Women in Iran are realistic about the difficulty of undoing more than three decades of institutionalised discrimination against them, writes REBECCA BARLOW. Views on the prospects for meaningful change under Iran’s new leadership are mixed. Some have expressed hope that new president Hassan Rouhani will usher in a period of greater cultural openness with the […]
A mass stabbing attack on bystanders at a train station in China in March has again focused attention on the troubled Xinjiang province, writes MICHAEL CLARKE. Dru C. Gladney argued over a decade ago that China faced the prospect of Xinjiang becoming its West Bank if it failed to address the problems stemming from its […]
Despite a bad environmental reputation, writes SIMON AVENELL, Japan has also been a pioneer in global environmental protection and justice. Japan’s environmental record over the past half century has been problematic, to put it mildly. The country’s environmental blackspots have included Antarctic whaling, coastal dolphin culling, driftnet fishing, virgin rainforest logging, elephant ivory imports, fetal […]
The ball appears to be in Beijing’s court as protests grow in Hong Kong over how the former British colony should be governed, writes KERRY BROWN. The Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region over late June and into early July coincided with the final stages of the consultations launched in December 2013 […]
Twenty-five years after the events of Tiananmen Square, the issue is still far from settled, writes RICHARD RIGBY On the night of 3–4 June 1989, units of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) entered Beijing, killing some hundreds of ordinary Beijing citizens as they made their way to their objective, Tiananmen Square, the focal point of […]
The focus of sovereign intervention in response to the nuclear meltdowns since 3/11 risks long-term consequences for short-term gains, writes Adam Broinowski. The meltdowns of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) since the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 (3/11) have exposed not only the dangers of nuclear power but the visibility of the […]
