Authoritarian governments all over the world have latched onto a great way of stopping unwelcome criticism and subversive thought – suspending data services, phone calls, texting and participation in social media. As internet penetration has surged during the past decade, especially in the developing world, so have attempts to switch off the flow of information. …
Putin is now claiming that Poland invaded Russia at the start of the Second World War and that the Poles and Nazis amounted to the same thing! Could this just be a joke in bad taste? It is , in any case, total fake news. Stalin signed the Stalin Ribbentrop pact expecting to acquire a …
For years people have been complaining about Cyprus’s “golden passport” scheme. Launched in 2013, it offers citizenship to anyone investing €2m in Cypriot property, giving 4,000 members of the global mega-rich residency, voting rights and a back door into Europe. Earlier this year, President Nicos Anastasiades reacted angrily to claims Cyprus was abusing the practice …
To The Sunday Times In 1960s Oxford I would see Cecil Rhodes’s statue, think how wrong he was and walk on. That is life in an open, tolerant country: bits of our history are sticking up everywhere, and we are free to admire, condemn or laugh at them. I prefer that to a country in …
Xinjiang, China China has destroyed and built over scores of traditional burial grounds belonging to the Uighur people in the northwestern Xinjiang province, as part of what critics claim is a ruthless campaign to wipe out the history and cultural identity of the region’s indigenous Muslim population. Satellite images published last week showed flattened earth …
