Intelligent people can be staggeringly unintelligent at times.

In recent weeks, two respectable international organisations working in the fields of conflict resolution, human rights and interfaith dialogue have awarded prizes to the leaders of two Asian countries where there is growing religious conflict and grave violations of...

If you have been to see Les Miserables, you may remember more than the tunes. Perhaps the lyrics of some of the songs have stayed in your head? Perhaps the opening scene, of prison slave labour, remains in your mind? Perhaps the chilling, relentless, heartless attitude of Javert, the prison...

In his superb article 'A Human Rights Wish-list for 2013', Jack Healey encouraged us to chose our own wish-list. I have taken up that suggestion.

My 10-point wish-list is as follows:

1. Make 'Freedom of Conscience' a human right for all. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion, often...

Humankind is fickle and superficial. Not all human beings, by any means, but many, especially those in international policy-making and diplomacy. One moment they talk of freedom, democracy and human rights, but then at the first glint of a dollar sign, the lips that previously gave those values rhetorical service...

Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono arrives in London at the end of this month, for a three-day state visit. It follows David Cameron's visit to Indonesia earlier this year, and signals a desire by both countries to strengthen their relationship.

There is much to celebrate and encourage in Indonesia....

A Christian, a Muslim and an atheist sounds like the beginning of joke. Instead, it could the beginning of a broader-based struggle for freedom of religion and belief, in the face of rising religious intolerance around the world.

Last week, I visited Alex Aan, an Indonesian atheist in jail for...

Within the past few days, news has emerged that China has forcibly repatriated at least 41 North Korean refugees - to a desperate fate in the country they fled.

The North Korean regime takes a very dim view of its citizens who leave the country illegally,...

Four years ago today, gunmen under orders from Burma's dictatorship came to a house in Thailand in broad daylight and shot dead a man as he sat on his veranda.

The man who was assassinated was the General Secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU), Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan,...

When a democratically elected president is forced to resign by rebels within the police and military, threatened with bloodshed if he refuses, frog-marched by police and military to a press conference to announce his decision, detained for several hours, beaten up as he addresses a peaceful gathering of supporters, and...