Human Rights

David J. Kramer is president of the nonprofit Freedom House, which recently published the report " Contending With Putin's Russia: A Call for American Leadership . " O verlooked amid the focus on the Boston bombings and the suspects' links to Russia is the latest example of the systematic abuse of human rights under Vladi­mir Putin. Alexei Navalny, 36, is on trial this week on charges of stealing $500,000 from a timber firm in 2009, a case that was previously closed for lack of...

MOSCOW — Russia's only independent polling agency said Monday it may have to close after prosecutors targeted it for "political activity" under a law spearheading President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on civil society. Levada Center published a letter, dated last week, from prosecutors who said its polls and publications are "aimed at shaping public opinion on government policy" and demanded it cease publication until it registers as a "foreign agent" under a law passed last year.

Thomas R. Pickering is a member of the Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment. He was undersecretary of state for political affairs from 1997 to 2001 and served as ambassador and representative to the United Nations from 1989 to 1992. It's never easy in this volatile world to advance America's strategic aims. For more than four decades, in the service of Democratic and Republican presidents, it was often my job to persuade foreign governments to adhere to international law and observe the highest standards of...

BEIRUT — Fierce street fighting in a Syrian town near the Lebanese border has killed at least 28 elite members of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, activists said Monday, as Syrian government forces pushed deeper into the strategic, opposition-held town. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syria's civil war, said that more than 70 Hezbollah fighters have also been wounded in the fighting around the town of Qusair. If confirmed, the casualties would...

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding that Syria end its brutal 11-month crackdown on protesters and endorsing an Arab League plan for a political transition that would require President Bashar al-Assad to yield some of his power. The nonbinding resolution is largely symbolic and includes no enforcement provisions. But its approval, by a vote of 137 to 12, with 17 abstentions, highlights the growing isolation of Syria's closest protectors at the United...

President Obama and European leaders called Thursday for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign, after months of his violent crackdown on protesters. The rhetorical escalation was backed by new U.S. sanctions designed to undermine Assad's ability to finance his military operation. "The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way," Obama said in a written statement. "For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.

THE OBAMA administration's commitment to the traditional American cause of promoting democracy and human rights has been widely questioned, and not without reason. So some rights advocates were pleased by an address that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered at Georgetown University, in which she laid out "the Obama administration's human rights agenda for the 21st century. " We're not so happy. Ms. Clinton said that the administration, "like others before us, will promote, support and defend...

I agree with Steve York [ letters , Feb. 20] that repairing America's image in the Muslim world will require consistent actions, not just words, on issues such as human rights. As an American Muslim, I would like to see the Obama administration take strong action against the perpetrators of human rights violations in many Muslim countries. Some of the Muslim countries that the United States wants as allies are among those that gravely violate these God-given rights. In 1974, Pakistan constitutionally declared the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim...

The advancement of human rights around the world was a cornerstone of foreign policy and U.S. leadership for decades, until the attacks on our country on Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, while Americans continue to espouse freedom and democracy, our government's abusive practices have undermined struggles for freedom in many parts of the world. As the gross abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay were revealed, the United States lost its mantle as a champion of human rights, eliminating our national ability to speak credibly on the subject, let...

The Post missed the mark in its Oct. 5 editorial "Court shopping," which advocated clear limits on the scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum (Shell) , the complaint is that Shell directly assisted the Nigerian military in torturing and killing innocent villagers. If true, the purpose of Shell's misconduct was to gain economic advantage in its business. Shell argued that as a Dutch corporation, it should not have to answer in America for these alleged human-rights abuses.

As GOP weighs how best to profit from Obama's problems, Democrats hope it overplays its hand WASHINGTON — The scandals dogging President Barack Obama are a political gift to Republicans, who could use some good luck after recent election losses. It's not clear, however, how Republicans can best capitalize on Democrats' woes, legislatively or politically. Last November's election dynamics complicate the picture on both fronts. Republican leaders are urging a bit of restraint in exploiting the White House's new weaknesses.

BEIRUT — Syrian troops pushed into a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border on Sunday, fighting house-to-house and bombing from the air as President Bashar Assad tried to strengthen his grip on a strategic strip of land running from the capital to the Mediterranean coast. With the regime scoring gains on the battlefield, the U.S. and Russia could face an even tougher task persuading Assad and his opponents to attend talks on ending Syria's 26-month-old conflict. Washington...

BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in a newspaper interview Saturday he won't step down before elections and that the United States has no right to interfere in his country's politics, raising new doubts about a U.S-Russian effort to get Assad and his opponents to negotiate an end to the country's civil war. In the capital Damascus, a car bomb killed at least three people and wounded five, according to Syrian state TV. It said bomb experts...

NEW YORK — Activist Cynthia Brown, one of the guiding forces at the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch, has died at age 60 after fighting cancer. Brown started with Human Rights Watch as a researcher in 1982, focusing on the Americas. In 1990, she went to Chile for two years for the organization. In 1993, she became its first program director, overseeing every report it published. Human Rights Watch, which said Brown died Sunday in Manhattan,...

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — El Salvador's Supreme Court heard opening arguments Wednesday in a landmark abortion case in which a woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus has not been allowed to terminate a pregnancy in which the fetus is given no chance of surviving. The Central American country's laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman's health is at risk. At present, the woman and any doctor who terminated her 23-week pregnancy would face arrest and...

BEIJING — Police in China frequently beat, torture and arbitrarily detain suspected sex workers, often with little or no evidence that they engaged in prostitution, a rights group said Tuesday in a report that called on the government to discipline abusive officers. Officers sometimes detain women only on the basis of their carrying condoms, thus deterring their use among sex workers and increasing the risk of spreading HIV, New York-based Human Rights Watch said....

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge spoke yesterday, and, as usual, he didn't say anything. Which is just how the Chinese government likes it. The idea of awarding the Olympics to Beijing was that it would help change the behavior of the Chinese government. Instead, the Chinese government is changing the behavior of everyone else. They should start a new Olympic event for Rogge in Beijing: the Apolitical Head Duck, which should take place at the conclusion of the Dissident Roundup.

Amy Ostermeier, 34, a senior human rights officer for the State Department, died Sept. 2 at her home in Alexandria. According to her husband, Jim Rosenberg, she had cancer of unknown origin. Ms. Ostermeier joined the State Department in 2005 and helped develop policies on issues related to religious freedom and other human rights. In 2007, she was a member of the U.S. observer team at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva about violence against women. She said rape and other forms of violence toward women...

The May 8 editorial " Tactics under fire ," about the recent confrontation between Boko Haram militants and Nigerian government forces in the town of Baga, calls for a thorough investigation and accountability. Our government is taking resolute actions to ensure that both are accomplished swiftly and effectively. Upon learning of the incident — in which Nigerian security forces and troops from Cameroon, Chad and Niger were called on to repel a Boko Haram assault in this border region — President Goodluck Jonathan immediately...

LIBYA Militias press protest at Justice Ministry Men in pickup trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns and rocket launchers protested on the road outside Libya's Justice Ministry on Tuesday to push demands that aides of ousted ruler Moammar Gaddafi be barred from senior government posts. Tensions between the government and armed militias have intensified since authorities began a campaign to dislodge the gunmen from strongholds in the capital, Tripoli, to tackle lawlessness threatening Libya's democratic transition.