The Human Rights Action Center has been involved for seven months in a investigation into the incarceration conditions and medical care of former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian. We sent a longtime Asia researcher, Harreld Dinkins, and Hans Wahl, a researcher with considerable expertise on prison standards and the...

On March 29, American University professor David Bosco wrote a piece in the Washington Post about the International Criminal Court (ICC) and their nearly exclusive focus on Africa as a place to pursue 25 charges of crimes against humanity. He concluded with a remarkable paragraph:

"Still fragile, the...

Faith can be a comfort and faith can be a cudgel. Faith has been and remains for many to be a wellspring of inspiration that can be used to check one's moral compass and to recharge one's internal resources the struggle for all people's human rights. It is also important...

It's a strange day in the Beltway when Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is left to speak virtually alone in a filibuster on the use of drones. When the concern is about the president's authority to hunt and kill American citizens on American soil without even the pretense of judicial oversight,...

Imagine a global nation of people stretched into a diaspora that numbers perhaps 80 million people, more than five times the global Jewish population. Have you heard of the Tamils? They are in South India, Malaysia, Canada, Sri Lanka and around the world. Mostly Hindu, there is a substantial Christian...

I hope this missive finds all of you well and healthy. This is the first time I have ever gone to a political party for help. I want to make it clear that I am coming to you from a space outside of party politics and am standing instead on...

It always starts with James Franco, doesn't it? "Pineapple Express," a Franco and Seth Rogen vehicle that came out in 2008, used "Paper Planes" in a red-band trailer for their film. Thus the artist M.I.A. became known outside of cognoscenti hipsters and became a full-blown pop star. With...

The debate surrounding the legality and use of drones is similar to the debate now going on between football players, young and old (old, of course, if they are lucky). On the football field the damage to the brain by the impacts of skilled and determined men of great size...

My New Year celebration was quiet and introspective. Time spent in serenity can illuminate the hallways of the possible. Spending time "visioning" for human rights achievements might seem frivolous, but we must consider how to spend our energies on creating hope for people to brighten their darknesses. Meditative time can...

On December 12, 2012, two days before the horrific school shootings in Connecticut, two reports were issued that might have merited more media attention and societal concern on both sides of the Atlantic. The UK Government released the Peter Finucane Review, detailing the active complicity in the 1989 assassination of...

As we look into the New Year, it is also time to look back and see which governments might free a prisoner or two due to the decline of age or ill health. With honoring the traditions that are represented by a holiday that celebrates a religious figure who focused...

In the 1980s, the word "disappeared" entered the human rights lexicon. It was a term that came up through circles of human rights defenders in Latin America, where it was associated with the thousands of activists who were taken in the night. Kidnapped people would languish in prisons, be tortured...

Frank Barsalona was the architect who built the temple of rock. He was the guy that transformed it from just music into a movement, turned it into something that reached people all over the world and changed the way we related to one another.

I first met him...

I met Daw Aung San Suu Kyi twice. The first time was in the wooden two-story, headquarters of her party, the National League for Democracy, in Rangoon. The year was 1999 and though she had already captured the imagination of the world, many experts questioned her ability to deliver any...

Imagine Taiwan in the past and how far it has come. The willingness and wisdom to evolve into a pluralistic democracy from an authoritarian system has been in step with South Korea as leading the transformation in respecting human rights and international standards in East Asia. The moves made towards...

Due to a flu infection, I was unable to travel to investigate the detention of Taiwan's former president, Chen Shui-bian, and possible human rights violations in detention. In my absence, the investigation was conducted by my team: Hans Wahl, with considerable experience on international standards for prisons and...

Molly Maguire, whose farm had been stolen by the British during the Irish Potato famine, used to wake her children to these words; "Awaken my dearest, awaken. What tyrant shall we topple today?"

Awakening to human rights is a moral imperative. One needs to protect oneself as well as others...

President Ma,

I write you with considerable respect for both your position and your person. I also write you inspired by Taiwanese who I have known personally in the United States and have met with in Taiwan itself. It is in that spirit that I ask you to read these...

Two months of horrific escalations of violence have engulfed western Burma's Rakhine State. While the conflict lurches between reproach and revenge, the media seems to be at a crossroads between better reportage and being forgotten by the drive of the news cycle. The violence threatens to extinguish the tentative embers...

In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Human Rights, Not So Pure Anymore," Samuel Moyn argues that "for those who long for a state and a world that not only protect liberties but also promote well-being," the human rights movement has not "made enough of a difference." He...