The UN torture watchdog just called out Pakistan for keeping former Prime Minister Imran Khan locked up under conditions that might cross into actual torture territory. Alice Jill Edwards said the 72-year-old politician has been stuck in solitary confinement for over a year at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi with cameras on him constantly, and he only gets one hour outside his cell per day. International law considers anything past 15 days of isolation psychological torture.
Khan apparently cannot exercise outdoors or pray with other inmates, and his lawyer's visits keep getting cut short. The guy has serious health problems from a spinal injury and gunshot wounds, but authorities keep blocking his personal doctors from checking on him...
South Korea just hit its former acting president Choi Sang-mok with criminal charges over the wild martial law situation that went down under President Yoon Suk Yeol. Special Prosecutor Park Ji-young announced the indictment alongside charges against ex-Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, saying both guys failed their basic duties by refusing to appoint Constitutional Court justices after parliament recommended them during the chaos following Yoon's impeachment.
Prosecutors claim Choi only appointed two out of three recommended justices and deliberately skipped over Ma Eun-hyeok because there was not enough bipartisan support, which they are calling a criminal dereliction of duty. The defense will probably argue they were just trying to...
A UN official just told Nepal to actually enforce its anti-discrimination laws after finding that the government keeps ignoring its own constitutional protections for Dalits and other marginalized groups. Nicolas Levrat said Nepal has solid legal frameworks on paper, but the enforcement is basically nonexistent, and minorities are still getting screwed over constantly despite safeguards written into the 2015 constitution.
Courts acquitted defendants in roughly 63 percent of cases involving attacks on Dalits, and the government only bothered implementing about 13 percent of the human rights commission recommendations. Levrat pointed out that commissions meant to protect marginalized communities have zero funding and no real power, while...
A UN expert is calling Bangladesh's forensic work on 114 unidentified protest victims from the summer a major step toward getting answers and holding people accountable. Morris Tidball-Binz visited the country to help with the investigations and said the process could strengthen their forensic systems while giving families some closure. Authorities started digging up bodies and running DNA tests at a temporary morgue, and they expect to wrap everything up soon.
The deaths happened when the government cracked down on student demonstrations against a job quota system that reserved positions for war veterans' families. Security forces killed over 300 people after the prime minister ordered them to shoot rioters on sight. She ended up...
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker just signed off on medical aid-in-dying legislation that lets terminally ill adults request prescription medications to end their lives, but the program does not kick off until September 2026. Patients need confirmation from two doctors that they have less than six months to live, and they have to be mentally capable of making the decision and physically able to take the medication themselves.
The Catholic Conference of Illinois already called the bill dangerous and wants the state to put money into hospice care instead. Disability rights advocates have concerns about the self-administration requirement potentially excluding people who are suffering but cannot physically swallow pills on their own, while...
A federal judge in Maryland just slapped a temporary restraining order on ICE to stop them from grabbing Kilmar Abrego Garcia again after she already made them let him go from a detention facility in Pennsylvania. Judge Paula Xinis said the agency has no legal authority to deport him without an actual removal order, and keeping him locked up causes irreparable harm. His lawyers filed for the order because they figured ICE would just arrest him again when he showed up for his scheduled check-in in Baltimore.
The whole situation has been a mess since March, when authorities deported him to El Salvador before the Supreme Court ordered his return. Trump claimed the government could not bring him back, and then DHS later announced plans to...
UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews called out the UK government to trash Myanmar's upcoming military junta election as fake, and he wants Britain to push other countries in Asia to do the same. The junta scheduled voting for later this month to create some illusion of political stability while the civil war keeps going, but rights groups say the military keeps locking people up randomly and ramping up sexual violence against anyone who opposes them.
Andrews pointed out that Britain has not hit Myanmar's junta with any new sanctions since October, and the UN Security Council has been pretty useless on the whole situation. A junta air strike just killed at least 34 people at a hospital in the western part of the country, which is supposed...
Human Rights Watch just released findings claiming Russia has been systematically torturing Ukrainian prisoners of war through beatings, fake executions, electric shocks, and dog attacks. The report came from interviews with 12 former detainees, and it says the abuse was designed to completely destroy their dignity. Holly Cartner from HRW said Russian authorities are running a coordinated torture operation that violates international humanitarian law.
The organization says Russia is breaking the Third Geneva Convention, which bans torture and cruel treatment of POWs. HRW wants independent monitors to get immediate access to all Russian detention facilities, and they are calling for the prosecution of everyone involved through...
UN investigators dropped a report saying Venezuela's national guard has been running a decade-long campaign of extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, torture, and sexual violence against anyone protesting or opposing President Nicolás Maduro. The crackdown got way worse after the disputed election, when security forces detained over 2,000 people and killed at least 24 protesters who challenged Maduro's victory claim.
Authorities used terrorism charges to grab activists and opposition members without warrants during raids called Operation Tun Tun, holding them without lawyers and forcing some detained kids to record fake confessions. The same patterns showed up during protests back in 2014, 2017, and 2019, and investigators say the whole...
