RightsBase

human rights news & views

British spies complicit in torture of rendition victims: secret document

Britain's spy agencies MI5 and MI6 were authorised to participate in interrogations on foreign soil and permit torture in 'proportion' to the presumed importance of the information sought. The Blair government's secret policy was in use for nearly a decade, reports the Guardian, until it was revoked by the coalition government last year. This, in […]

Assange warns of ‘totalitarian’ potential of the internet

Surprisingly, perhaps, freedom (of information) fighter Julian Assange thinks the internet is, on balance, bad for human rights. Speaking to Cambridge University students — presumably by video link, given he is still under house arrest in Norfolk — Assange (pictured) described the internet as the "greatest spying machine the world has ever seen" and an […]

Who remembers the Assyrians?

Adolf Hitler is said to have assumed impunity for his Final Solution with a rhetorical, ‘Who remembers Armenians?’  His dismissive reference to the 1915-18 genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman empire overlooks the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians by the same regime. The Christian population of the Middle East — from the Copts […]