The Interior Ministry declared Sanait Tesfauneh, an asylum-seeker from Eritrea, a 'threat to public security' and placed her in administrative detention after she was suspected of purchasing a forged work permit. Now, several organizations are attempting to challenge the detention system that deprives asylum seekers of their civil liberties. Victor Hugo's Les Misérables was published in 1862. Over the years the book became the most famous indictment against the treatment of the weak by society, authorities, and the law. Hugo tells the tale of Jean Valjean who was unable to find work to support his family, so he smashed a…

I believe in literature, even more so than journalism. So I'm starting a writer's workshop for local authors who work in English. Here's why: It wasn’t the newspapers and journalists who freed the Filipino people from hundreds of years of Spanish colonialism. It was literature. Jose Rizal’s novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch me not) is widely credited as having fanned the flames of the revolution that eventually overthrew the Spanish and led to an independent Philippines. The book, which I picked up and read during my travels in the Philippines, is an emotional, character-driven account of life under Spanish occupation. It…