Can Turkey justify its horrendous catalogue of human rights’ abuses in the name of modernity? I had thought that after years working in Human Rights, I had become desensitised to horrors inflicted and suffering unlimited. Torture should have been just another research topic. Talking to Ipek Firat, the wife of a political
Published in The New Statesman sometime in 1998*, this short piece ‘Material Girl’ by Arzu is a response to Natasha Walter’s article overviewing her book ‘The New Feminism’ Purity has become such a dirty word. Even more so, when attached to Natasha Walter’s definition of old school feminism. This ‘ism’ hasn’t
Arzu Merali looks at the case of Sheikh Abdulkareem Obaid, and the wider issues of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. Saged is 15 years old. Like many boys, he wants to be like his father. An architect and Muslim cleric, Abdulkareem Obaid is also one of dozens of hostages abducted from
Written in 1996, a year after the worst massacre on European soil since the Second World War, this essay outlines the complicity of international institutions and European governments in the crimes. “How should ye not fight for the cause of Allah and of the oppressed among men and of the women and
Arzu Merali provides a brief critique of UN literature compiled for the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, September 1995, based on a review of some of the agency literature she found there. Download the report here. The report gives examples of racist and Islamophobic imagery and text used