“When they first held me, there was no case against me. They didn’t accuse me of any crime. An officer in Alweya police station demanded $6,000 from me and said they wouldn’t let me go if I didn’t pay.” Israa Salah (not her real name) was interviewed by HRW in Iraq’s death row facility in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyya neighborhood on crutches. …

There is something mundanely routine about lining up at Starbucks for a cup of coffee every morning. As you slowly shuffle to the front of the queue, like a zombie who is not fully awake yet, the smell of freshly ground coffee beans slowly stimulating your senses. When the first few drops of coffee touch your lips, you cringe at …

Tigers are not an uncommon sight in India, which is home to about 1,700 of them, but most don’t eat humans. Yet over the last month there have been reports of at least 17 people eaten by the beasts in various parts of the country. In Ooty, a town in the south of India, schools were shut down for more …

An alarming rise in the number of killings of political activists in Bangladesh since disputed parliamentary polls has left grassroots campaigners across the country fearing for their lives. Labelling the arrests and subsequent deaths of activists “extrajudicial killings”, opposition leaders have blamed the government for targeting opposition activists. Several ruling party activists have also been killed over the past two …