The Uyghur people of East Turkestan, an area known by the Chinese authorities as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have long been victims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s sixty-year authoritarian rule. In the years since the CCP gained control of East Turkestan in 1949 and before Deng Xiaoping launched his... More

　　Israeli settler groups have set up 11 new outposts in the occupied West Bank, in a direct rebuttal of mounting US calls to freeze settlement activity. 　　Young Jewish groups are reported to have set up the structures – mostly tents and huts on hilltops – in the West Bank over... More

　　Israel arrested 9,000 Palestinians last year, 700 of them children. 　　A former Israeli military commander has told the BBC that Palestinian youngsters are routinely ill-treated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, reports the BBC' s Katya Adler from Jerusalem and the West Bank. 　　"You take the kid, you blindfold him,... More

　　The polling was conducted by Gallup Pakistan, an affiliate of the Gallup International polling group, and more than 2,600 people took part. 　　Interviews were conducted across the political spectrum in all four of the country's provinces, and represented men and women of every economic and ethnic background. 　　When respondents were... More

　　The senior human rights official at the United Nations has said that the Israeli military acted with "near impunity" during its late-December to mid-January offensive on the Gaza Strip, violating international law. 　　Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a report on Friday that evidence collected... More

　　In November 2008, an Iraqi mother called Sabria Jaloob received what she described as a "blessing". 　　It was the body of her son, Noori, who had vanished during the 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran and had not been heard of since. 　　For more than two decades, Sabria did not... More

　　Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing unrest are now living in camps that Oxfam said on Thursday were horrifically overcrowded and unfit for humans. 　　The fighting has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa nation, with one million internally displaced people and thousands more... More

　　Decades of Soviet nuclear testing on the steppes of Kazakhstan have been blamed for an alarming number of health problems suffered by residents in the area. 　　Now scientists are trying to determine whether the victims are passing on faulty genes to their children, the BBC's Rayhan Demytrie reports. 　　"It looked... More

　　The Muslim blessed month of Ramadan has become a popular time for many non-Muslims, especially Filipino migrant workers, to convert to Islam. 　　Everyday in Saudi Arabia, Islamic centers across the country open their arms to non-Muslim migrant workers who decide to join the world's fastest growing religion. 　　During Ramadan, a... More

　　Israel "punished and terrorized" civilians in Gaza in a disproportionate attack in its three-week war on the territory earlier this year, a United Nations report has found. 　　Judge Richard Goldstone, who led the inquiry, said he found evidence Israel targeted civilians and used excessive force in the assault, which was... More

　　"He was picking grapes when he died," says Khalil Kassem Terkiya, glancing at his wife as he recalls the day their son was killed by a cluster bomb in southern Lebanon. 　　Graying and slight, Terkiya looks older than his 46 years: "A cluster bomb was caught in the vine and... More

　　The leader of an Afghan political group wanted by the US has said that Washington used a false pretext to launch its war on Afghanistan, on the eve of the eighth anniversary of the conflict. 　　Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who leads a faction of the Hizb-e Islami group, said that the war... More

　　The Afghan Taliban pose no threat to the West but will continue their fight against occupying foreign forces, they said on Wednesday, the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that removed them from power. 　　U.S.-led forces with the help of Afghan groups overthrew the Taliban government during a five week... More