Asia

While the US and the EU continue their negotiations about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under disputable circumstances, namely the lack of public oversight, negotiators should maybe take a look at Taiwan: The student-led mass protests give a striking example of what can happen if governments try to implement questionable trade agreements behind closed doors or even against ... Read More »

The road towards a career constitutes a never-ending story and is imbued with making choices. One of these is whether or not to step out of your comfort zone, and take on the challenge to study abroad. After careful consideration, overwhelming amounts of paperwork and endless procedures I decided to go on an exchange, and here I am, studying at ... Read More »

“No, there are no penguins in the Arctic.” The confusion about the polar regions is still not settled in the popular mind, while on the other hand serious business interests start to come into play in one of the globe’s most fragile ecosystems. With climate change advancing at a pace never experienced before, the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean ... Read More »

Dubai. The name stands for wealth, opportunities and shiny facades. But how does the oil-rich gulf country actually run and think? Eight young men just got jailed for up to one year for posting a parody internet in the internet. The sharia law and strict judges have no sense of humour when it comes to issues of “national security”. The ... Read More »

In a country far, far away there once was a dictator that controlled an entire nation. He was in charge of all three branches of government, plus the economy and the media. Everybody had to do as he pleased. He was the richest man of the country. But the dictator was not satisfied, he wanted more. And so the dictator ... Read More »

2 November 2013 – last Monday, a car crashed through the heavily guarded barricades of Tiananmen Square  and burst into flames in front of the steps of the Forbidden City. Later this week, the Chinese authorities said the crash was probably a suicide attack committed by Uighur Muslims belonging to a radical Islamist organization. This claim was immediately disputed by ... Read More »

When we hear ‘human rights violations’ and ‘North Korea’ in the same sentence, it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. But one might be baffled to hear that in the following ski-related case, North Korea is not the one being accused of human rights violations, but the accuser. North Koreans have been working night and day on the construction ... Read More »

“Killing the rapists”… is the title of an upcoming Bollywood movie which wants to address the burning issue of rape in India. It aims to represent women differently from some other Bollywood productions, where women are often represented either as mythical pure Savitri’s or as entirely negative impure beings of the lowest cast. In “Kill the Rapists” the film makers  ... Read More »

While the newly elected president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, is evoking hope for a new détente between his country and the U.S., there is one group of Iranians that desperately longs for change inside: Members of the Baha’i faith. Persecuted and repressed ever since, the new tone of President Rohani makes them dream about peace and official recognition in the ... Read More »

How do you make a documentary of a massacre, a genocide, when there are no living survivors willing to speak about it? When the massacre itself is still celebrated and its perpetrators are deemed ‘heroes? The answer is as simple as brilliant; you make the documentary about these ‘national heroes’, the ones who proudly talk about how they killed over ... Read More »