Tag: war

Human Rights, Society

We haven’t left the cave yet

Ali Khamenei is dead. For decades, he held ultimate political and religious authority over a theocratic regime that continues to oppress Iranians at home and sponsor terrorism abroad. For those who survived torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of this regime, those who were forced to flee their homeland to escape persecution, and those who lost friends and family, including the thousands of protesters killed by Iranian security forces in January, this is a moment of relief. Khamenei will not be hurting anyone anymore. For some, joy joins relief in an intricate tangle of emotions that only those who have lived under the shadow of the Grand Ayatollah can truly comprehend.

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Human Rights

Abstaining on Ukraine at the UN is Indefensible

Senior Russian officials continued denying their intent to invade Ukraine until the moment the invasion began. The Russians misled and miscalculated, and Europe is now in the midst of its largest military conflict and refugee crisis since World War II.

Neither NATO, a defensive alliance whose purpose is to protect its member states, nor Ukraine posed an existential threat to Russia prior to the invasion. As the International Court of Justice recently noted, there is also no credible evidence to support Russian claims that Ukraine was committing genocide against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. The Russian claim that their “Special Military Operation” is “de-nazifying” Ukraine is likewise laughable. The country has a democratically elected Jewish president, after all.

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