September 2-8, 2024

NORTHEAST ASIA

Pressing on toward rights-based framework for LGBTQ+  

Around this time last year, Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (CFA) mandated the government to establish within two years an alternative legal framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships – a decision that, while falling short of full marriage equality, marked a significant step toward upholding the rights of LGBTQI+ individuals.

One year later, no such framework has been crafted, prompting Amnesty International to call on Hong Kong to provide a progress report on its plans to recognize same-sex partnerships.

Specifically, Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks urged the government to “provide an update on its plans to act on the Court’s judgment. The government has one year left to comply with the decision, but in the meantime equality is being denied on a daily basis.”

FAST FACTS

• Currently, same-sex couples in Hong Kong cannot marry, adopt children, or access many of the rights and benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples. They cannot inherit property, file joint taxes, or receive medical benefits for their partners.
• In 2018, democracy and LGBTQI+ activist Jimmy Sham, who married his partner in the United States in 2013, initiated a legal challenge before the Court of Appeal, where he argued that Hong Kong’s current laws discriminating against same-sex couples were unconstitutional.
• The CA denied Sham’s appeal in 2023 but allowed him to bring his case before the CFA. In turn, the court ordered the government to come up with a legal framework to recognize same-sex partnerships by October 2025.
• Hong Kong also rolled back other discriminatory measures against the LGBTQI+ community, in what advocates saw as a major step toward recognizing LGBTQI+ rights. These included policies requiring gender reassignment surgery so transgender people could change their gender markers on their ID cards and denying same-sex couples of subsidized housing benefits.
• A 2023 survey showed more than half (60 percent) of Hong Kong respondents were becoming more accepting of same-sex marriage – a sharp increase from 2013 and 2017, with 38 percent and 50.4 percent, respectively, of respondents with favorable sentiments about same-sex unions. 

LGBTQI+ rights in Hong Kong

Source: EqualDex, Hong Kong Free Press, South China Morning Post

ACTIONS SOUGHT

• Amnesty International is calling on Hong Kong authorities to accelerate their efforts to comply with the court’s ruling, review discriminatory laws and policies, and uphold the rights of all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

¹This means that gay men can donate blood as long as they have abstained from male-to-male sex within a year, supposedly to account for the incubation period of HIV.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

An appeal for peace and interfaith dialogue

Pope Francis’s first stop, on Sept. 3 in Muslim-majority Indonesia, in a grueling 12-day journey across Southeast Asia and Oceania, was highlighted, among others, by his appeal to world leaders and religious communities to unite in countering religious extremism and fostering global peace.

Speaking in Jakarta, the Pontiff stressed the urgent need for interfaith dialogue to combat the use of religion for violence. “In this way, prejudices can be eliminated, and a climate of mutual respect and trust can grow,” the 87-year-old pope said. 

His sentiment was echoed by Indonesia’s two largest Islamic organizations, who in turn expressed hopes that the Pope could help amplify calls to end the ongoing violence in Gaza.

FAST FACTS

• Pope Francis’s Asia-Pacific tour, which began on Sept. 2 and dubbed the “longest, farthest and most challenging” trip of the pontificate, takes him across Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Singapore. 
• He is expected to highlight climate change and interfaith dialogue, and emphasize the importance of Asia for the Catholic Church. In Asia, which has 4.5 billion people, Catholics make up just 3.31 percent of the population. 
• His visit to Muslim-majority Indonesia follows the disbandment of Indonesian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, which in 2023 represented over half of arrested terrorists in the country. Other groups like Jamaah Ansharut Daulah have also perpetrated extremist violence in the country, including two suicide bomb attacks in 2021 and 2022. 
• Indonesia is also sympathetic to Palestine, which has been under a brutal offensive by Israel since October last year. Francis himself has also repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Outgoing president Joko Widodo said Indonesia “appreciates the Vatican’s attitude.”

ACTIONS SOUGHT

• Apart from interfaith dialogue, the Pope called on Indonesia to remain committed to social justice as enshrined in the preamble of its 1945 Constitution.
• The head of Muslim group Muhammadiyah, Haedar Nashir, urged President Widodo to convey to the Catholic leader the urgency of ending the Israel-Palestine conflict and for Indonesia to take on a “more proactive role in world peace in seeking a permanent solution for the future of Palestine.”

SOUTH ASIA

Looking toward renewed OHCHR mandate for Sri Lanka  

Fifteen years after Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war ended in 2009, justice remains elusive for its victims. Perpetrators continue to evade accountability, while survivors and their families face harassment and unlawful surveillance.

As the 57th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) begins on Sept. 9 (date?), international and regional rights groups are urging global leaders to extend the mandate of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner in Sri Lanka by another two years.

In a joint letter to the UNHRC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, the Sri Lanka Campaign, Forum-Asia, and Franciscan International said that renewing the U.N. mandate will enable the Sri Lanka Accountability Project to complete its work and deliver long-overdue justice to the victims of the war.

FAST FACTS

• The group’s call comes as the UNHRC’s 57th session, which begins Sept. 9, is expected to discuss an OHCHR report detailing the sexual abuse and intimidation of Tamil activists by Sri Lanka’s security forces. 
• The report noted that there was a “clear pattern” on which Tamils were being targeted and monitored: those who “had been involved in protests over disappearances, land/environmental rights or commemoration of war victims and were believed to be previously involved or linked with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)”. 
• Over 100,000 were killed and 27,000 forcibly disappeared – mostly Tamils – by the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009. Since then, many of them remain subjected to surveillance and harassment as the government seeks to suppress repress any sign of uprising. 
• The impunity for these abuses prompted the establishment of the OHCHR mandate in 2021 Resolution 46/1, which was extended in 2022 under Resolution 51/1. These resolutions serve as the basis for the U.N. Sri Lanka Accountability Project that empowers the OHCHR to “collect, consolidate, analyze and preserve” evidence that may be used against perpetrators of war crimes against the Tamils.
• Despite the setting up of multiple truth commissions to help victims achieve justice, a U.N. report published last May said that the steps taken by successive Sri Lankan governments since 2009, when the 26-year armed conflict ended, “have not resulted in tangible progress in realizing victims’ rights” and therefore “there remains a real risk of recurrence.”

ACTIONS SOUGHT

• In their letter, the groups asked the OHCHR to renew its mandate as not doing so would “disincentivize adherence to international human rights law, and betray the many victims of grave human rights violations and abuses and their families who, in the absence of domestic accountability, look to the U.N. for justice, truth and reparation.”
• They also called on the international community to “demonstrate … that it was taking a principled position on human rights in Sri Lanka.” 

GLOBAL / REGIONAL

An appeal for the U.N. to be more proactive

As the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar continues to deteriorate, an international rights watchdog has called out the powerful U.N. Security Council (UNSC) for its alleged months of inaction despite mounting warnings from other U.N. officials as well as rights groups.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch director of Crisis Advocacy Akshaya Kumar urged the U.N. body to “mobilize to prevent further atrocities in Myanmar” as its silence on the matter “only deepens the sense that the council can’t rise to the moment when it matters.” 

Kumar is referring to mounting calls for the UNSC to enact reforms to address its problematic veto system which has hindered its ability to act swiftly on critical issues, particularly Myanmar.

These calls have only increased especially after the council struggled to pass resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine conflict precisely because of the veto powers held only by five countries: Russia, China, United States, United Kingdom, and France. 

FAST FACTS

• In the case of the Myanmar conflict, which stemmed from the 2021 coup by the junta, the UNSC has likewise underperformed. Apart from a 2022 resolution calling for an “immediate end” to the violence in Myanmar as well as the release of arbitrarily detained prisoners, and a 2023 statement similarly urging such actions, the council has not taken stronger measures.
• This is in part due to veto-wielding China and Russia, also permanent members of the Council, which has used its powers to block other resolutions that express concerns over the escalating humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. 
• Both countries are accused of supporting the junta diplomatically and militarily – though China as of late has been backing the rebel fighters
• who have cost the junta some shock victories in key areas.
• As the UNSC remains silent, the junta has ramped up attacks on civilians including airstrikes and blocking humanitarian aid. With millions now displaced by the conflict, other U.N. bodies like the U.N. Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have adopted stronger but non-binding resolutions imposing an embargo on arms for the junta.

ACTIONS SOUGHT

• Kumar urged the UNSC to engage with regional blocs like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but not to allow regional paralysis to affect its own actions. 
• It also asked the council to play a greater role in enforcing the International Court of Justice’s 2020 provisional measures to prevent genocidal acts against the ethnic Rohingya.