Opinio Juris

Rule 51.3 of the Olympic Charter provides that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or areas," a principle that has been in the Olympic Charter for more than 50 years in order to preserve the universality of the Games. "The application of this regulation is common sense," explained Rogge, adding that without this rule, Olympic competitions and ceremonies could be used as a stage for all different kinds of political statements about armed conflicts, regional differences of all kind, religious disputes and many others.

"If athletes genuinely want to express their opinion, that's fine," Rogge continued. "But let's not forget, there is also the right not to express an opinion. Athletes should feel no moral obligation to speak out. They deserve the right to focus on their preparations and should not be made to feel obliged to express themselves if they do not wish to. The IOC and the National Olympic Committees have the duty to protect them from any kind of pressure. In any case, I do not expect there will be many incidents (of breach of rule 51). Athletes are mature and intelligent people. They will know what they can say or not say. If they have doubts, the IOC and the NOCs are here to guide them."

1. Whether a foreign government that is a “necessary” party to a lawsuit under Rule 19(a) and has successfully asserted sovereign immunity is, under Rule 19(b), an “indispensable” party to an action brought in the courts of the United States to settle ownership of assets claimed by that government.

2. Whether the Republic of the Philippines (Republic) and its Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), having been dismissed from the interpleader action based on their successful assertion of sovereign immunity, had the right to appeal the district court’s determination that they were not indispensable parties under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19(b); and whether the Republic and its PCGG have the right to seek this Court’s review of the court of appeals’s opinion affirming the district court.

Religion does not exist in isolation. It concerns and shapes our fundamental view of the nature of human life and how it is and should be lived. This realization has come home in politics, especially international politics. Obviously, when we are under attack by people whose ideology we cannot understand unless we delve into the history of Islamic law and theology, we must learn to take their religious doctrines seriously.

The future is likely to bring many more debates on how religion shapes not only politics but economics.... Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary of Harvard University have used the results of World Values Surveys to study the relation between religion and economic attitudes. They found that many religious beliefs concerning cooperation, government, working women, legal rules, thriftiness and the market economy are conducive to higher per-capita income and growth. Religion appears to have an effect on economic growth and development by fostering thrift, a work ethic, honesty and openness to strangers. This has lead to the notion of "spiritual capital," analogous to human capital, which focuses on knowledge and behavior stemming from transcendent concepts and ultimate concerns.

Their model stresses the importance of freedom, not only in economics per se, but in religion itself. Religion most often has positive effects when it is free. This model is reinforced by the results of our recently concluded survey of international religious freedom. The countries with the worst religious freedom records, including Burma, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have, unless they have oil, terrible economic records. Similar relations hold for those in the middle and for those with high levels of freedom: The highest 30 countries in rankings of economic freedom all scored highly on religious freedom.

Barro and McCleary's work suggests that this is more than a mere correlation: There is good reason to think that religious freedom leads to good economic outcomes. The current evidence indicates that closed religious systems hamper economic development. Hence, if we want economic growth and development, we need to permit religious groups and people to follow their beliefs. In this case, economists should join political scientists in examining religion more seriously.

Whether we like it or not, religion is likely to remain central to politics, and even economics. This means that in the future, politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans, are likely to expand their talk of religion on the campaign trail. We should not dismiss this as if religion were a mere irrational prejudice or interest-group totem. We should instead demand that politicians address these fundamental issues in a serious, coherent and empirically grounded way. If they do not do so, they (and we) will misunderstand our all-too-religious world.

A California free speech group whose board of directors includes Google and Yahoo said on Monday it had asked U.S. trade officials to challenge China's Internet restrictions as a violation of global trade rules. The issue threatens to further strain U.S.-China trade relations if the U.S. Trade Representative's office decides to take on the case. With China already the world's second-largest Internet market with over 162 million Web users, the commercial stakes are huge. "China's censorship of the Internet, while fundamentally an issue of free speech and individual liberty, is also a significant barrier to U.S.-China commerce, and therefore, very much a trade issue," Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said in a statement that came as top U.S. officials were in Beijing for economic talks. In infringing the rights of its 1.2 billion citizens, China is also infringing the rights of American companies to sell goods and services to consumers in China, via the Internet," he said. Internet giants Google and Yahoo have seats on the coalition's board of directors, but the bulk of the public interest group's members are West Coast newspapers and other traditional media companies, Scheer said in an interview.... The case relies on a legal theory developed by Columbia University Law Professor Timothy Wu, who argued in a law review article last year that WTO agreements on goods and services could be used to challenge government censorship of the Internet.

When the New Zealand police force said they were open to suggestions about how to rewrite national policing laws, they meant it. In September, they posted the 1958 Police Act online and invited Kiwis and non-Kiwis alike to visit the site and type in their own revisions to the law — extending the concept of “Wiki”-style collaborative writing from encyclopedias to democracy.

“The idea was to take something that’s inherently dry and intellectual” like law reform, explains Superintendent Hamish McCardle, who is in charge of the review, “and transfer it to something that’s cool and innovative” — like Web 2.0.

By making the Wiki open to anyone who cared to participate, the police force hoped to make it easy for international law and policing experts to weigh in, as well as those one million or so New Zealand citizens living abroad. Of course, all of that interactivity yielded its share of unconventional ideas. McCardle’s favorite is one submitted by a user who requested that the name of the police force be changed to “The New Zealand Yum-Yum Teddy Bear Strike Force Z.” That particular suggestion was quickly edited out. Other bold ideas made it into the final Wiki document, like a suggestion to increase the minimum police recruitment age to 25, since the human brain is not fully developed until then.

Despite the novelty of the Wiki process, McCardle is quick to point out that plenty of old-fashioned checks and balances are in place. The Wiki follows a traditional review process and will culminate in a document that will advise, rather than mandate, Parliament in its decisions regarding the Police Act.

In 1972, Ahmed, his older brother, and uncle, were captured and detained by the Bengali army. The army suspected Ahmed's uncle of having collaborated with Pakistan. During the detention, the army killed Ahmed's uncle in front of Ahmed. They also beat Ahmed and his brother. Ahmed's brother suffered a fractured hand and Ahmed has scars all over his body from the beating.

After moving to Geneva Camp, Ahmed became politically active. He joined the Bihari organization Stranded Pakistani General Repatriation Committee (“SPGRC”) in 1985, and became an assistant to Nassin Khan, the SPGRC's chief leader. In 1990, Ahmed organized a hunger strike. During the strike, the police arrived, took Ahmed into custody overnight, beat him, and released him the next day.

In 1991, Ahmed participated in a demonstration in front of the Pakistan Embassy. The demonstrators sat in a circle around the embassy, and they tried to give the Ambassador a memorandum requesting that he make arrangements to send them to Pakistan. When they were not allowed to enter the embassy, the demonstrators screamed and threw rocks. The police were called, and they fired guns and threw tear gas at the demonstrators. The demonstrators tried to run away but they were caught by police. Many demonstrators, including Ahmed, were beaten by the police. The police forced Ahmed to sign a statement saying that he would not organize in the future.

On December 26, 1994, Ahmed, together with the Bihari community in Geneva camp, participated in a demonstration. The community protested that they wanted to go to Pakistan because they “cannot live with this kind of living.”The police arrived and tried to break up the demonstration. At one point, the demonstrators became angry with the police and started throwing stones. The police called for backup and fired guns and tear gas at the demonstrators. The police captured many demonstrators, including Ahmed, took them into custody, and beat them. The police released Ahmed the next day but threatened him with death should he ever protest again. Ahmed testified that, “if I ever try to say anything like this or try to speak then we will be killed in the police camp.”After he was released, Ahmed fled the camp, realizing that he was not safe and that he needed to leave the country. After four visits to the American Embassy, Ahmed succeeded in getting a visa. There is no evidence that Ahmed was violent or that he advocated violence at any of the three demonstrations....

Ahmed contends that he is entitled to relief under CAT. To qualify for CAT relief, Ahmed must establish that it is more likely than not that he would be tortured if removed to Bangladesh. “‘Torture is an extreme form of cruel and inhuman treatment and does not include lesser forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that do not amount to torture.’" Torture is defined as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or her or a third person information or a confession, punishing him or her for an act he or she or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or her or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind...." Kamalthas v. INS, 251 F.3d 1279, 1282 (9th Cir.2001) (quoting 8 C.F.R. § 208.18(a)(1) (2000)). Country conditions evidence can play a decisive role in determining eligibility for relief under CAT. Ahmed bears the burden of presenting evidence to establish “substantial grounds for believing that [he] would be in danger of being subjected to torture in the country of removal.”. We review the factual findings underlying the IJ's denial of relief under the CAT for substantial evidence.

The evidence in the record compels a finding that it is more likely than not that Ahmed will be persecuted if returned to Bangladesh, and Ahmed has offered evidence, if less pronounced, suggesting the likelihood of future harm. While in Bangladesh, Ahmed was taken into custody and beaten on four occasions (once while with his brother and uncle, and three times after participating in protests). Though certainly forms of persecution, it is not clear that these actions would rise to the level of torture.

Because the evidence does not demonstrate that it is more likely than not that Ahmed will be tortured if returned to Bangladesh, we find that CAT relief is not appropriate. Accordingly, we find that substantial evidence supports the IJ's determination that Ahmed is not eligible for CAT relief.

There is similar variation in the religious background of countries with high levels of religious freedom. This is obviously a complex matter, since current regimes may reflect comparatively little of a country’s religious background. China, Tibet, and Vietnam all have a largely Buddhist background, but current religious repression comes at the hand of communist party regimes whose members profess to be atheistic materialists. Turkey has a Muslim background, but its constitutional order is highly secularist, while Muslim-background Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan suffer under repression by Soviet political holdovers (on religious freedom in secular settings, see my essay “Secular and Religious, Church and State”). Nevertheless, since the survey usually covers several countries of each religious background, the overall patterns can be revealing.

Historically, Christian countries tend to have the best scores in religious freedom, as they do in political rights and civil liberties. Of the forty-one countries surveyed that can be rated as religiously “free” (i.e., scoring three or above), thirty-five are traditionally Christian. Conversely, only two of the forty-two traditionally Christian countries surveyed (Belarus and Cuba) are “not free” (i.e., scoring six or seven). It should also be noted that these scores reflect not only religious background but also levels of wealth and economic development.

The other religiously “free” countries are Israel and three countries of largely Buddhist background—Japan, Mongolia, and Thailand. The Buddhist countries with poor scores largely reflect the presence of communist regimes in China, Tibet, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. If these are excluded, the remaining countries, except Burma, score relatively well. There are few Hindu-majority countries in the world and, of those surveyed, Nepal scores poorly on political rights and civil liberties generally, as well as on religious freedom. India is unusual in that its score for religious freedom, five, is markedly lower than its otherwise good record on democracy and on civil liberties generally. This difference reflects the upsurge within recent years of a militant Hinduism in India, coupled with attacks including large-scale massacres against religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, the growth of anti-conversion laws, and an increase in religiously based terrorism tied to Kashmir, which has in turn provoked repressive state measures.

The Muslim majority countries comprise the religious areas with the largest current restrictions on religious freedom. This pattern parallels problems with democracy, civil liberties, and economic freedom, but the negative trend with respect to religious freedom is even stronger. Of the twenty “unfree” countries and territories surveyed, twelve are Muslim majority. Of the seven countries receiving the lowest possible score, four are Muslim majority. This is a phenomenon that goes beyond the Arab world or the Middle East. In measures of, for example, electoral democracy, the Muslim world outside of the greater Middle East scores better than the Middle Eastern countries, and over half of the world’s Muslims live in electoral democracies: the problems with democracy are concentrated in the Middle East. However, in terms of religious freedom, the large Muslim democracies of Indonesia and Bangladesh score a five and a six respectively. In these cases, the problems of religious freedom are due not to government repression but to widespread societal religious violence, including religiously based terrorism, aimed at minorities and at undercutting the government. It should also be added that there are religiously free Muslim majority countries, including some of the poorest, Mali and Senegal, which are religiously freer than many European countries.