Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, July 6, 2012

Mohamed El Dahshan scrutinizes the reasons for the outside world’s conspicuous failure to take note of the uprising in Sudan.

Francis Wade takes Burma’s pro-democracy movement to task for failing to acknowledge the rights of the country’s beleaguered Rohingya minority.

Rick Rowden explains why the new mission statement for Argentina’s central bank has free-market conservatives up in arms.

Min Zin weighs in on the dispute over naming rights in his homeland: Burma or Myanmar?

Endy Bayuni recounts the sad tale of corruption in Indonesia’s Ministry of Religion.

Egyptian activists are gearing up for the next stage of the struggle for women’s rights, as Christian Caryl reports in his column.

Francisco Toro illuminates Venezuela’s peculiar involvement in the recent coup in Paraguay, while Juan Nagel explores the economic logic behind the deluge of cars in Caracas.

And Jackee Batanda shows how civil society groups in Uganda are increasingly demanding accountability from their political leaders.

Plus this week’s recommended reads:

Nicholas Pelham explains how Morocco’s king has managed to dodge the impact of the Arab Spring in a must-read piece for the blog of The New York Review of Books.

Human Rights Watch presents a comprehensive study of the Syrian government’s torture apparatus. Freedom House presents its annual Worst of the Worst report, which analyzes the state of affairs in the world’s most repressive societies.

Writing for The Independent, Patrick Coburn offers an impassioned defense of Julian Assange.

At OpenDemocracy.net, Stephen Zunes argues that the revolts in Sudan are gradually assuming the character of a full-blown insurrection. Storify offers a useful narrative of the recent events in Sudan.

The Musings on Iraq blog provides an interview with expert Kirk Sowell, who examines the drift to authoritarianism under Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

International Crisis Group’s Silke Pfeiffer, writing in The Miami Herald, assesses the constellation of forces leading up to the presidential election in Venezuela. The ICG also present two in-depth reports on the transition in Yemen and the challenges ahead for electoral democracy in Libya.

In an article for Time magazine, Ishaan Tharoor covers the destruction of Timbuktu’s Sufi shrines by Islamist militias.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports on deepening tensions in Ukraine after parliament’s passage of a bill that elevates the official status of the Russian language. (Above, protestors against the new bill clash with riot police in Kiev.)

Transitions Online describes Serbia’s odd televised attempt to counter persistent xenophobia directed against the Roma, Europe’s largest marginalized minority.

Finally, Minxin Pei, writing for Project Syndicate, argues that China’s current system doesn’t have the flexibility to cope with an approaching economic slowdown.