December 11-17, 2023

NORTHEAST ASIA

Criminalizing dissent 

Journalist groups have urged Mongolian authorities to drop the charges against a reporter-editor and to lift the suspension of her news site amid an unmistakable pattern of media harassment in the country.

On Dec. 11, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Confederation of Mongolian Journalists (CMJ) demanded the immediate release of Naran Unurtsetseg, editor in chief of the news website Zarig.mn, who was arrested on Dec. 4 for contempt of court and spreading purported false information. 

Unurtsetseg was criminally charged after she posted on her personal Facebook account that subjecting an elderly individual to a prolonged court hearing was an act of inhumanity. The prosecutors said she had “discredit(ed) the reputation of the court.” 

She has since been barred from leaving Mongolia while the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC) – a state agency once flagged by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for “encouraging government censorship” – imposed a block on the Zarig.mn website and its Facebook page.

Unurtsetseg is the 10th journalist currently facing investigation under Article 13.14 of Mongolia’s criminal code, which sanctions the “public dissemination of clearly false information that harms a person’s honor, reputation, or business reputation,” CMJ said. Zarig.mn’s founder and investigative journalist J. Battul has been similarly charged with a violation of the law, being the target of complaints from the Minister of Economy and Development.

Media advocates have long been sounding the alarm against this provision of the law, which came into effect on Jan. 10, 2020, ostensibly to fight COVID-19 misinformation, and was one of the restrictive measures imposed by the government at the height of the pandemic. Press freedom and anti-corruption advocates contested that the law “does not define the term ‘false information.’” 

Just three months after the new provision was introduced, the Globe Investigation Center monitored eight court decisions where half of the plaintiffs were politicians and public officials and all the defendants were found guilty of “spreading false information defaming the honor and reputation of the complainants.”

Mongolia ranked 88th out of 188 countries and territories included in the 2023 World Press Index of Reporters Without Borders (RSF). 

Although the country – described by Freedom House as an electoral democracy with firmly institutionalized political rights and civil liberties – generally recognizes media freedom, “imperfect defamation laws encourage abusive lawsuits against journalists, stirring self-censorship,” said RSF.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Increasingly hostile situation for refugees

Faced with a fresh wave of refugees coming into its borders, Indonesia has called on the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) to persuade other countries, particularly those who are party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, to do their share in assisting the homeless minority ethnic group from Myanmar. 

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi specifically urged a “collective approach to the refugee crisis” during her meeting with UNHRC High Commissioner Filippo Grandi in Geneva, Switzerland on Dec. 11. 

“[He] understood the challenges faced by Indonesia and said the UNHCR will try its best to help solve this problem … by providing assistance to support the lives of the refugees,” she said in a subsequent press conference in Geneva. 

More than 1,500 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Indonesia since November 2023. The latest arrivals on Dec. 12 were refused shelter by Acehnese. Despite this massive setback for the refugees, the Indonesian government agreed to give them temporary assistance.

Overall, at least 1 million Rohingya – a mostly Muslim minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine State – have fled their homeland since 2017 as a result of a brutal military crackdown, and sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar. But squalid conditions, violence, and other forms of inhumane treatment in these temporary facilities forced them to set sail again for better conditions, in Indonesia and Malaysia, in particular. 

In Aceh province, the once-welcoming locals have turned against the latest batch of refugees to arrive on its shores, calling them “parasites” competing with their province’s scant resources. 

As a non-signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention, Indonesia is under no obligation to assist or resettle refugees such as the Rohingya.

In 2016, however, President Joko Widodo signed a national refugee law providing access and temporary protection for refugees. The presidential regulation also authorized the UNHCR to help provide protection and resettlement for refugees in Indonesia.

But the U.N. Refugee Agency has ruled out resettlement as a solution to the refugee crisis gripping Indonesia. It warned that “resettlement spaces are extremely limited globally, benefitting less than 1% of the refugee population.”  

Other countries hosting Rohingya refugees – including Malaysia and Thailand – have resisted acceding to the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. In Malaysia, refugee girls find themselves trapped in forced marriages with abusive men; while Thai authorities, who say they do not want to treat refugees as asylum seekers, have been accused of summarily detaining refugees indefinitely.

SOUTH ASIA

Keeping Afghanistan on the radar

Despite the ongoing conflicts in other parts of the world such as Gaza, Afghanistan’s extremely complex challenges, including their enormous impacts on women and girls, should not be forgotten by the international community.

U.N. Population Fund’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, Pio Smith, made this earnest appeal at the conclusion of his five-day mission (Dec. 7-12) to Afghanistan. Among others, he observed that the number of health facilities in the country was “nowhere near what is needed to ensure that every Afghan woman and girl receives essential reproductive health services, including psychosocial support to help them cope and rebuild their lives.” 

While more than two-thirds of the Afghan population is in need of humanitarian assistance, Afghan women and girls are especially vulnerable to poverty and human rights violations. Since the Taliban took over in 2021, women have been banned from pursuing education beyond sixth grade and subjected to limited work opportunities. The cumulative effect of such policies has largely resulted in the unwarranted confinement of women in their homes, according to the U.N. Women. 

Compounding the oppressive Taliban rule, especially for women, are the recent devastating earthquakes in Herat province and the deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan. 

“Beyond the physical scars, there are a lot of mental wounds. Many, sadly, are feeling desperate and suicidal. These women and girls are suffering [and] they are in dire need of psychosocial support to help them cope and to help them rebuild,” Smith echoed.  

The Taliban’s repression of women, and the humanitarian crisis confronting Afghanistan, has left many women feeling “invisible, isolated, suffocated, and living in prison-like conditions,” according to a group of U.N. experts, while multiple studies indicate they suffer symptoms of depression and anxiety over the lack of certainty in their future.   

These dire conditions have reversed the gains made over the last 20 years for the rights of women and girls in the Afghan country. 

Since last month, hundreds of thousands of Afghans refugees have returned from Pakistan after the latter imposed a deportation order against undocumented refugees at their border. Among the returnees, the UNFPA said, were pregnant women and girls “who require urgent and life-saving maternal health services.” 

Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world to give birth, said the U.N. agency. 

GLOBAL/REGIONAL

A plea to avert a greater crisis

As the world grapples with the climate crisis, raging conflicts, and unrelenting poverty that are taking a huge toll on vulnerable communities around the world, U.N. has launched an appeal for US$46.4 billion in humanitarian funding for 2024.

In its “Global Humanitarian Overview 2024” released on Dec. 11, the U.N. warned of a “bleak” situation as it predicts that nearly 300 million people will need humanitarian assistance next year. 

Source: U.N. Global Humanitarian Outlook 2024

“Without adequate funding, we cannot provide life-saving assistance. And if we cannot provide that assistance, people will pay with their lives,” warned Martin Griffiths, U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. 

Some 50.8 million people will come from Asia and the Pacific, where the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan (US$3 billion) and Myanmar (US$994 million) are expected to take the lion’s share in humanitarian aid that will pour into the region. 

This year, the U.N. received $20 billion, which represented only a third of what was required. While this amount was able to reach 128 million people in 28 countries, the effect of the lower funding for this year was palpable: in Afghanistan alone, the number of people receiving food aid drastically dropped from 13 million in May to 3 million in November. 

In Myanmar, where the junta has taken over, 90 percent of required shelter projects were not implemented because of lack of resources, leaving over 500,000 people in inadequate living conditions.