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Rwanda – free speech for some
by Marius Smith Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, took to Twitter this week to talk to his 28,000 followers in a barely comprehensible blizzard of abbreviations, acronyms and exclamation marks. Over a period of six hours, he derided his critics in the press, discussed the News of the World phone hacking scandal and lampooned calls for…
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Swaziland, where it’s good to be the king
By Marius Smith If you’ve been keeping up with the news about Kate and Will’s royal wedding, you may have noticed the kerfuffle over the invitation extended to King Mswati III. The leader of Swaziland rules his tiny African nation with an iron fist. Political parties are banned, emergency laws have been in place for…
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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…
Castan Centre for Human Rights Law 