Human Rights Glance
Hisham El Farra is 24 years old and in his final year at university where he studies social education. After graduation, though, he’d like to be a businessman, working with imports and exports. Travel is high on his wish list. One place he wants to visit is Spain, primarily to check out the women, he admits with an embarrassed youthful smile. “They are flawless,” he says.
But leaving his home in Gaza may not be possible. Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the territory has been under an Israeli-led blockade and, like Farra, an entire generation of Gazan youth has come of age without interaction with the outside world. The effect on their outlook on their own lives and that of the country around them is palpable.
Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force.
Human rights campaigners accused the British government of possible war crimes yesterday for failing to secure the release of a man held without trial for eight years by the Americans.
Israel has turned away dozens of African asylum-seekers, mostly Eritreans trying enter the country from Egypt, human rights groups have said.
The crowd at a City Council hearing in Springfield, Miss., didn’t expect to be surprised when Rev. Phil Snider took the podium to speak out against a proposed piece of gay rights legislation this summer, as his words initially seemed to echo the sentiments of many right-wing conservatives on the issue.
