Browse: Home / Carl Gershman

Carl Gershman

N. Korean defectors offer hope for ending ‘horrendous’ regime

By Demdigest on August 23, 2010

As North Korea’s ruling party prepares to step away from dictatorship to collective rule, defectors this week detailed their experiences and escape in an “emotional and horrendous” account of life under the regime.
Participants at last weekend’s International Conference on North Korean Human Rights in Toronto, Canada, heard horrifying accounts of torture, executions, sexual violence and [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , , , , | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a response

Defectors a bridge to a free North Korea

By Demdigest on August 19, 2010

A new generation of North Korean defectors is behind a “small miracle” that is raising hopes for human rights in North Korea, writes Carl Gershman.
This week’s 10th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees comes at a time of renewed opportunity for progress against one of the world’s worst human rights violators.
Organized by [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , , | Tagged , , , | Leave a response

Bipartisanship is dead? Vin Weber award affirms consensus on advancing democracy

Bipartisanship is dead? Vin Weber award affirms consensus on advancing democracy

By Demdigest on July 21, 2010

Joining the ranks of such luminaries as Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel and the Dalai Lama, former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber yesterday received the National Endowment for Democracy’s prestigious Democracy Service Medal for what the organization called “his commitment to advancing the principles of democracy and human dignity.”
“Democracy needs people like Vin Weber who are fervent [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

15 years after Srebrenica massacre, moral imperatives meet political realities in the Balkans

By Demdigest on July 19, 2010

The Obama administration remains committed to ensuring reconciliation and reform in the Balkans, a senior official has insisted. But the region’s elites are pursuing narrow self-interest at the expense of the collective good, warned Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President and Deputy Assistant to the President, addressing a meeting on the fifteenth [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Green movement ‘will bring democracy’ to Iran – eventually

By Demdigest on July 8, 2010

Green movement leader Mir Hosein Mousavi’s latest broadside against the regime came as several hundred Green movement protesters mobilized to mark the anniversary of the July 9, 1999, attack on Tehran University.
The regime orchestrated the assault on the university dorms (the 18th of Tir Disaster) in which student Ezzat Ebrahimnejad was murdered, a leading medical [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Beijing strives to win Uighur hearts and minds

By Demdigest on July 6, 2010

China’s ruling Communist Party is marking the anniversary of last year’s unrest in Urumchi with a campaign to win Uighur hearts and minds while still refusing to reveal details of the events or officially recognize the underlying causes of the violence.
This week sees “a really solemn and horrible anniversary of the day when Uighurs in [read full story]

Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a response

Clinton defends civil society from ‘critical threat to democracy’

By Demdigest on July 6, 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has used a landmark speech to the Community of Democracies to highlight “the steel vise” with which governments are restricting civil society and announce a fund to help activist groups to combat the growing crackdown.
The speech – described by aides as her most significant address during a four-day tour [read full story]

Posted in , | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response

Gerardo Le Chevalier – no one better understood democracy’s prospects in the Americas

By Michael Allen on February 2, 2010

More tragic news emerging from Haiti where the United Nations confirmed that Gerardo Le Chevalier, head of the UN Electoral Assistance unit, was killed in the 7.0 quake.
A Salvadoran citizen and former director of Latin America and Caribbean programs for the National Democratic Institute, he was among those who died when the U.N. headquarters in Port-au-Prince [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Responses

North Korea: openings in closed society?

By Demdigest on July 20, 2009

“Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney,” notes human rights activist Suzanne Scholte. “North Koreans have no one like that.”
The torments of life in North Korea’s gulag are documented in this must-read article in The Washington Post:  
Before guards shoot prisoners [read full story]

Posted in , , , , , , , , | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a response