“Personal liberty is inviolable. No one may be detained, inspected, or searched nor otherwise subjected to any restriction of personal liberty except by order of the Judiciary stating a reason and only in such cases and in such manner as provided by the law . Any...
In honour of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, recurring tomorrow, 25th November, WiB looks at Tracy Chapman’s “Behind the Wall”, a song dedicated to the victims of one of the most common forms of gender-based violence: domestic abuse. Tracy Chapman is...
If you happened to be strolling through the coastal city of Oostende, Belgium, you might chance upon a 1931 sculptural monument towering over the seafront, known as ‘De dank van de Congolezen’, or ‘The gratitude of the Congolese’. “The Gratitude of the Congolese” The bronze statues...
“No Man’s Land” (in Bosnian: Ničija zemlja ) is filmmaker Danis Tanović’s much acclaimed first feature film, for which he also wrote the screenplay and composed the music. Released in 2001, the film is set in 1993, during the second year of the Bosnian-Herzogovinian war against...
Seldom do the circumstances require and endorse the use of the adverb “seldom”, furthermore repeatedly, and even more seldom do the circumstances require and endorse the use of the noun “glee”, furthermore appealing to its original definition, namely a seldom felt emotional state of unconditional delight,...
In February 1953, one of the most prominent French authors of the past century, Jean Giono, was writing an allegorical tale. The story would soon after become known to the world as “The Man Who Planted Trees”. Giono was commissioned to write it by an American...
“Emel Mathlouthi’s voice feels as if a bird’s heart was set on fire by the deepest point of the ocean, a fire that none can extinguish except the highest point of the sky. But the bird does not want its heart to stop burning, so the...
A linguistics professor of mine once told me: “One of the hardest things in life is to tell someone what a film is about”. If one were to believe him, it is all the more challenging when it comes to a landmark of cinematic art such...
According to Shakespeare’s King Lear, “when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools”. After coming into this world on the 17th of January 1991, amidst the start of the bombardment of Iraq during the Gulf war, Hamza al-Ghanem...
Dear alien, first of all, it was quite a humorous experience to find out you also call us “aliens”. In English, we have come up with the name “humans” for our species. What about you, have you also chosen a random name for yourselves? To be...
‘Any person who is physically restrained (by imprisonment or otherwise) from expressing (in any form of words or symbols) an opinion which he honestly holds and which does not advocate or condone personal violence’. (Amnesty International founder Peter Berenson coining and defining the expression ‘Prisoners of...
Phil Ochs was an American topical folk singer-songwriter, most active, politically and artistically, in the 1960’s counterculture era. His strenuous advocacy of peace, freedom, equality, social fairness, human rights and human dignity inspired nearly all of his music, and that very same music, in turn, inspired...
