Statement

One of the greatest legacies that Gautama Buddha left to the ascetics who followed his path was the requirement that they obtain their food and other needs in the form of alms from the people. The giving and receiving of alms is thus a profound act of adherence to his teachings and among the most […]

On 27 September 2006, eight days after the coup that has dragged Thailand back to the dark days of military intervention into all areas of political and social life, the country’s ambassador to the United Nations told the General Assembly that “we can well expect that one of the first tasks of the new civilian […]

ASIA: UN Human Rights Council statement in response to the Mr President, Madam High Commissioner, As Human Rights Defenders from Asia, we welcome the commitment and initiatives of you and your office for the protection of human rights in Asia, where domestic mechanisms continue to be inadequate. The lack of a regional human rights mechanism […]

Ten persons were killed by an angry mob on September 13, 2007 in Bihar state of India. A few days before, another person suspected for theft, was attacked by a mob in Bihar. In this incident, a police officer also participated by dragging the suspect around by his legs tied to the officer¡¦s motorcycle. On […]

Mr. Mian Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister of Pakistan, was abducted on September 10, 2007 from Islamabad airport and put on a PIA flight bound for Saudi Arabia. He has since been kept incommunicado and his whereabouts remain unknown. At the time of his abduction it was announced by the authorities in Saudi Arabia […]

We would like to bring to the notice of the Council the trend of attacks on religious leaders and places of worship in Sri Lanka, due to their involvement in protecting and assisting victims of ongoing hostilities between the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE). This violence is part […]

On 31 August 2007 the Court of Appeal in Thailand upheld the decision of a lower court that a group of persons had in 2002 been exercising their legal rights under the abrogated 1997 Constitution when they went to protest about a gas pipeline project on the border with Malaysia, leading to clashes with the […]

The head of a ruling coalition party in General Musharraf’s government has threatened lawyers and journalists with dire consequences if they misbehave in future or man handle government lawyers. He, on the other hand justified the attack on the Sindh High Court building by his workers on September 10, 2007 when the full bench of […]

The government of General Musharraf attacked the Sindh High Court building today (September 10, 2007), beating several lawyers and using abusive language against the judges on the bench which was conducting an inquiry into the carnage of May 12, 2007 in Karachi, where more than 50 persons were killed. The same day the attackers also […]

The Asian Human Rights Commission has been informed that courts in Burma’s largest city, Rangoon, have stopped operating. As has been widely reported, protests began in Burma after an increase in fuel prices of two to five times on August 15. Since August 20, all cases going to the ordinary courts around the city have […]

A group of 23 legal professionals and human rights activists from Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Cambodia, Bangladesh, China and Thailand gathered in Hong Kong from May 14 to 18, 2007 for the second consultation on the Asian Charter on the Rule of Law, on the topic, Executive Control & Corruption in […]

It has been three years since the prominent human rights defender Munir Said Thalib was poisoned on a flight to Amsterdam operated by the state airline Garuda Indonesia. Everyone boarding a plane would assume absolute safety, except for an unexpected crash, which is extremely rare nowadays. This was not the case for Munir, who decided […]

On September 4, a video documentary entitled “Solve or Unsolved?” was produced by the Reporter’s Notebook, a public affairs programme of a local television network, GMA. The documentary describes clearly the picture of how poorly the police investigators secure documents and keep records. The police blotters, the note books in which complaints and incident reports […]

This is the first of the AHRC statements under the heading ‘Reflections on pictures’. We encourage everyone to send your reflections about the photo and the related human rights incident to ahrchk@ahrchk.org. The AHRC also welcomes any thought-provoking pictures on human rights issues you may wish to share. (If you send photos, kindly give details, such as […]

On January 11, 2007 the President of Bangladesh proclaimed a State of Emergency following an upsurge in violence between rival political groups. Unfortunately, the State of Emergency has been prolonged for more than seven months even though this violence has subsided.    The State of Emergency has been accompanied by the Emergency Powers Ordinance-2007, which has […]

Recently Mahanama Tilakaratne, the Chairman of the Commission to Investigate Killings, Disappearances, Abductions and Unidentified Dead Bodies (the one-man commission) was quoted in the press as saying that 1,425 out of the 1,992 people thought to have disappeared since September 2006 to June 2007 had returned.  The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has earlier commented […]

A newly constructed bridge erected by a military organization collapsed in Karachi on September 1, 2007, taking the lives . There is still no confirmation of how many people and vehicles may be trapped inside the debris. The government of Pakistan, including the provincial government of Sindh and the concerned ministries had yet not constituted […]

1. On 15 August 2007, the Government of Myanmar increased the cost of all vehicle and generator fuels, over which it holds a monopoly, without prior announcement. As has been widely reported internationally, the diesel fuel prices doubled; compressed natural gas prices, used for some vehicles and cookers, increased five-fold. The increased prices had a […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 4, 2007 AL-021-2007 A Joint Written Statement submitted by the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), a non-governmental organization on the roster, Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a non-governmental organisation in general consultative status and Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, a NGO […]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  AS-214-2007 September 4, 2007 A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission SRI LANKA: Government treats disappearances as ‘normal occurrences’ Several Sri Lankan newspapers reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had disclosed in their bulletin that a further 34 persons had been abducted over the past three weeks. […]