An Expensive Bribe for a Syrian ID
During a recent trip back to Syria, I found myself in the precarious position of having to replace my national identity card, which had gone missing. Thus commenced my journey into the belly of Assad’s bureaucracy, which had become hungrier and more emboldened than I remembered.
Sri Lanka’s Fishers Face a Tangled Future
The perilous combination of climate change, pollution and overfishing means that the catches themselves have been dwindling as well. There are fewer commercially viable species like snappers, tuna and prawns in the more shallow waters adjacent to the coast — places that have sustained thriving communities for centuries.
Hard News: The Struggle to Report on Myanmar and Belarus From Exile
The situations in Belarus and Myanmar are very different, but what they have in common are attacks on human rights and democracy. In both countries, assaults against freedom of the press have driven most independent journalists into exile.
Tunisia’s President Gives Life to a Zionism Conspiracy Theory
For months, President Kais Saied and his closest advisers have been ingesting the bizarre musings circulated by a tiny, obscure party on Facebook, with one particularly pernicious theory gripping his attention: that Black migrants are pawns in a Zionist settler movement designed to fundamentally strip Tunisia of its identity and land.
Condemned to Death for Blasphemy in Pakistan, She Lives a Life of Poverty in Exile
In 2010, Asia Bibi became the first woman in Pakistan to be sentenced to death under the country's controversial blasphemy laws, in a case that sparked global outrage. After eight years on death row, she escaped to Canada in 2019 following her acquittal. She tells New Lines how she has since lived a life of poverty in exile.