In December 2020, Indigenous Honduran environmental activist Félix Vásquez was killed in front of his family by a group of masked men in the village of El Ocotal. His assailants were armed with pistols and machetes, scarring his family forever. This attack was a response to Vásquez’s efforts to help protect the environment and advocate […]
Tag: persecution
The World’s Largest Security State Has Created its Own Security Problem
Violence In Western China The capital of the Chinese province of Xinjiang, Urumqi, looks like many Chinese cities. The horizon is full of construction machinery creating new factories, high-rises, and office buildings. More striking is that the streets of the developed sector are largely populated with ethnic Han Chinese. The Chinese government has incentivized Han Chinese to move […]
Iraq’s Kurds: Questions on Self-Determination
Kurdish independence has arguably been one of the most long-standing struggles for self-determination. But with independence referendums taking flight across the world, what makes the Iraqi Kurds’ claim to autonomy more, or less, legitimate? The answer some use is ethnicity. Others look to the historical persecution of the Kurds. These two reasons don’t exist in […]
Continued Persecution of Christians
“Continued Persecution of Christians” was originally published in the Davis Political Review on April 6, 2015. On April 2, students at Garissa University College in Kenya started their day as usual; waking up, going to class, and attending religious services, completely unaware of the tragedy that would soon unravel. Early in the morning, masked gunmen stormed […]