Photo by Håkon Grimstad on Unsplash Irene Shashar, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, has addressed MEPs in a plenary session in Brussels to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On a highly-charged occasion on Thursday she described how she survived the horrors of Nazism in Warsaw as a “Holocaust Hidden Child”. This involved fleeing through a sewer to…
Tonight (25th January) we celebrate the life and poetry of Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland. Honouring a national poet is something that Scotland shares with Ukraine, two of the few countries in the world to do so. Robert Burns is renowned for the respect in which he held his fellow man. He was…
Photo by Erica Magugliani on Unsplash International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) will be marked this week with a series of special events. These kicked off on Tuesday when the European Commission hosted an international conference, ‘Remembering the past. Shaping the future’ in Brussels. The conference was opened by Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas. It was organised by the Commission in partnership…
Photo by Liza Pooor on Unsplash Statement by the High Representative on behalf of the European Union on the case of Alexei Navalny and other political prisoners. “Today marks three years since Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny returned to Russia. He was arbitrarily arrested, prosecuted and sentenced following his return from Germany, where he was receiving medical treatment…
Russia is holding thousands of civilians hostage in the occupied territories of Ukraine, creating an atmosphere of terror and violence. Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that about 28 000 Ukrainian civilians are being held in Russian captivity, approximately 2,000 of whom are over 65 years old. It is important to understand that the Geneva Convention…
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash Journalists are being “deliberately targeted to cover up stories and restrict the public’s right to know”, it is claimed. The allegation was made by the respected International Federation of Journalists. It has just published its annual list of journalists killed which records the highest number of deaths in recent years. Is says…
Photo by Bexar Arms on Unsplash On 28 September 2018, Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain a Saudi document confirming he was divorced, so that he could marry his Turkish fiancée. He was told to come back on 2 October to collect the document. When he returned a Saudi murder…
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has said that the Russians are committing mass war crimes against civilians in the occupied territories of Ukraine. As of 19 December, the UN recorded 142 cases of executions of Ukrainian civilians. In addition, numerous facts about large-scale torture and cruel behaviour towards detainees, including sexual…
According to official figures, since the beginning of the Russian war, as of 31 July 2023, 19,546 children have been deported from Ukraine to Russia. These are only those cases that were officially recorded – when a parent, guardian or witness of a child’s deportation reported it to the National Information Bureau of Ukraine. For…
Photograph Eduard Delputte on Unsplash Roberta Metsola, president of the European parliament, has paid a moving tribute to the winners of this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The prize has been awarded to Jina Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. The award was presented in Strasbourg in a ceremony…
