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NORTHEAST ASIA
In HK’s press freedom struggle, a chorus for solidarity
The Wall Street Journal’s firing of its longtime Hong Kong reporter for taking a union leadership role has sparked outrage among her fellow journalists who urged newsrooms to uphold press freedom and not buckle under pressure.
“We urge The Wall Street Journal and all news organizations to respect reporters’ rights to join press clubs and to advocate for press freedom without the fear of punitive action from their own newsrooms,” the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Hong Kong (FCC HK) said.
“By pressuring employees not to take part in the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), a key advocate for both local and international journalists working in Hong Kong, the WSJ risks hastening the decline of what space for independent journalism remains,” the HKJA echoed.
The two journalists’ groups, along with other journalist associations, made the call after Selina Cheng, who was recently elected chair of the HKJA, was fired on July 17 from her post in WSJ’s Hong Kong bureau.
“Three weeks ago, my editor at the Wall Street Journal found out about my candidacy and immediately directed me to withdraw from the election,” Cheng wrote in her Columbia Journalism Review article published on July 20. “She said the role would be incompatible with my jobs as a Journal reporter.”
Cheng, who has been a member of HKJA’s executive committee since 2021, stood pat on her decision to run and won.
Her firing has reignited debate about how newsrooms balance pressure from authoritarian governments, particularly that of China, and media freedom.
Aside from the HKJA, international press groups like the Asia chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) also stood in solidarity with Cheng.
In its statement on Cheng’s termination by the WSJ, AAJA-Asia said: “Journalists must be able join and lead press organizations that are committed to defending media freedom without facing intimidation or retaliation.”
Before China’s national security law came into force in Hong Kong in 2020, the city enjoyed a vibrant press. The law targeted activists, human rights defenders, and journalists. The subsequent crackdown on civil liberties including press freedom has forced a number of Hong Kong journalists to move overseas and report from abroad.
Hong Kong ranked 135th in the Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 Press Freedom Index, and China 172nd in a list of 180 countries.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
An appeal to probe latest attacks on media, rights defender
Indonesian authorities have been urged to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for recent violence against journalists and human rights defenders, which have reignited concerns about the long history of impunity in the Southeast Asian country.
The Jakarta-based Journalist Safety Committee (KKJ) and Human Rights Watch, as well as Amnesty International, have urged the Indonesian government to conduct a transparent investigation into two separate violent incidents involving a journalist and a rights defender: a deadly arson attack against Rico Sempurna Pasaribu and his family on June 27, and a murder attempt on human rights lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy last July 17.
Pasaribu, who had just exposed an alleged illegal gambling operation by a military officer on local Tribata TV on June 22, was found dead five days later inside his burning home in Kabanjahe along with his wife, daughter, and grandson. CCTV footage showed men pouring gasoline along the home.
In its report to the Presidential Staff Office on July 17, KKJ – an alliance of journalist organizations – said the case required special attention “due to suspicions of military involvement” and questioned why the implicated military members in Pasaribu’s reports have yet to be summoned.
Weeks later, Warinussy – who advocates for the Papuan people – was shot by an unidentified person in Manokwari, West Papua province while he was withdrawing money from an ATM. He survived and was taken to hospital immediately.
“This attack is a reprehensible attempt to silence a courageous voice and to instill fear in those who fight for justice,” Amnesty International said of Warinussy.
These cases bring to the fore Indonesia’s spotty human rights record, especially in terms of protecting journalists and rights defenders. In a 2024 report, the Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) recorded more than 1,000 cases of violence against journalists since 2006, with the single highest year coming in 2023 (87 incidents).
Abuses against this group used to be common during the military dictatorship of Suharto, whose ex-military commander and son-in-law Prabowo Subianto is set to take office this October. Subianto himself is accused of various abuses against activists.
RMIT lecturer and journalist Tito Ambyo said these cases showed a “troubling resurgence of a culture of media repression and censorship” as “figures who held power prior to the reformasi [reform] era that began in 1998 seem to have been emboldened by the election of [president-elect] Prabowo Subianto and the apparent erosion of democratic norms.”
SOUTH ASIA
A cry for probe as deaths mount in student protests
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has appealed to the Bangladeshi government to hold “impartial, prompt, and exhaustive investigations” into the violence wracking the South Asian country as university protests descend into nationwide unrest, leaving over 100 dead.
On July 19, U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Turk said the attacks on student protesters were “particularly shocking and unacceptable” and expressed worries about reports that the notorious Border Guard and Rapid Action Battallion – both with lengthy records of rights violations – were being deployed to the protests.
The student protests, which began last June, were triggered by a Supreme Court decision to reinstate an old quota system allocating more than half of government jobs for certain groups. A third would be set aside for descendants of freedom fighters against Pakistan in 1971, while a smaller quota would be earmarked for vulnerable groups like women, disabled and those from poor neighborhoods.
“Bangladesh’s political leaders must work with the country’s young population to find solutions to the ongoing challenges and focus on the country’s growth and development. Dialogue is the best and only way forward,” Turk said.
The call was echoed by Amnesty International, which said the rising death toll was a “shocking indictment of the absolute intolerance shown by the Bangladeshi authorities to protest and dissent.”
The quota system comes at a time when students grapple with high youth unemployment amid a stagnating economy, with 32 million young people out of work or education from a population of 170 million.
Critics say the proposals are discriminatory and will benefit families aligned with the ruling Awami League party of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist for the past 15 years.
But while Hasina said she would sit down with student leaders to discuss the quota system and even announced a judicial inquiry into the deadly violence, observers say she is likely to pin responsibility on her political opponents, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami alliance, of instigating the unrest.
Apart from the street violence, rights advocates are also concerned about other abuses such as an internet shutdown and curfews with a “shoot-on-sight” order to silence protesters. Turk says of the internet shutdown in particular that it “disproportionately restricts the enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression” and urged the authorities to restore Internet access “without delay.”
GLOBAL / REGIONAL
As South Asia drowns, a fresh call for climate financing
Amid the onslaught of extreme climate events in South Asia, Amnesty International has called on high-income, fossil fuel-producing states to commit to climate finance to help the region’s governments and other developing countries cope with the climate crisis and compensate them for loss and damage.
South Asia is one of the most vulnerable to climate shocks – including floods, heatwaves, and extreme weather – in the world. A World Bank report estimated that over 800 million people live in climate change hotspots, and that by 2050, the region could see over 40 million climate migrants as it sees more frequent extreme weather.
A separate World Bank analysis warned that the region already was “living through a ‘new climate normal’ in which intensifying heat waves, cyclones, droughts, and floods are testing the limits of government, businesses, and citizens to adapt.”
In a statement on July 15, Amnesty International program director for climate, economic social justice, and corporate accountability Marta Schaaf said that while the poor communities of South Asia contribute almost nothing to greenhouse gas emissions, “they are paying for government inaction on climate with their livelihoods and all too often – their lives.”
“There can be no solution without a roadmap for climate justice and there is no climate justice without human rights,” Schaaf said, while challenging the world’s high-income emitters to also phase out their dependence on fossil fuels.
Schaaf’s statement comes after devastating flash floods left over 200 dead in India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh alone, with millions more affected and displaced. The torrential rainfall follows a record-breaking heatwave covering both South and Southeast Asia, prompting class disruptions from Pakistan to the Philippines.
Saleemul Haq, director at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, told Al Jazeera that the region – home to nearly 2 billion people – was particularly at risk because of a combination of geography, population and poverty.
Despite this, high-income, high-emission countries remain tight-fisted over climate financing, which would have helped developing countries fund their own adaptation and mitigation measures as well as just transition from fossils. According to the Global Center for Adaptation, developing countries need at least US$3.3 trillion in climate finance between now and 2035 – but at current levels of financing, they will likely only see US$840 billion.
As the world heads into the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan this year, COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev vowed that the top negotiating priority was agreeing on a “fair and ambitious” goal on climate finance that’s “adequate to the urgency and scale of the problem, taking into account the needs and priorities” of developing countries.
