Abstract: In the early 1960s, a group of West Germans established the religious colony of Colonia Dignidad (the Colony of Dignity) in central Chile. This article chronicles the violence and atrocity that occurred at the Colony during the era of Augusto Pinochet’s military rule. At the same time, it demonstrates how Germany’s longer history of colonial entanglement and the Nazi practices of torturous medicine served as the underpinnings for the human rights violations that occurred. The Colony’s existence was only possible due to the long-standing ties between Germany and Chile. These same connections have rendered the legacy of the Colony intertwined with failures on both sides of the Atlantic to uphold human rights.
Current Issue
Our latest issue is out! Featuring a dossier on cultural renditions of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center twenty years after it opened, including two essays from former detainees, our Winter 2022 issue also includes an essay on a resilience approach to human rights in contemporary Syria and Lebanon, and two essays on the International Committee of the Red Cross: one considers the organization's attempts to be neutral in early 1950s Korea, and the other presents the ICRC's managerial engagement with armed violence in Rio de Janeiro.
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International Law: A Novel, by G. (reviewed by a protagonist)
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. [I]rony [is employed] as a defense, . . . especially against the expression of intense affect . . . – M.H. Stein (1985) G.’s aspiration in his splendid new book[1] appears to be to rewrite international law as a vast novel, much as (another) G. sought to rewrite world history as a vast novel two centuries ago, in his Continue reading →
Barbarian International Law
This essay is part of a symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law. All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Gerry Simpson has written what he is pleased to describe—tongue firmly placed in cheek—in the alternative as “the most useless book in the history of international law,” presumably saving any timid would-be-readers the trouble of checking for themselves. What the intrepid rest of us do get instead are six chapters showcasing in typical Simpsonian fashion what is possible in writing Continue reading →
Excited to share that my article, Barring Judicial Review, will be published in @VandLRev! Many thanks to everyone who provided comments on earlier drafts. More comments are welcome! https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4368442
Our new issue of @HumanityJ is out!
Among other articles, @MohamedouOuld reflects in a hauntingly beautiful piece on how fifteen years of indefinite detention, torture, and abuse in the war on terror contributed to his development as a writer.
http://humanityjournal.org/current-issue/
21 years and counting... Special dossier in Humanity on Cultural Renditions of Guantanamo and the War on Terror: http://humanityjournal.org
@HumanityJ @BingHumanRts @MansoorAdayfi @MohamedouOuld @knadimintea
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