Perspectivas / Perspectives

El acuerdo sacrifica
los derechos de las víctimas a la justicia
y garantiza la impunidad,
dijo José Miguel Vivanco,
Director de HRW para las Américas

Enero 2.─ El grupo activista de los derechos humanos, Human Rights Watch, criticó duramente este martes un acuerdo entre el gobierno y los rebeldes de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC, alcanzado a principios de mes en Cuba, diciendo que sacrifica los derechos de las víctimas a la justicia y garantiza la impunidad.

El pacto abre el camino a un acuerdo final de paz en los próximos meses.

Bajo los términos del convenio, los guerrilleros y militares serán juzgados por tribunales especiales de paz. Quienes confiesen crímenes graves, no irán a la cárcel sino que cumplirán una sentencia máxima de ocho años en proyectos especiales como limpieza de minas y reconstrucción de comunidades.

This article is guilty of spreading panic and disorder

More general signs of a crackdown on expression in China   

Beijing, Dec.5.─ In the middle of August Zhao Shaolin, a retired Communist Party boss of Jiangsu province in eastern China, was carted away by the country’s anti-corruption commission. Nothing unusual there. Dozens of local party bosses have fallen foul of a national anti-bribery campaign. What was surprising were the charges levelled against him. These usually stress the vast wealth the accused is said to have squirrelled away by his or her nefarious activities. Mr Zhao’s crime, according to Beijing News, a party newspaper, was to flout party discipline by criticising government policies. Some people, Xie Chuntao of the Central Party School sniffed, think “they are cleverer than the Party, which cannot be allowed.”

Mr Zhao was not the only one. In mid-October the anti-corruption commission arrested two serving provincial party chiefs, in Hebei near Beijing and Guangxi in the south. Their list of crimes also included criticising the party. On October 12th the Politburo approved a new edition of the party’s rules. It was, Xinhua, the state news agency, said, “the most complete and stringent code of conduct” in the history of the Communist Party. It bans party members from making “negative comments” or “irresponsible remarks” about policy. Members may debate issues—but only if they say nice things.

Hunted by ISIS, afraid to enter refugee camps, they are undercounted and desperate for help  

Dec. 17 (WSJ).─ Donald Trump’s bizarre proposal to bar all Muslim immigrants from the U.S. has overshadowed a more legitimate concern regarding religion and immigration: Middle East Christians who are desperate to escape the genocidal campaign against them by Islamic State.

Islamist terror attacks like the ones in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have underlined the need for more and better vetting of refugees from the Middle East who seek safety in the U.S. But with tens of thousands pushing at the gate, who should to get first preference?

Dec. 7 marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most pivotal documents in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history: Dignitatis Humanae, or “On the Dignity of the Human Person.” Issued at the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the work stated the church’s belief “that the human person has a right to religious freedom.”

This declaration was at once revolutionary and reaffirming of Catholic tradition—and its significance has only increased as attacks on religious freedom have proliferated in the intervening years.

In many ways, the Catholic Church’s affirmation of religious liberty echoes the American tradition of religious freedom, articulated so forcefully in the writings of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and given constitutional enumeration in the First Amendment.