Liu Xianbin was jailed this week , for 10 years. Guess what the offence was? Something heinous, something violent, something depraved, I hear you cry. Close, but no cigar. He wrote an essay. He actually wrote a number of articles which...

Charge or release. Them’s your options. We have heard it before. In fact, if word documents had predictive text, that might well be our default sentence here at Amnesty. When you hear about people currently being held in detention, in...

Members of minority groups in Pakistan lost a brave advocate, when the minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, was murdered by three gunmen on his way to work today. He foresaw his own murder, and said he was prepared to face that...

Discontent is catching, that’s the fear. It seems to be a valid one. As one populace after another looks over at their neighbour, newly freed from the shackles of repressive government, and thinks I want that- it could be me...

We’re watching you, that was the implicit message from the Amnesty team when an Amnesty researcher recently returned from the latest trip to investigate the human rights situation in the Ivory Coast, said : “The eyes of the world may...

Where in the world is the worst place to be gay? This is the hefty question a Radio One DJ will tackle on BBC3 this coming Monday. Uganda has got to be up there in the running. Presenter Scott Mills had a personal taste of the violent...

The media swarm over the first anniversary of the Haiti earthquake had begun to quell, when in waltzed the former dictator who had made a run for it 25 years ago amid the fierce protests which finally put pay to his tyrannical rule...

It never rains, but it pours like hell. That must be the prevalent feeling in Haiti’s camps as the first-year anniversary of 2010’s devastating earthquake approaches. Oxfam released a report today blaming ‘dithering and aid confusion’...

Revelation, exposition, naming and shaming, turfing up the past- this is the stuff that has dominated the news over the last weeks since WikiLeaks started to gradually and systematically haemorrhage its latest haul of content. Yet...

At first it sounds like the sort of administrative disaster that most party hosts dread. Having elected to give an award to someone, as the day approaches it transpires that they can’t come, and neither can any member of their...

There has been a lot of debate around about the justification of blasphemy laws in the media this week as a result of the news of the death sentence passed on the Pakistani Christian woman, Aasia Bibi. Our Pakistan expert was...

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words posted on what is well known to be a social forum where satire, sarcasm and flippancy are staple features of any utterance, can never lead to a criminal conviction. So goes a new take on...

Aung San Suu Kyi, is arguably the most famous prisoner in the world. She is one of Amnesty International’s longest running prisoners of conscience and an iconic inspiration to people across the world, who has come to symbolise the...

I don’t know if you noticed, but David Cameron popped over to China this week. His stated mission was to improve trade links between the two countries and garner profitable business deals for UK companies. Whilst he was at it though...

As regular readers of this blog no doubt you will, but lest we forget, this coming Sunday Burma will hold its first election in 20 years. It doesn’t take a psychic octopus (which is just as well ) to predict the outcome of this race...

There was plenty of media attention today on Indonesia. It focused on the erupting volcano , the displacement of up to 50,000 people, deaths from flash flooding and landslides , and an emergency landing for a Quantas aircraft. This did...

It’s been a mixed bag in terms of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) news this week, to say the least. Which do you want first, the good news or the bad? Russia was told by the European Court of Human Rights yesterday that...

Working for Amnesty you often come across things which turn your stomach, but I found news about the graphic video showing the torture of Papuan villagers- apparently by military personnel- intensely difficult to watch. The footage was...

We are in the very midst of award season at the moment, today there is a lot of buzz about the Man Booker announcement , and the unprecedented move to grant the award to a comic novel, for the first time in the history of the prize...

It is three years on from the iconic “Saffron Revolution” when protestors swept through the streets of Burma. The world watched with bated breath, as footage captured by brave and clandestine reporters revealed the largest show of...