Habib Siddiqui

  Taiwan is among the 110 delegations invited to President Biden's "Summit for Democracy" next month, according to   a list   released by the State Department on Tuesday night. Why it matters:  Taiwan's inclusion is sure to infuriate the Chinese government, which views the self-governing island as a breakaway territory and opposes any attempts to legitimize it on the international stage. Biden has repeatedly expressed his ironclad commitment to  helping Taiwan  defend itself from a potential Chinese invasion. He has at times  gone further  than the official U.S. government position on a potential war over Taiwan, only to have the White House press office clarify that the policy has not changed. The big picture:  The invitation list for Biden's summit, which will be held Dec. 9-10, underscores the messy nature of 21st-century democracy and U.S. relations with certain allies and partners. Hungary, whose far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is ...

  The invitations are out for U.S. President Joe Biden’s   democracy summit   on December 9–10. Which countries did Biden’s team   settle on , and why were they selected? WHO WAS INVITED? The current mix of invitees includes liberal democracies, weaker democracies, and several states with authoritarian characteristics (such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Pakistan). Rather than limit participation to a core group of committed democracies, Biden’s team opted for a big tent approach (see table 1 below). The majority of invitees—seventy-seven countries—rank as “free” or fully democratic, according to  Freedom House’s 2021 report . Another thirty-one invitees rank as “partly free.” Finally, three countries fall into the “not free” camp (see figure 1). Combining Freedom House’s index scores with tallies from the  Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project  yields revealing results. Eight invitees fall exceptionally low on these democracy rankings, r...

On  Tuesday, 23 November 2021, Israel embarked on a large-scale demolition campaign throughout the West Bank, in which it destroyed and confiscated dwellings, tents, livestock enclosures, buildings under construction, a road, and even a structure intended for burial. Twenty-two people, including 15 children, lost their homes in one day. Some of the demolitions were captured on video: Filmed by: Nasser Nawaj'ah, Hamdan Hamdan, 'Eid Hazalin, 'Amer 'Aruri Jerusalem Area: Israel demolishes three homes of six people, including three minors At around 6:00 A.M., Civil Administration personnel and Border Police officers arrived at the neighborhood of  Wadi al-Humos , an eastern extension of Zur Baher in East Jerusalem. The forces bulldozed three buildings: a two-story building that was home to a family of five, including three minors, and a building that was home to one person. From there, the forces moved to the other side of the Separation Barrier and demolished a four-story ...

    Ram Puniyani   Salman Khurshid, a former Union Minister, is one of the prominent leaders of Congress and also is the well known lawyer of Supreme Court. He recently came out with a book, “Sunrise over Ayodhya: Nationhood in Present times”. The book is publicized as “… the Supreme Court… cleared the way for the construction of a Ram temple… If the loss of a mosque is preservation of faith, if the establishment of a temple is emancipation of faith, we can all join together in celebrating faith in the Constitution…” The book also states that Hinduism is a great and tolerant religion, while Hindutva is a politics akin to the one of ISIS and Boko Haram. In a way in the  book, Khurshid goes miles to defend the Supreme Court judgment, despite the fact the Court did recognize putting of Ram lalla idols in surreptitious manner in1949 was a criminal act, that the demolition itself was a crime but it decided not to punish anybody for both these crimes. For the l...

    Historic decision by Argentinian courts to take up genocide case against Myanmar     For Immediate Release 28 November 2021     The Argentinian judiciary has taken the historic step to open a court case against the Myanmar military - including Min Aung Hlaing and much of the current junta’s senior leadership - over the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya, the Burmese Rohingya  Organisation  UK (BROUK) said today.    On the 26 November 2021 the Second Chamber of the Federal Criminal Court in Buenos Aires confirmed that it would launch a case against senior Myanmar officials under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which holds that some crimes are so horrific that they can be tried anywhere. BROUK first petitioned the Argentinian judiciary to open such a case in November 2019.    “This is a day of hope not just for us Rohingya but for oppressed people everywhere. The decision in Argentina show...

  John Reed , south-east Asia correspondent  NOVEMBER 27 2021 Argentina’s judiciary has agreed to open a genocide case brought by  Rohingya  victims of atrocities committed by  Myanmar ’s military, in a move hailed by victims and their advocates as a historic step toward bringing the country’s ruling generals to justice. The case was brought in Buenos Aires by a UK-based Rohingya group and six female survivors of the military’s 2017 crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where security forces killed thousands, committed rapes and drove about 750,000 members of the long-persecuted minority into Bangladesh. “We will be looking for concrete results in terms of accountability and punishment for those who participated directly and indirectly in the genocide,” Tomás Ojea Quintana, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, told the Financial Times. “We want to identify with names the perpetrators and try to get these people brought to justice in Argentina.”  Quintana said ...