In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Julian Ku

29 Jun

A U.N. Commission of Experts has recommended that the Security Council push Indonesia to re-open trials of individuals suspected of committing war crimes in the Timor-Leste (East Timor). Indonesia has conducted prosecutions via an ad hoc tribunal, but according to the commission, these prosecutions were little more than sham trials.I haven't seen the report which is not available online,...

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28 Jun

This very interesting piece from the St. Louis Post Dispatch notes that the U.S. is obligated to announce its measures for implementation of a March WTO decision requiring cotton subsidy cuts by Friday (July 1) and that many cotton farmers are understandably nervous about the expected cuts.This may make the WTO seem fairly powerful, but in reality, the U.S. could...

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24 Jun

This report from Agence France Press suggests that the U.S. has broken new ground in admitting to torture when it filed its report to the Committee Against Torture, a report that is required by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). Here is the triumphant reaction by UN officials:'They are no longer trying...

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24 Jun

Wow! According to this survey, China is more popular among the public in 16 Western European countries than the U.S. This proves that anti-Americanism is remarkably widespread and deep in Europe. And it also suggests that the public, even in liberal democratic Western Europe, don't care very much about human rights violations, as long as they occur in other countries...

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23 Jun

While Japan has been scheming to overturn IWC limitations on its whaling activities, it has also been finding new ways to annoy its neighbors. The most hilarious of these is Japan's attempt to establish Okinotori, an uninhabited series of rocks/islands in the Pacific. Japan has done this by assigning Okinotori a Tokyo address thereby making it part of the municipality...

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05 Jun

OK, I'm not quite signing off yet. I just wanted to point readers to two more sharp (and in my mind, devastating) attacks on Amnesty International's attempt to equate Guantanamo with "gulags". (A comparison that they have not backed away from, as Jon Adler notes here). One is by Kenneth Anderson in the Weekly Standard, and the other...

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05 Jun

Opinio Juris is thrilled to welcome Professor Roger Alford, of Pepperdine University School of Law, as a guest-blogger, filling in (mostly) for me while I travel and catch up on a few other projects. Roger will be posting from India, where he is currently travelling for the next two weeks. Roger is a well-known scholar of foreign relations and private...

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02 Jun

I noted a while back that the Bush Administration is treating the Law of the Sea as essentially ratified, even asking for money to fund the Law of the Sea Tribunal. Yesterday, more evidence of the Bushies' love of the Law of the Sea Treaty has emerged, strangely enough, in the context of the ongoing Louisiana-Florida battle of underseas oil...

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