AHRC News

I am writing this to convey some basic concerns of a group of lawyers, judges and human rights defenders who met at Hong Kong from the 17th to the 21st September to discuss the impact of delays in the...

It was in August of this year that Indonesia’s draft revised Penal Code Bill was to be submitted to the President for parliamentary debate. Predictably, this did not take place. No one knows  w...

At the United Nations Human Rights Council several European Union countries attempted to assist Sri Lanka out of its present serious crisis by suggesting human rights monitoring by the United Nations ...

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 giv...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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 incommunica...

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 ongoin...

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...

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, ...

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 cond...

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 i...

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...

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 woul...

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 descri...

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 t...

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 prolonge...

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 sayin...

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 trappe...