Talking Rights

A March 20 hearing at the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, detailing torture by the United States. This is just the beginning of what will be years of investigation into human rights abuses committed in the name of the “war on terror.”
And we are no safer…
The beginning is in Spanish but the speakers are in [...]

from today’s USA Today:
Before her visit to China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removed the issue of human rights from the table, saying it could “interfere” with talks on the global economic crisis, climate change and security.
She missed a critical point. Human rights aren’t a side dish on a crowded buffet. Human rights support and [...]

This is an excerpt from an interview with Army Specialist Brandon Neely by the University of California at Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas. Often overlooked in the torture debate is the effect of torture on the perpetrators.
There is a wonderful Danish documentary about this called “Your Neighbor’s Son: The [...]

I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”
– Lewis Carroll

As the New York Times reports today, a federal appeals court yesterday found that accusations against a Uighur detainee held for more than six years at Guantanamo were based on bare and unverifiable claims.
“With some derision,” the three-judge panel said the [...]

In another first, legislators in New York just voted to require anyone showing a plastination exhibit to show where exactly the bodies came from. Senator Jim Alesi (R-Perinton) sponsored the bill, which mirrors similar efforts in California, Pennsylvania, Washington and Hawaii.
North Carolina may see similar legislation introduced next year.
Alesi told WROC-TV, “It’s human dignity [...]

Well, not quite — but the network of people who have opposed the for-profit use of unclaimed and “un-donated” bodies in plastination exhibits scored several impressive victories recently.
After an extensive investigation of the origin of the bodies, the New York State Attorney General announced on May 29 that Premier had agreed to a settlement [...]

A student at Duke University, Grace Wang has become embroiled in a controversy stemming from the vigil held last week to bring attention to human rights violations in Tibet. Her story, published today in the Washington Post, underscores the passions involved as well as the dangers of speaking out.
She tells her story beautifully, so I [...]

Although there were many more counterprotestors than protestors, today’s vigil, organized entirely by students, was a big success.
Some pictures follow. More are available at Flickr.

Spurred by a growing network of activists and ABC’s 20/20 expose, the “Bodies”-style plastination exhibits are under increasing scrutiny nationwide. In Pennsylvania, for example, where the Premier show is housed at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Science Center, state Rep. Michael E. Fleck is preparing a bill that will ban the commercial exhibition of human cadavers without written [...]