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NORTHEAST ASIA
Challenging a vague and fickle law
It’s tricky when a vague law is used as a basis to determine the boundaries of free expression. But where do the limits of free expression begin and end?
A recent decision by a South Korean court may have brought this question to the fore when it ruled that one of its citizens violated the National Security Act for a poem he wrote expressing support for North Korea.
Lee Yoon-seop, 68, was sentenced to 14 months in prison on Nov. 27 for his poem that “glorified and praised the North.”
Amnesty International urged Seoul authorities to drop the charges against Lee, saying he was only “exercising his right to freedom of expression.”
“Writing a poem does not pose a threat to security,” says the human rights group.
Lee had written a poem in 2016 praising the North Korean regime, which was subsequently published on Pyongyang’s state website “Uriminjokkiri.” The poem argued in favor of reunifying the Korean peninsula under North Korea’s socialist regime, saying citizens could reap the “benefits” of free housing, education, healthcare, and employment.
In 2001, the same law was used against seven South Korean activists upon their return from Pyongyang to commemorate the 56th anniversary of Korean independence from Japanese occupation. One of the activists, Dongkuk University professor Kang Jeong-goo, was charged with violating Article 7 of the law for praising the late North Korean President Kim II-sung and then National Defence Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il.
Article 7 prescribes a prison term of up to seven years for the crime of praising or sympathizing with an “anti-state group,” a term described as vague by critics.
Since the controversial law’s last revision in 1991 – which abolished a provision stating that communist states are anti-government organizations – activists have challenged its overbroad and vague provisions that undermine free speech. But Seoul’s Constitutional Court has repeatedly affirmed the national security law’s constitutionality.
Last June, the Yoon Suk-yeol administration released its National Security Strategy, which highlights stricter monitoring of inter-Korean exchanges among civilians. Such a move is expected to tighten the noose on violators of the law and, to rights advocates, will further undermine the right to freedom of expression in South Korea.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Saying no to blood money
Vietnam may have secured funding for a just energy transition, but local environmental groups are not turning a blind eye to the injustices faced by climate activists who have been jailed and silenced by the government.
On Dec. 1, shortly after Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh unveiled a multibillion, five-year plan to reduce the country’s coal use, the Vietnam Climate Defenders Coalition urged the program’s funders to demand the urgent release of several jailed climate leaders and require that financing be contingent on explicit protections for environmental and human rights defenders.
“There will be nothing ‘just’ about this energy transition while climate leaders remain in jail and civil society remains silenced,” said Guneet Kaur, coordinator for the International Rivers’ Environmental Defenders Campaign. “Those financing this project, including the governments as well as the international banks, should be very concerned about how their money will actually be spent.”
The specter of Hanoi’s jailed climate activists looms large over the agreement, which will see Vietnam receiving US$15.5 billion in funds from Group of 7 (G-7) member countries and foreign investors under the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) program. The deal was first announced last year by wealthy nations to help developing countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, and India transition to clean energy by 2050.
Its vast renewable resources has made the socialist country as Southeast Asia’s “frontrunner” in renewables. The current government has set an ambitious target to generate a fifth of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030—a goal that many believe would be impossible without its dedicated climate defenders.
Among those who were arrested and imprisoned are environmental justice lawyer Dang Dinh Bach; founder of environmental group Change VN, Hoang Thi Minh Hong of Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition, Goldman environmental prize winner Nguy Thi Khanh; and Mai Phan Loi and Bach Hung Duong of the Center for Media in Educating Community.
Last September, Global Witness, which keeps track of environmental defenders killed globally every year, noted that until the program’s decision makers ensure civil society’s meaningful participation, “the ambitious targets of the JETP could be jeopardized.”
SOUTH ASIA
Eradicating horror killings
In Pakistan, around 1,000 women are killed yearly by their own kin as part of what has been widely described as the horrific practice of “honor killings.”
Last week’s reported killing of an 18-year-old girl by her own father and uncle over what turned out to be a doctored photo proved to be too much even for this grisly practice.
This has prompted renewed calls for the abolition of the tribal jirgas that make these killings possible, and for an end to violence against women.
“Honor killing in Pakistan is an abhorrent … practice that has no place in our modern society,” says Malaika Raza, general secretary of the human rights wing of the Pakistan People’s Party. “We must unite as a collective force against this grave violation of human dignity.”
Nadia Rahman, Amnesty International South Asia deputy regional director, expressed concern that Pakistan continues to fail in curbing the “extra-legal power of jirgas or tribal councils to run parallel legal systems perpetuating patriarchal violence with impunity.”
The 18-year-old victim — identified as Reema Bib, who lived in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kohistan district — was shot dead by her father and three other men after a photo showing her sitting with her boyfriend went viral on fake social media accounts. Police later learned that the photo had been edited.
Honor killing crimes continue to run rampant in Pakistan, especially in deeply conservative areas. They are often carried out by relatives under the orders of their jirga (tribal council of all-male elders) for “offenses” that “harm” the family’s honor, like eloping, adultery, and other perceived infractions to “female modesty.”
Concerned groups say that instead of bringing about justice, jirgas perpetuate violence and discrimination against women. In some towns, jirgas have banned women from voting; in others, jirgas have ordered young girls to be married off to older men.
In 2019, Pakistan’s Supreme Court declared jirgas unconstitutional and illegal under the country’s international human rights obligations. But the practice continues to persist: last year alone, the national human rights commission documented at least 384 instances of honor killings.
GLOBAL/REGIONAL
Against empty rhetoric
Exasperated by empty calls for dialogue, over 600 civil society organizations are demanding that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc drastically change its approach to the Myanmar crisis and to “align its efforts with the Myanmar people’s own demands.”
In a joint statement published on Dec. 1, the groups urged the 10-member regional bloc, of which Myanmar is also a member, to “take concrete actions to fulfil the demands made by the people of Myanmar to establish a federal democratic union and bring the illegal military junta to justice for committing mass atrocity crimes.”
The statement comes after Indonesia organized a meeting of Myanmar’s concerned groups on Nov. 20 to 22 to “bring conflicting parties to an inclusive dialogue…to find a durable and comprehensive solution” to the ongoing crisis brought about by the junta’s takeover of the civilian government since 2021. Included in the meeting were representatives of the pro-democracy camps, ethnic minority armies, and the National Unity Government. There was none from the junta.
While Indonesia heralded what it called “positive signs” from the stakeholders in the ongoing civil war in Myanmar, the signatories to the statement said ASEAN’s efforts to facilitate an inclusive national dialogue without holding the junta to account for its atrocities and taking concrete measures toward bringing an end to the raging conflict in the country ““undermin(ed) the extraordinary efforts of Myanmar’s Spring revolutionary forces.
Last August, the United States Institute of Peace cautioned against accommodating dialogue proposed by the junta, which it said was an act of “deception and distraction” amid massive losses to ethnic resistance armies.
This latest development exposes ASEAN’s weak spot anew: its principles of nonintervention and consensus-building bars it from taking stronger action on issues concerning its member-states.
In the case of Myanmar, while the regional bloc has generally refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the junta, some member states appear to have taken a contrary position. For instance, Indonesian state-owned arms dealers have been linked in arms sale to the junta since 2021.
The regional bloc has also stumbled in finding a resolution over the overlapping maritime disputes in the South China Sea, of which a large part is being claimed by China. It has pinned its hopes on a long-overdue code of conduct with China but negotiations are still ongoing up to this day.
