Human Rights Glance
A high court judge has ruled that the right-to-die case of a man who can only communicate by blinking and wants his "suffering to end" should be allowed to proceed.
Tony Nicklinson, 57, who has locked-in syndrome, wants a doctor to be able to lawfully end his "intolerable" life after suffering a stroke in 2005 which left him able only to communicate by a voice-synthesiser that registers blinking. He launched legal action seeking the right for a doctor to intervene to end his "indignity" and have a "common law defence of necessity" against any murder charge.
When I was growing up, police in America generally treated women with gentleness and respect. It was generally understood that women were not to be thrown around or mistreated by police unless they were being openly violent. But in most areas of the United States those days are long gone. Sadly, many police officers seem to make it a point to be especially mean and degrading to women. All over the country women are being openly abused and humiliated by police. In America today, women are being yanked around by their hair by police, women are being pepper sprayed directly in the face by police, and women are being brutally strip-searched in front of leering male police officers. This is not how a civilized nation should be treating women and there is no excuse for treating women like dogs. The incidents that you are about to read about are absolutely shocking. They reveal just how far America has fallen. If police will treat non-violent women like dogs, then what will they do when the time comes to arrest you? That is something to think about.
The Public Committee Against Torture In Israel submitted affidavits by Palestinian women to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein on Monday describing their treatment during interrogation by the Shin Bet security service.
British troops handed a Pakistani man to US forces in "questionable circumstances" after the invasion of Iraq and appear, in the words of one of the UK's most senior judges, to have "sold the pass" – in other words, lost the possibility of influence – with regard to his future.
About half a million Afghans have fled their homes because of violence and are living in desperate conditions with little help from a government reluctant to deal with the problems, Amnesty International says in a report.
Palestinians are being regularly and illegally barred from reaching Dead Sea beaches in the occupied West Bank, according to a Supreme Court petition filed by Israel's leading civil rights organisation.
A week after apologizing for signing a controversial document describing homosexuality as "an illness" that can be "healed," Amsterdam's chief rabbi seems to have retracted his apology.
