The Chinese government is currently interning hundreds of thousands of the country's Uighur Muslim minority. In an interview, Jewher Ilham, the daughter of human rights activist Ilham Tohti, who has been sentenced to life in prison, calls on the European Union to take action against Beijing.

 Uhr, Jan.8.– Jewher Ilham, 25, is the daughter of Chinese economics professor Ilham Tohti, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his advocacy of the rights of China's Uighur minority.

She went to the United States on her own in 2013 after her father's arrest at an airport. He had taught at Beijing's Minzu University until early 2014 and was considered to be the last moderate activist working on behalf of Muslim Uighurs in China.

 A Nobel Peace Prize is no guarantee of future performance.

In Oslo on Tuesday, Ethiopia’s reformist prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, was awarded the prestigious prize amid criticism that the recognition was premature: Ethiopia’s transition to democracy is far from complete and ethnic violence and dislocation are prevalent in his country.

 The Hague, Dec.11.– As if to underline that Nobel laureates are as capable of violence and cynicism as any other leader, 1991 winner Aung San Suu Kyi, now the leader of the government of Myanmar, also traveled to Europe this week to appear before a court in The Hague and defend her government against charges of genocide.

As a campaigner for democracy and imprisoned dissident, Suu Kyi became a global icon of human rights and democracy in the ’90s. 

India’s rapid descent into xenophobia, violence, and irrationality
has an important economic dimension, but it takes politicians
to channel these emotions into nationalism, and to embolden
the nationalists to commit violence.  Now that the BJP has done so,
is it able – or willing – to exorcise the many demons it has unleashed?

New Delhi, Dec.10.– Injustice, discrimination, and violence are hardly unheard of in India. But today, they are being normalized, enabled, and even encouraged by the state, which is promoting an aggressive form of Hindu nationalism that looks increasingly like mob rule. India’s diversity and complex civilizational legacy are now under assault, and it is shaking the very foundations of Indian democracy. 

In August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped Jammu and Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority territory – of its special status, which had granted it considerable autonomy, and split it into two “union territories” over which the central government now wields more direct control.

 Bardarash, Iraq; Dec.8.– Hundreds of Syrian Kurds have returned home from Iraqi refugee camps over recent weeks despite fears for their safety, amid complaints that thousands have been ‘imprisoned’ with little access to food, healthcare and work.

Over the past month, around 100 people have been voluntarily returning each week from camps in Iraq after fleeing northern Syria at the start of a Turkish offensive in October designed to force out Kurdish forces.