Statement

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. […]

In recent years, the Human Rights Council’s predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights, placed Nepal at the top of the list of perpetrators of forced disappearances. Following interventions and the establishment of a field office of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the country, disappearances have dropped significantly. Information received by […]

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) is gravely concerned by the insufficient action on the part of the Human Rights Council to address the growing problem of extra-judicial killings and . The ALRC has alerted the international community, including the Human Rights Council, concerning this growing and extremely grave situation on numerous occasions. For example, […]

Last week the Sri Lankan Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) successfully prosecuted a police sergeant who had solicited and accepted a bribe of Rs. 6,000/= (US$ 60.00). The news of this successful prosecution only evoked a sarcastic response from the public. In one newspaper a columnist referred to it as “catching […]

In recent months several dead bodies had been found in the streets of Manila with placards about their necks or bodies suggesting that they were criminals. When two corpses were found at the Manila’s downtown area in Sta. Cruz district, the placards suggests they were thieves and warning others, supposedly not to do the same, […]

On August 24, 2007, the Cambodian Government, the National Assembly, the Senate, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and its coalition partner FUNCINPEC, in unison decried a request for former King Sihanouk to be stripped of his immunity and face trial in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The request had been made to the National Assembly by […]

Cases of 547 persons killed and 396 persons disappeared during the period from January to June, 2007 according to a report published by three well-known civil society groups, the Civil Monitoring Mission, law Society and Trust and the Free Media Movement. The report was issued on 23rd August 2007 and states that it is not […]

Disappearances after arrest or forced disappearances have become a major political issue in the country. Enforced disappearances of persons following illegal arrest has been a common phenomenon in Pakistan since the military government took power in 1999. The situation became worse after the 9/11 incident in the United States and the government of General Musharraf […]