Another interesting set of weekend must-reads from our friends at Global Europe, including To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature — By Mark Danner, NY Times; Haiti’s Hidden Hope — By Mark L. Schneider, New York Review of …

Leading Singapore democrat Dr. Chee Soon Juan, has been imprisoned again. The president of the Singapore Democratic Party was jailed on 19 January, together with SDP colleague Ghandi Ambalam, for one week for the crime of distributing leaflets …

The US Government will fund and facilitate innovative approaches to expanding internet freedom and access, said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Activists like those in Iran’s Green movement were “redefining how technology is used to spread truth and expose …

Authoritarian regimes have deliberately targeted and intensified attacks against human rights and democracy advocates over the past year, according to the annual review of Human Rights Watch.

“We’ve seen the ways in which governments create a very hostile environment …

Synchronized sentencing again hits Vietnamese and Chinese democracy activists.

The one-day trial of four Vietnamese democracy advocates ended today as a Hanoi court handed down unusually harsh sentences. The most prominent defendant, human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh, 41, received …

The United States will continue to engage Burma’s ruling military junta in an effort to promote democratic reform, a senior official said today.

But Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell conceded that engagement had delivered little more than a …

Why does the legacy of the Cultural Revolution still haunt China’s communist rulers? Perhaps because in the absence of democracy the ruling party is dependent on performance-based legitimacy.

“It’s a form of rule based on results, efficacy, not on …

Vietnamese democracy and human rights activists go on trial tomorrow, charged with conspiring to overthrow the communist regime. The ruling Communist Party equates the advocacy of political pluralism with treason.

The court has banned the use of any recording …

Who Will be Arafat’s True Successor? asks Helga Baumgarten in the latest issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin (also available in Arabic). Issandr Amrani assesses The ElBaradei Effect on Egyptian Politics  and Human Rights Watch’s Joe Stork makes some Suggestions …

The new cynicism about U.S. support for democracy promotion is taking a toll, writes James Kirchik. Whatever the faults of the Bush administration’s execution of its Freedom Agenda, “it would be foolhardy to distance the United States from the …