar to those of Belarus in order to curb critical media coverage, particularly on the internet. Recent increases in the numbers of online users in these countries have undoubtedly contributed to authorities’ perceived need to control the web.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The West must not validate a dictator by buying gas or other resources from him; but instead make him understand that gas purchases are based solely on the democratisation process and on improvements in the human rights situation.
