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Amnesty International says a draft anti-gay bill in Chad represents a backward step for human rights in the country. The rights group said Tuesday that amendments to the penal code proposed by the government would criminalize same-sex conduct in Chad, threatening jail sentences of between 15 and 20 years, and a fine ranging from $100 and $1,000. …

It’s difficult to read Amnesty International’s report on ethnic cleansing in Iraq without imagining that you’re reading the script of a movie. Over and over, the report, issued today, relates accounts of men being taken out of their villages in pickup trucks, lined up in a deserted area, and shot. Often they were shot in the backs, many times at the edge of a “wadi” or a large hole in the ground, into which the bodies would tumble. Some were not gravely injured and feigned death so that they could escape—and tell the story. Enough Iraqis—Christians, Shia Muslims, Yazidis...

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. ... “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda [?], and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said. ... “Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. ... The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use...

We Are All Complicit in the Warzone that Has Become Ferguson, Missouri The President, our Congresspeople, the governor, the police, and maybe even you. By James Joiner on August 19, 2014 14 5 0 View All Comments (5) Getty Images As I'm writing this, people are in the streets in Ferguson, Missouri for the sixth night in a row. Journalists are being threatened and detained—not arrested, so, God forbid, they will not have their day in court and force some semblance of legal reckoning—and therefore kept from performing their duties. These are duties which are, remember, firmly and unequivocally protected...

In an unusual move, the global rights organization Amnesty International has dispatched a delegation of observers and organizers to Ferguson, Mo., to provide direct support to community members and to observe the police response to protests. The 13-person delegation, which arrived late last week, was the first of its kind deployed by Amnesty within the United States, the organization said. The St. Louis suburb has been filled with unrest since since Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed on Aug. 9 by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. That unrest intensified once again on Sunday, with reports...

In a story unlikely to receive attention from the mainstream media in the United States, a former Guantanamo Bay captive has been arrested in Spain for operating what authorities there say is a sophisticated jihadist recruitment network. Spanish media is reporting that the one-time Gitmo prisoner is a 46-year-old Moroccan named Lahcen Ikassrien, who heads an Islamic cell that recruits fighters for the Syrian and Iraqi-based terror group known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Ikassrien and seven others were arrested in Madrid recently as part of a dozen raids on terrorism cells in the Spanish capital,...

NEW YORK, March 21, 2014 (C-FAM.org) - Women rescued from prostitution are criticizing UN agencies and Amnesty International for trying to legalize prostitution insisting legalization would lead to more girls being trafficked, and transform pimps into legitimate businessmen. “When [UN personnel] work in a brothel then will I listen to their argument,” said one former prostituted woman referring to the newly-created agency called UN Women. “What the hell are they [Amnesty International] thinking,” said Rachel Moran, a former prostituted woman from Ireland. Author of Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution, Moran refers to a leaked draft paper advocating for legalizing...

There are many ways to measure 30 years, but for Glenn Ford, the yardstick is simple. "My sons -- when I left -- was babies. Now they grown men with babies," he said, speaking as a free man for the first time in nearly three decades. Ford, Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner, walked free Tuesday after spending nearly 30 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. "My mind's going all kinds of directions, but it feels good," Ford, 64, told reporters outside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to CNN affiliate WAFB.

Attempts to purge Muslims from parts of the war-torn Central African Republic have prompted "a Muslim exodus of historic proportions," rights group Amnesty International warned Wednesday. {snip}

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists. The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits. She said his headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs. He had recently married and was soon to be a father.

Russian authorities have reportedly raided offices of human rights group Amnesty International, according to the Associated Press. *****************************************snip*****************************************"Russian officials have searched up to 2,000 NGOs in the past month, according to Pavel Chikov, a member of the presidential human rights council."

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Shortly after sending U.S. troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, President George W. Bush focused so intently on freeing Afghan women from the shackles of Taliban rule that empowering them became central to the United States' mission there. More than a decade later, as his successor Barack Obama charts a way out of the unpopular war, Afghan girls are back in school, infant and maternal survival rates are up and a quarter of the parliament's seats are reserved for women who at least on paper have the same voting, mobility and other rights as men. But Obama rarely speaks about...

MADRID — Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Spanish authorities of using racial and ethnic profiling, with police singling out people who are not white in order to meet quotas. In a new report, the human rights group said some police stations in Madrid have weekly and monthly quotas for ID checks and detentions of immigrants not carrying residency papers or work permits, encouraging officers to target people belonging to ethnic minorities, even if they are living legally in Spain as residents or are citizens. “People who do not ‘look Spanish’ can be stopped by police as often as four times...

A true story: Several years ago, the CIA informed the White House counterterrorism adviser that it had located a wanted Islamic terrorist and requested White House guidance for how to proceed. The counterterrorism adviser recommended “extraordinary rendition” — snatching the terrorist in a covert operation and secretly whisking him away for interrogation in a foreign country. A White House lawyer demanded a meeting with the president to argue that this would be a violation of international law. In the Oval Office, the lawyer and the counterterrorism adviser argued their cases, when suddenly the vice president walked in. Hearing the lawyer’s...

Why would any Catholic college welcome a radical pro-abortionist?

Catholics and Catholic organizations should not endorse organizations with “morally objectionable” missions, North Dakota’s bishops said, citing Amnesty International, the March of Dimes and Susan G. Komen for the Cure because of their links to abortion or unethical research. Bishops Paul A. Zipfel of Bismarck and Samuel J. Aquila of Fargo in a March 10 statement called upon pastors, clergy and the lay faithful to be prudent and just in making their charitable decisions, particularly on issues related to human life and marriage.  “All human life is sacred and must be protected,” the bishops said. “This is why we should...

No one really knows how bad it is, but it’s much worse than I thought possible. Piecing together information from satellite images and eye witness accounts, Amnesty International suspects that the horrific concentration camps in North Korea are growing. Some 200,000 people live as slaves – enduring starvation, torture, and rape while performing hard labor. Many die every year, only to be replaced by fresh bodies. Of those that survive, few will ever be released. Deemed ‘prisoners’, the victims of North Korea’s political pogroms are interned for the smallest criticisms of the regime of Kim Jong-Il, and when they are...

An Afghan policeman has shot dead an American soldier and wounded three others in the southern province of Helmand. A member of the Afghan national police opened fire on the Americans on Thursday during a full scale scuffle in the provincial capital city of Lashkar Gah, located about 555 kilometers (344 miles) south of Kabul, a Press TV correspondent reported. The shooting marks the second incident of its kind in less than a month. On April 27, a veteran Afghan army pilot opened fire on foreign troops at Kabul airport, killing eight US-led soldiers and a contractor. Several US-led foreign...

Here’s the latest from CagePrisoners, Moazzam Begg group that campaigns for Salafi jihadi prisoners. The article contains is a mocked-up photograph, showing the bloody corpse of Barack Obama, accompanied by text describing the future assassination of the President of the United States. The article was posted by Fahad Ansari, a solicitor who previously worked with the so-called Islamic Human Rights Commission, and who is now at CagePrisoners. Ansari is the man who described Anwar Al Awlaki, the man tipped to be Bin Laden’s replacement, as “inspirational“. Ansari previously wrote an article for CagePrisoners, in which he said of the death...