Otsing

Respect for fundamental freedoms is a core value of the EU, which it promotes through its external policy. The European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize honours the work of human rights defenders. With human rights under attack in many parts of the world, the Prize remains as relevant as ever. This year it is awarded to Russian opposition activist Alexey Navalny, whose brave refusal to be silenced recalls the work of Soviet-era dissidents such as Andrey Sakharov. The Sakharov Prize will be presented at ...

Andrey Sakharov was a Soviet physicist who played a leading role in his country's nuclear weapons programme. However, in the 1960s he fell out of favour with the regime due to his activism for disarmament and human rights. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, Sakharov's legacy is more relevant than ever. Since 1988, the European Parliament has awarded an annual prize for freedom of thought named after him.

After 18 years of restricted policy, the EU and Cuba have started negotiations towards a future bilateral agreement aiming at supporting economic and democratic reforms. With power passing definitively from Fidel to Raúl Castro, Cuba has shown more openness to modernisation of the country. This new prospect of a normalisation in EU-Cuba relations may even stimulate some policy change in Washington.

The effects of EU antiterrorism legislation are ambivalent. Banning whole organisations provides hardly an incentive for behavioural change but may strengthen extremism and belligerence. In territories with limited statehood the effects of listing can disrupt essential social and humanitarian services which the organisations offer and for which they are backed by larger parts of the society. The lack of transparent criteria for delisting is another critical issue. As a means of 'prevention' the listing ...

During the 1960-1980s in the USSR, psychiatry was turned into a tool of repression. Soviet psychiatry was cut off from world psychiatry and developed its own - highly institutional and biologically oriented – course, providing at the same time a “scientific justification” for declaring dissidents mentally ill. Since the collapse of the USSR there have been frequent reports of persons hospitalized for non-medical reasons, mostly in the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The abuses are caused by an underdeveloped ...