Much of the world’s attention is currently fixed on Ukraine. People in various countries are following the news closely, learning the names of Ukrainian cities, taking in refugees, and sending humanitarian packages. Many are shocked by evidence of the aggressors’…
I remember August 2011 as the month my friend and colleague Ales Bialiatski, a human rights defender and director of the Belarussian Viasna Human Rights Centre, was arrested. Bialiatski was immediately recognized as a political prisoner being prosecuted for this human…
Lots of people are suddenly talking about “discrimination,” even though this word is not used readily in Russia, just like the closely-related concept of “minority rights.” Many still find it somehow unpatriotic to protect and defend minority rights and combat…
Is it possible to speak of one people’s guilt before another? Is it necessary? Is it correct? The 20th century saw the emergence of the concept of collective national guilt and the need for “atonement.” This concept was extremely important…
The brother of Adi Rukun, who is featured in the documentary “The Look of Silence” (2014), was brutally killed in the 1960s while the hunt for communists and those who looked like communists was raging in Indonesia. Dictator Suharto came…
The song Russian Woman, which initially appeared to be a simple manifesto for moderate feminism and fashionable body positivity that was entirely appropriate for the Eurovision contest, where “politically correct” messages have triumphed for many years, provoked an outpouring of…
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