February 12-18, 2024

NORTHEAST ASIA

Keeping vigil over its last freedoms

Current efforts to draft a new homegrown national security law in Hong Kong have stoked fears not only of a further shrinking of civic space, but of the erosion of one of the last standing freedoms in the city: religious freedom. 

Exiled Hong Kong activist Frances Hui warned that the enactment of the controversial Article 23 to expand the Beijing-imposed 2020 national security law could be used to further restrict freedom of religion.

According to a public consultation document on Article 23, the proposed legislation covers five types of crime, including espionage and external interference – common charges brought against foreign organizations and funders. 

As such the proposed new security law could be used against foreign Christian missionaries as well as other small- to medium-scale church groups, Hui warned. 

“We don’t know how they’re going to use this law to go against religious groups, but having this law passed and imposed in Hong Kong would be a great threat to religious groups in Hong Kong,” said Hui, who also serves as the policy and advocacy coordinator at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

Hui, herself a Catholic, published a report late last month revealing how religious communities in the city – one of the last vestiges of its once-vibrant civic society – were “being pressured to promote Chinese Communist Party priorities.”

These conditions are a stark turnaround from just three years ago when Hong Kong’s citizens enjoyed freedom of worship. 

The report said that while religious persecution in Hong Kong was not yet as dire as it is in mainland China – where religious symbols are being destroyed and religions are were being systematically brought under the Chinese Communist Party’s “Sinicization” campaign – the city’s religious leaders are now being pressured to give sermons promoting socialist values and barred from talking about human rights.

Arrests of prominent Catholic figures provide clearer examples of how the NSL has been used to target Church leaders. In November 2022, outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen was convicted of failing to “properly’ register a fund that helped pay for the legal and medical fees of pro-democracy protesters, according to a report by Washington Post. 

In August 2023, another local Catholic leader, Bobo Yip, was arrested along with nine others for allegedly violating the NSL. 

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Ending persecution of political prisoners

Yet another Vietnamese activist thrown in jail has staged another hunger strike to protest his mistreatment in prison. 

Dang Dinh Bách, an environmental defender and lawyer currently facing five years in prison over “trumped-up” tax evasion charges, is currently serving his sentence in Prison No. 6 in Nghe An province in a wing reserved for political prisoners. 

He began his hunger strike on Feb. 2 to protest against his condition in prison, where, among others, he lacks access to adequate food, medicine, and hygiene items. Visits by his family and lawyer are subject to restrictions. There are also reports he’s been “attacked and beaten up in custody,” U.N. experts said.

On Feb. 14, 10 U.N. experts led by Special Rapporteur for human rights defenders Mary Lawlor called on the Vietnamese government to stop the “targeting, convicting, and mistreating” of human rights defenders after Bach began his third hunger strike. 

“Deprivation of liberty and mistreatment in prison should not be used as a tool by the Vietnamese government to silence human right defenders and civil society members,” the U.N. experts said.

Bach, who was arrested on June 24, 2021, initially went on a hunger strike in December 2022 to draw global attention to his case. His partial hunger strike in May 2023 was in protest against his unjust imprisonment, according to the 88 Project, which advocates for Vietnamese activists.   

To date at least 83 environmental defenders have been arrested in Vietnam. Like colleagues and fellow detainees Mai Phan Loi and Bach Hung Duong, Bach had been calling on the government to pivot from fossil fuels, a touchy subject even in a country that touts itself as a future regional leader in clean energy. 

Bach joins a long list of political prisoners who have resorted to hunger strikes to protest their atrocious ordeals in prison. Blogger Le Trong Hung – also detained in Prison No. 6 – in 2023; as well as blogger Nguyen Van Hoa and activists Nguyen Bac Truyen and Pham Van Diep in Vietnam’s An Diem prison in 2020 also did the same.  

A 2016 report by Amnesty International had cast “a rare light on the torture and other harrowing treatment of prisoners of conscience” in Vietnam, including “prolonged periods of incommunicado detention and solitary confinement, enforced disappearances, denial of medical treatment, and punitive prison transfers.”

SOUTH ASIA

Allowing more women at the table

Ahead of the United Nations meeting on Afghanistan in Doha, women’s rights and civil society organizations urged the global body to make sure that women’s issues are front and center of the discussions.

Over the weekend, several rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Women and Children Research and Advocacy Network, called on the U.N. to recognize the “gender apartheid” in the South Asian country.

The two-day U.N. convened Special Envoys’ meeting in Doha, Qatar opened on Feb. 18 to discuss how the international community should engage with the Taliban regime.

“The international community cannot continue to take a ‘business as usual’ approach vis-a-vis the human rights situation in Afghanistan. [The] UN … [should] insist that the Taliban immediately reverse all restrictions curtailing the rights of women and girls and release all those arbitrarily arrested and unlawfully detained,” said AI senior director Deprose Muchena.

But while the U.N. envoys and other senior officials showed up in full force at the conference, Taliban representatives refused to join the meeting when the U.N. rejected its demands to be Afghanistan’s sole official representative, said U.N. secretary general Antonio Guterres. 

Prominent Afghan rights advocate Husna Jalal also lamented the supposed lack of “genuine representation of grassroots women” in the meeting and called on the U.N. to make sure to bring “new voices of Afghanistan” to the forefront. 

It has been three years since the Taliban took over Kabul, systematically erasing hard-won gains for women’s rights through draconian policies barring their full participation in work, school, and other public spaces. 

Such bans have far-reaching implications especially in healthcare, where many women are barred from seeking further medical training and thus “ensuring shortages (of medical workers in the country) for the foreseeable future,” according to a new Human Rights Watch report. 

Women’s rights advocates and even the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett called these policies “gender apartheid.” 

The Taliban have not been officially recognized by any other world government, and foreign aid has been cut off or severely scaled back. This plunged the country into an “unprecedented humanitarian crisis with a serious risk of systemic collapse and human catastrophe” as half its population – women and girls – are shut out from public life, according to the U.N.

GLOBAL/REGIONAL

Saving the world’s most food-insecure zone

As South Asia grapples with a so-called “new climate normal” that could affect its food security, agribusiness and industry leaders are now demanding urgent action in the region by ensuring climate-smart food systems to insulate it from the impacts of climate change. 

During the annual Sustainasummit led by the Soybean Export Council (USSEC) in Dubai on Feb. 15, experts stressed the need for smart conservation initiatives, sustainable agricultural practices, and climate-resilient practices in food cultivation, production, distribution, and consumption to protect the region’s food security especially amid a growing population and rising temperatures. 

“The production of 15 commodities like palm oil, soy and beef production is significantly impacted by biodiversity, water, and climate. So we need to have smart and sustainable production systems in agriculture and industry,” said Hammad Naqi Khan, chief executive officer for World Wide Fund for Nature–Pakistan.

Their calls follow a recent study by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which found that South Asia – composed of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka – is currently the world’s most food-insecure zone, with over 1.4 billion people unable to afford even cheap food.

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2023

As one of the world’s most populated regions, South Asia is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as droughts and floods hit the region more frequently. This is on top of the multiple crises affecting the region, including the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan; an ongoing extremist conflict in Pakistan; and rising right-wing authoritarianism in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. 

As such, its governments, environmental groups and even international bodies like the U.N. have been ramping up efforts on climate-resilient food systems in the region. For example, nonprofit organization International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center recently developed heat-resistant maize hybrids for South Asia. 

The World Bank has also provided funding for the region’s Indigenous peoples, seen as important environmental stewards, to promote and preserve their green practices.