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SOUTH ASIA
Crackdown on Bangladeshi activists
More than 70 human rights organizations demanded the “immediate and unconditional release” of two Bangladeshi activists, who are high-ranking officers of a local rights organization said to be “persistently targeted” by the Bangladeshi government.
Adilur Rahman Khan and A.S.M. Nasiruddin Elan, secretary and director, respectively, of Odhikar, one of the leading human rights organizations in Bangladesh, were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for “publishing and circulating false information, hurting religious sentiments, and undermining the state’s image.”
These charges, which were brought under Bangladesh’s 2006 Information and Communication Technology Act, stemmed from the 2013 fact-finding report of Odhikar documenting extrajudicial killings during a demonstration.
The rights groups said the two activists were targeted “solely for their human rights work” and that their convictions were an escalation of the government’s smear campaign against Odhikar.
They noted that the case against Khan and Elan was also “marred with due process violations, such as the failure to provide the defense with advance information on the prosecution witnesses or a copy of the Criminal Investigation Department’s further investigation report until the day before a hearing.”
In addition to targeting Odhikar’s leaders, the state also blocked the organization’s access to funds as the latter’s registration renewal application has been pending since 2014.
In a separate statement, the Asia Democracy Network described the charges against Khan and Elan as “baseless and politically motivated,” and demanded their immediate release and the quashing of their convictions.
The government under the ruling Awami League party has been accused of undermining the work of human rights groups. A report released in July by the Centre for Governance Studies shows that only 2% of human rights defenders feel safe in the country, where widely believed state-sanctioned harassment and persecution of this sector are not uncommon.
The U.S. Embassy in Bangladesh said human rights groups in Bangladesh “operated with significant government restrictions” while the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights noted the persisting judicial harassment of human rights advocates in the country.
The dire state of human rights in Bangladesh is reflected in the 2022 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, where it ranked 135th out of 140 countries in terms of fundamental rights. Between 2015 and 2022, the South Asian country’s scores for fundamental rights have been steadily declining, based on the same global index.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
A coverup story backfires
Rights groups in the Philippines have challenged President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to investigate the case of the two environmental activists who went missing on Sept. 2. They also urged him to probe the state forces who were allegedly behind the activists’ abduction.
“Everyone involved in the abduction, enforced disappearance and fake surrender of environmental activists Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano (must) be held accountable,” said Cristina Palabay, secretary general of rights group Karapatan.
“Shouldn’t you issue an unequivocal statement that abductions and forced surrenders are not acceptable because they are human rights violations? Why the deafening silence when it comes to human rights?” said Renato Reyes, president of the rights group Bayan (New Patriotic Alliance).
Their statements come after Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano, both young activists based in Bataan province in the central Luzon region, were surfaced by the military two weeks after they went missing while en route to conduct research and consultations with the province’s fisherfolk.
Both are members of AKAP KA Manila Bay, an environmental alliance based in Central Luzon opposing reclamation activities in Manila Bay, where the largely fisherfolk community of Bataan fish.
Their disappearance was part of an alarming pattern of harassment and violence against environmental activists in the Philippines, now considered the deadliest country in Asia for environmental defenders for 10 consecutive years.
On Sept. 19, the two were presented in a press conference where they were expected to say they had surrendered to government forces to leave the Communist movement, as was revealed by Jonathan Malaya, assistant director general of the National Security Council.
But flanked by military men, the two revealed they did not surrender but were instead abducted and then made to sign an affidavit of surrender under duress. They have since been returned to their families.
The threat of perjury charges now looms over them as a “humiliated, betrayed” National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, the government’s anti-insurgency arm, insisted they had surrendered voluntarily.
NORTHEAST ASIA
No peace without human rights
The U.N. special rapporteur on North Korean human rights, meanwhile, called on the South Korean government to include human rights discussions in future peace talks with the totalitarian state amid wide-ranging and continuing abuses in the country.
At a press conference during her visit to South Korea on Sept. 12, U.N. official Elizabeth Salmon praised Seoul’s domestic efforts to raise awareness about Pyongyang’s human rights conditions, while also challenging its government to “take more measures to work with the international community.”
Such measures could take the form of recalibrating some international sanctions, which could have “unintended consequences” on humanitarian relief efforts there.
About a month prior to her visit, U.N. rights chief Volker Turk warned of “continuing, severe, widespread, and long-standing” violations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) citizens by their own government, which “stem directly from, or support, the increasing militarisation of the DPRK.”
Reinforcing Salmon’s report, Turk said the DPRK government has repeatedly demanded citizens to “tighten their belts” to the point of starvation in some cases, “so that the available resources could be used to fund the nuclear and missile programmes.”
To support Pyongyang’s ambitions, the government has resorted to the widespread use of forced labor including in political prison camps, by children forced to collect harvests and the confiscation of overseas workers’ wages, the U.N. rights chief added.
The DPRK’s warmongering — aimed mainly to warn Seoul — was causing an “alarming and unsustainable” situation across the peninsula, according to the U.N. Human Rights Council. North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile launches are also impacting nearby countries such as Japan.
GLOBAL
Protect the planet’s defenders
As environmental defenders across the world continue to be targeted, or worse, killed, for their work, a global advocacy group demands “urgent action” to hold to account governments and greenwashing corporations.
The call by international environmental group Global Witness comes amid its revelation that 177 environmental defenders across the world were killed in the line of duty in 2022. This translates to one defender getting killed every other day in the past year.
At least 16 defenders were killed in Asia, where the Philippines has topped the region’s ranking of deadliest countries for environmental work for the past decade.
This also brings the total number of killings to 1,910 since 2012, when Global Witness started documenting killings of environmental defenders.
While this number is slightly lower than the recorded 200 deaths in 2021, the “worsening climate crisis and the ever-increasing demand for agricultural commodities, fuel and minerals will only intensify the pressure on the environment – and those who risk their lives to defend it,” the group said.
Many of these cases also go unsolved, Global Witness said. As such, they urged governments to “report, investigate and seek accountability for reprisals against defenders.”
Presently, the ASEAN member-states — many of which consistently rank among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change — are crafting an Environmental Rights Framework to protect and uphold the environmental rights of its citizens.
Advocates are urging the inclusion of “strong measures” in the framework to protect environmental defenders and frontline communities, such as indigenous peoples (IPs) within the region.
