Afghan witnesses testified that they saw an Australian soldier murder a farm worker they knew. But the soldier is not on trial — rather, he is suing newspapers that accused him. The witnesses are needed simply to defend the right not to accept his version of what happened.

If the witnesses are right, he ought to be on trial. Furthermore, it should not matter whether the victim was a farm laborer or Taliban fighter. Isn't it a war crime to kill a prisoner?

President Castillo's administration proposes small and tentative steps to tax some foreign mining companies more.

In June, the UK promised not to deport UK-resident EU citizens if they had made an application for continued UK residence. Now its staff are doing just that and show no concern for either these promises or the law.

The UK government has done things like this so much that I must conclude that the deportation office simply does not care what it does wrong.

The Burmese military rulers say they will hold elections.

Their willingness to have elections could mean an opening for returning to democracy. They should not be trusted to run the elections, but through diplomacy they might be led to agree to let some trusted neutral party do it.

India increased its repression in Kashmir in 2020, arbitrarily jailing the main human rights defenders in that former state, which it has converted into an occupied territory.

People have been imprisoned for criticizing any act of the Indian government. It sounds like Hong Kong.