Castan Centre for Human Rights Law

Category: Auslaw

  • The Giffords shooting: a view from the Antipodes

    Sarah Joseph Happy New Year everybody! This afternoon I write about a sad event that took place on Sunday morning (Melbourne time) in Tucson, Arizona. A US Democrat Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in an attempted assassination in which many others were wounded, and six others died. At the time of writing, the hopes for…

  • Eritrea: All that potential, and so little to show for it

    By Marius Smith Among last week’s torrent of Wikileaks cables released by the Guardian was a series of reports from the US embassy in Eritrea.  The cables derided the tiny African nation’s secretive leader, Isaias Afwerki, as an “unhinged dictator [who] remains cruel and defiant”  and “a recluse who spen[ds] his days painting and tinkering…

  • Reflections on Wikileaks

    By Sarah Joseph Gosh. This Wikileaks story is just running and running. And with thousands more cables to be released (only a small percentage of the quarter of a million in Wikileaks’ possession have been published so far), it isn’t going to leave the front pages soon. To add to the intrigue, there has been…

  • The High Court and the Freedom of Political Communication

    By Melissa Castan What do Australian charities’ tax exemptions, #Twitdef and Wikileaks all have in common? Give me a moment. Last week the High Court held that Aid/Watch is a charitable organisation for the purposes of tax assessment. This would be unremarkable, but Aid/Watch is an organisation that campaigns for effective foreign aid policies through…

  • Developments in Twitter Defamation case.

    By Sarah Joseph My blog on Sunday regarding this issue had an unprecedented number of hits for the Castan blog, indicating a great level of interest in this story. The hits may also reflect that relatively little attention has been paid to this issue in the mainstream media, hence more reliance on blogs and especially…

  • Introducing the Human Rights Online Project

    Over the past two years, the Castan Centre has been expanding its online presence, particularly in the burgeoning world of social media, and has now consolidated its operations into the Human Rights Online Project.  The project enables the Centre to comment on human rights issues, to facilitate other people’s interest in human rights and to…