It is madness, said Pope Francis when he heard Russia was threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West he is not bluffing about using the weapons of mass destruction. He ordered Russia’s first mobilisation since World War Two and backed a plan to annex swathes of Read more
The decision by the Rolling Stones to remove their 1971 song Brown Sugar from the set list for their upcoming US tour has drawn both praise and criticism. Read by some as a surrender to the “woke brigade” and by others as a reasonable response to the accusation the lyrics glorify “slavery, rape, torture and Read more
The son of a man killed in the Christchurch terror attack says police treated him as a potential threat after calling for the accused gunman to be tortured. Omar Nabi’s father, Haji-Daoud Nabi, was fatally shot at the Deans Ave mosque on March 15 as he tried to shield another person. Read more
A report which the humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/ Doctors without Borders) released this week says the island nation of Nauru is facing a mental health crisis. The Indefinite Despair report includes medical data MSF gathered during the past year while it was contracted by the Nauruan government to deliver mental health services. These Read more
Torturing people is a mortal sin, a grave sin, says Pope Francis. In a Tuesday message for the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Francis said that torture didn’t end in Auschwitz-Birkenau. “Today people are being tortured. Many prisoners are tortured. Today in many places where there is war the same thing happens. Read more
Argentina’s Catholic bishops will hand over more than 100 baptism certificates of babies born to political prisoners in a torture centre during the country’s dictatorship. The bishops say their decision came in light of a “longing of Pope Francis”, who was the former bishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Francis has promised human rights groups Read more
European Union (EU) leaders are “knowingly complicit in the torture and exploitation” of thousands of migrants and refugees from Libya. In a new report titled “Libya’s Dark Web of Collusion”, Amnesty International says the EU finances the Libyan coastguard and officials running the country’s detention camps to carry out torture and exploitation. At present, the Read more
In 1989, while serving in Guatemala as a missionary in a Mayan community, Ursuline Sr. Dianna Ortiz was abducted and tortured by Guatemalan security forces. This trauma fuelled her passion for human rights work. Ortiz now serves as the editor of Education for Justice, a project of the Center of Concern. She also founded the Read more
A gruesome video online shows the torture of four women accused of witchcraft and “invisibly” taking out a man’s heart and eating it in a village of Papua New Guinea. The footage, reportedly taken in a village of the Enga province, shows four women who have been stripped, tied up, burned and beaten. Several men Read more
The Vatican is ready to help the US as it looks to close Guantanamo Bay prison. The offer came during a meeting on Tuesday, between Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and US Secretary of State, John Kerry, held at the Vatican. The Vatican stood ready to “help find adequate humanitarian solutions through our international contacts”, Read more