Neil Durkin

There’s very worrying news around about the possible poisoning of leading Russian human rights lawyer Karinna Moskalenko. The French police have started an investigation after she and her family became ill on Monday. It seems the...

There was a sort of collective gasp in the office last week. People were circulating a news report about an influential Saudi cleric called Sheikh Habadan. He was on Saudi TV saying women should wear a niqab (full veil) but with only...

So, the US is angry because a US judge has ruled that 17 ethnic Uighur detainees held at Guantánamo Bay should be released into the United States. And who wouldn’t be in their place? What’s the world coming to when you can’t hold a few...

At first glance there’s something ridiculous about news of Iran’s “gender sensitive car ”. Could it even be a hoax story? (Well, apparently not). A government-backed Iranian car company called Iran Khodro is launching it next June, to...

I was recently watching My Beautiful Launderette on DVD. My girlfriend’s idea. I wasn’t massively keen. I’d seen it on TV in the eighties and remembered it as only ok-ish. But, hey, it was pretty good! It’s definitely strange though...

I was only saying two days ago that “good news” in the human rights world isn’t really a cue for unrestrained joy. Releasing a handful of political prisoners while leaving thousands in jail (Burma) is not exactly an occasion for...

Other Amnesty bloggers have got there before me, but it seems only right to say in this post that there’s a palpable sense of relief in the office today that Troy Davis has avoided execution in Georgia, USA – for now – following his...

“His guilt or innocence doesn't matter. No one should be incarcerated for 33 years in the shadow of the execution chamber. It is an act of barbarism to keep any man in those conditions.” I could easily have written it myself, but this...

It’s not all doom and gloom at Amnesty International you know! In fact – there’s excellent news right here in this very post. Mohamed Erraji , the Moroccan blogger who was facing a two-year sentence for remarks made about the Moroccan...

There was an amazing news item on Channel 4 News this week. It was a film of a Taliban compound in Afghanistan. Amongst other stuff it had a stunning “film within a film” (“supplied to us by the Taliban themselves”, said C4’s Alex...

More depressing news (sorry, but this is a human rights blog!) about executions in Japan around today. Three men in their sixties were hanged earlier this morning taking the number killed by the Japanese state this year to 13...

Just when you thought it was safe to tip-toe back into the blogosphere, you hear the depressing news that Morocco has jailed a blogger for two years . The person in question – Mohamed Erraji, a 29-year-old who blogs (Arabic only, and...

Breaking with the iron rule that everyone in the world must now write comment about the gun-totin’, bearskin-as-sofa-throw-owning, rather-nice-rectangular-glasses-wearing Sarah Palin, I’m not going to mention her in this post (oh … er...

Reports that Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth is “trapped” in Gaza after going there on the campaigning “peace boat” has got people talking again about the Israel blockade and Egypt’s closed border. I reckon that’s a good thing...

One of the things you tend to notice in doing human rights work is the amazing calm of people who have suffered horrible experiences. I’m sure there are also embittered people who are always unpleasant to everyone they meet after what...

Words (almost) fail me. Cuba’s detained a singer from a rock band and is reportedly set to charge him with the super-vague offence of “social dangerousness” or “subverting communist morality”. Ok, it might seem ludicrous (it is), but...

This morning's news that there’s been a bomb attack on a hospital in Pakistan is chilling. Coming so soon after Pervez Musharraf’s resignation yesterday, you really get a feeling of a country “in turmoil” (to use the pundit-friendly...

The disturbing and immensely depressing events in Georgia/South Ossetia/Abkhazia have, of course, dominated the news for the entire weekend. Google News this morning shows 11,111 news items and counting, and even the Beijing Olympics...

Like a certain pair of British protestors highlighting Tibet and human rights in Beijing yesterday, George Bush’s recent remarks about China and human rights were well-timed. A “blunt condemnation” according to the Times, and there’s...

Too late for the UK papers, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s death last night is, as you might expect, featuring heavily in online and broadcast coverage today (and Global Voices has some blog reaction). For anyone who cares about literature...