News Story: Pakistan summons Afghan envoy over diplomat's "detention"

ISLAMABAD, May 17 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan on Wednesday summoned Afghan envoy and lodged protest over the "detention" of two Pakistani embassy diplomats in Kabul, the foreign ministry said.

Pakistani sources in Kabul earlier told local media in Islamabad that the two embassy members were "forcibly" taken by Afghan security officials when they had gone for shopping. Both were later released.

"The Afghan Deputy Head of Mission (DHM) was summoned to the Foreign Office to lodge Pakistan's strong protest over the incident in which two diplomatic officials in Kabul were detained today, reportedly by Afghan security agencies," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: Cambodia Slams Critics, Claiming They're Part of US-funded Regime-change Plot

Sokummono Khan

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Cambodia's foreign ministry has issued a broad rebuttal to accusations of human rights abuses and political repression that have dogged the rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen for decades.

Titled "To Tell the Truth," the report released Tuesday describes the allegations of abuses and repression as a campaign of misinformation spread by a conspiracy of foreign powers led by the United States.

Local and international investigators have documented many of the abuses, which Cambodia claims are a "distortion of facts, lies and amplification of minor issues" aimed at discrediting the government while rallying NGOs and the opposition.

"Cambodia has been submerged, months after months, years after years, by reports from opposition media, biased NGOs and misinformed institutions, which twisted the historical facts and events in an attempt to portray a negative image of Cambodia and to lay the blame on the government," the report said.

News Story: 1,883 prisoners released in Myanmar to greet new year Thingyan festival

YANGON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A total of 1,883 prisoners were released on Wednesday ahead of Myanmar new year water festival which is to start on Thursday, Myanmar State Counselor Office announced.

The 1,883 prisoners, including 233 women, were freed from prisons across the nation to enable them enjoy cut of prison terms on new year occasion.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Global parliaments, lawmakers want to visit De Lima

Leila de Lima (Image: Wiki Commons)

By Patricia Lourdes Viray

MANILA, Philippines — A global organization of national parliaments and lawmakers want to visit Sen. Leila de Lima in jail and examine her case.

On the closing day of its assembly in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) called for a fact-finding mission by the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians to the Philippines.

The organization has expressed concern over the detention of De Lima for her alleged involvement in the proliferation of the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

The group wishes to receive further details on the prison conditions of De Lima in the Philippine National Police custodial center.

"The Senator has been a vocal critic of President Duterte, leading a series of investigations into alleged extra judicial killings when he was Mayor of Davao city and initiating an inquiry into the alleged summary killings of thousands of alleged drug users and dealers since he took office in June 2016 and waged his war on drugs," the organization said in a statement.

In its resolution, the IPU said that the accusations against De Lima do not make sense given that she has been the one taking action against the alleged drug trafficking in the national penitentiary.

The organization noted that De Lima is being targeted due to her outspoken criticism of the Duterte administration's policies on human rights.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Report: Freedom House - Chinese Communists Intensifying Religious Persecution

Religion in China as of 2015 (Click Image to Enlarge)

The Chinese Communist Party has "intensified" its persecution of religious practitioners in recent years under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, and the ramifications are being felt well beyond the boundaries of religious policy, according to the U.S.-based Freedom House nonprofit.

In a new report released Tuesday, the group said increased oppression from the Chinese government is creating a thriving "black market" for believers to practice their religion outside of the official institutions.

"The party's rigid constraints render it impossible for state-sanctioned institutions to meet the growing demand for religion in Chinese society," said Senior Research Analyst Sarah Cook, the author of the report.

According to the article, Chinese authorities regularly jail believers for long periods, or engage in sustained violence against certain communities to exert control over illicit religious practices. At least 100 million Chinese, or about one third of the country's population, face "high" or "very high" persecution levels, the report said.

While the government is stepping up its religious restrictions with electronic surveillance at places of worship and imprisonment of those who share religious content on social media, Cook said the efforts illustrate "a remarkable failure," as an increasing number of people are worshipping underground and using tools to circumvent internet censorship.

"It reflects the party's difficulty in confronting citizens who are willing to make sacrifices for higher principles. From this perspective, it would appear that in the long-term battle for China's spirit, an unreformed Communist Party will ultimately lose," she said.

The report shows that China's persecution of religious believers stretches across various faiths, and includes Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Falon Gong practitioners, who face severe human rights violations from the Chinese Communist Party.

This story first appeared on Voice of America & is reposted here with permission.

News Story: Ex-detainees, Officials Say Torture Doesn’t Work

Former Guantanamo Bay detainees Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi on Wednesday described their ordeals of ill-treatment and abuse at the facility as US President Donald Trump is asking for recommendations on whether torture works.

It was only a matter of weeks before Benchellali, a Frenchman detained first at Kandahar in Afghanistan, cracked and confessed to confess to being a member of the al-Qaida network.

The only problem, he said, was that it was a lie.

"Because I was afraid, because I hurt, and because I told myself, when this is all worked out, I'll tell the truth.

But for now, better to tell them what they want to hear," he said.

Trump is asking for recommendations on whether torture works, if secret CIA black sites should be used again to interrogate suspects and whether the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay should not only stay open, but should accept future detainees, according to a draft executive order that signals sweeping changes to U.S. interrogation and detention policy.

The Associated Press and other news organizations obtained a copy.

The draft directive, which the White House said was not official, would reverse former US President Barack Obama's order to close the Guantanamo Bay facility - a place Trump has said he wants to fill "with bad dudes."

Trump, who has pushed for tougher interrogation techniques, said he would consult with new Defence Secretary James Mattis and CIA director Mike Pompeo before authorizing any new policy.

But he said he had asked top intelligence officials: "Does torture work? And the answer was 'Yes, absolutely.'"

Read the full story at TOLOnews

News Report: China Tightens Tibetan Borders as Dalai Lama Launches India Teaching Event

Tenzin: The 14th Dalai Lama
(Image: Wiki Commons)

Yeshi Dorje

China imposed new border restrictions in Tibetan border regions Sunday, citing risks from terrorism, but the new measures also come as Tibetan's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, begins a popular Buddhist teaching event in India.

The Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper reported Monday that the new measure is aimed at combating the risk of ‘terrorism’ and ‘separatism’ in the region. Critics say authorities frequently invoke such fears when imposing new security restrictions on Tibetans, and Tibetan exile news media say there are signs the measures are aimed more at preventing Tibetans from traveling than improving security.

The new regulation was first announced in December by Tibet Daily, an official Tibetan language news outlet, which said it would take effect on January 1, 2017; however, the Tibetan language articles did not use the word terrorism as reason to make the restriction.

Editorial: How Thailand’s Military Junta Tried to ‘Adjust My Attitude’ in Detention

By Pravit Rojanaphruk

Pravit Rojanaphruk recounts his recent “attitude adjustment” under the country’s ruling junta.

“Attitude adjustment” is a method employed by Thailand’s ruling military junta to neutralize its critics and opponents. Those “invited” for attitude adjustment are detained without charge and interrogated, with settings ranging from vacation- to detention-like facilities. Treatment ranges from effusive politeness to terse language; from being kept in a military camp where you can walk around and play sports to being detained in a small room with no vista to the world, depending on your learning curve toward the attitude adjustment process.

These are some of the things I remember best during my second round of attitude adjustment under the military junta, also known as the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). My crime was tweeting and posting comments questioning the legitimacy of the NCPO and its leader General Prayut Chan-o-cha, who is also prime minister, for which I was detained from September 13 to 15, 2015.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: More Foreigners Kidnapped in Southern Philippines

By Luke Hunt

Law and order continues to be a problem in the country’s south.

As Philippine president Benigno Aquino III begins to pack his bags for retirement and considers his legacy, one outstanding issue remains unresolved: a lasting solution to the civil conflict and the law and order mess it has created in the country’s troubled south.

The latest kidnapping of three foreigners and a Filipina by the Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamist group, was a case in point.

Two Japanese tourists had bravely attempted to the thwart the kidnappings, according to reports. They did not succeed and police believe Canadians John Ridsel, 68, and Robert Hall, 50, and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad, 56, were targeted as opposed to being taken at random.

The Filipina, identified as Teresita Flor, 40, was understood to be the partner of one of the Canadians. They were abducted late Monday from the Holiday Oceanview Samal resort on Samal Island, which was managed by Sekkingstad.

Abductions have become commonplace over the past 15-plus years, ever since Abu Sayyaf leader Galib Andang, also known as Commander Robot – yes, that was his realnom du guerre – ordered the kidnapping of foreign tourists from the deluded safety of holiday resorts in nearby East Malaysia.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: China’s Political Firewall – Mass Arrest of Lawyers

By Andrew Anderson

For the international community it is business as usual, even as China detains hundreds of human rights defenders.

One month ago Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his most coordinated effort yet to extinguish the human rights movement in China. In July, more than 200 human rights defenders (HRDs) were detained, including more than 100 human rights lawyers. All are key figures in the movement for justice, transparency and accountability in China. They are well-organized, well-educated and well-used to intimidation by the authorities.

Xi Jinping’s government has imprisoned leading lawyers, journalists, activists and academics – those with the reach and authority to influence minds – for defending the rights of others and exposing injustice. NGOs have also been targeted, especially those working on LGBT, HIV/AIDs, women’s rights, and labor rights issues, because they link and empower people across provinces and establish relationships with foreign NGOs and funders, who provide funding they cannot get in China.

In addition to mass detentions, government media outlets have launched a campaign vilifying the lawyers who remain in custody. Lawyer Wang Yu was labeled a “shrew” and a “hypocritical and false lawyer.” On July 9 she was taken from her home after her apartment door was pried open in the early hours of the morning and her electricity and internet connection cut. Her husband was also detained, as was her 16-year-old son, who was stopped at the airport as he was boarding a flight to Australia to continue his schooling. Another lawyer, and director of a law firm at which a number of the detained worked, Zhou Shifeng, was shown on national television confessing to “unlawful activities (which) have an impact on social stability.” Pre-trial televised confessions are a tactic to humiliate the human rights defenders and isolate them from their networks. Journalist Gao Yu was paraded on television before her trial in order to “confess her crimes.” At her trial, she retracted this confession, saying it was forced. She was subsequently sentenced to seven years. Now, police have promised leniency if she re-confesses.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Uyghur Terrorism - A Misnomer?

By Angela Poh

Conflating domestic protest with international terrorism is unhelpful.

Thailand’s recent deportation to China of more than 100 Uyghurs – the majority ethnic group in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region – drew a rebuke from the United Nations. It also prompted a strong public reaction within Turkey, which led to the Turkish government reiterating its determination to receive Turkic-speaking Uyghurs fleeing China.

In response, Beijing published a report on home-grown terrorism, claiming that police in China’s Yunnan Province have shot dead “four violent terrorists” and arrested 553 “extremists” attempting to leave China for foreign warzones like Syria and Iraq since 2014. While not making direct reference to the Xinjiang Uyghurs, the subtext to such pronouncements is that the Uyghurs attempting to leave China have strong links with global terrorism, and pose a genuine security threat.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Patience, Not Preemption, on the Korean Peninsula

By Mitchell Lerner

"The history of North Korea suggests that its leadership acts with greatest vehemence when it is internally weak, as a way to justify its economic failures by blaming a foreign conspiracy..."

Recently, Republican Senator James Inhofe, a ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, weighed in on the growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula by endorsing a preemptive strike against North Korea.

“We should be prepared to do it right now,’’ he declared. “In terms of the capability we have out there with the F-22s and the battleships … a preemptive strike from something like that would get their attention.”

Inhofe is well known for his hard line and sometimes controversial positions, so it might be easy to dismiss his remarks if it were not for the fact that other voices, including some from more traditionally restrained sources, have started making similar arguments. Jeremi Suri, one of America’s leading diplomatic historians (and, in the interests of full disclosure, one of my closest friends), recently joined this chorus, writing in a New York Times op-ed, entitled “Bomb North Korea, Before it’s Too Late,” that the U.S. should preemptively destroy a North Korean missile before it could be tested, a step he described as an act of self defense against a “clear and present danger.”

Public opinion seems generally critical of the idea, but there is a growing minority that is clearly warming to the proposition. An Ohio newspaper recently asked its online readers if they believed the U.S. should “launch a preemptive strike” against the DPRK; 31% of the over 1,300 respondents replied in the affirmative.

It is understandable that a growing number of Americans are frustrated with what seems like a never-ending stream of Northern belligerence, and with the seeming inability of American policymakers to deter the reclusive state. And yet, the argument for preemption rests on a flawed understanding of North Korea that makes this option not only ill-advised, but also potentially disastrous.

Read the full 3 page story at The Diplomat

News Story: (China) Writer Held Over Japan Comments

Jiao Guobiao (Wiki Info)

Chinese police detain a former journalism professor for posting his views on disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Authorities in the Chinese capital have detained outspoken writer and former journalism professor Jiao Guobiao on subversion charges after he posted online commentaries about the disputed islands known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, overseas rights groups said.

Jiao Guobiao was detained on Sept. 12 by Beijing police on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power" after he published his views on the dispute over the unoccupied Diaoyu islands, which have sparked a wave of anti-Japanese protests across China in recent days, according to the China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group.

Meanwhile, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on the Chinese government to release Jiao, who lost his job as a journalism professor at the prestigious Peking University after he criticized the powerful but secretive central propaganda department of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

"We are deeply disturbed to learn that Jiao Guobiao has been detained and call on Beijing's public security bureau to release him immediately," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said in a statement published on the group's website. 

"China's defense of its claim to the ... islands is a matter of public interest, and journalists in China should be allowed to comment on it freely," Simon said.

Zhang Yu, of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, said he had read Jiao's posts before he was detained.

"They were very moving posts, which talked about the Diaoyu islands and political reform," Zhang said. "The articles were very short, just a few lines each."

"Now, they have been judged to be tantamount to incitement to subversion," he said. "Whatever you think about that, it's terrible that a person can be criminalized just for what they say."

In one of the posts, Jiao takes issue with a recent comment from the foreign ministry spokesperson, saying that Beijing's claims that China will no longer be humiliated are false.

"It is the lot of the Chinese people to be humiliated," he wrote. "If they were bullied by outsiders in the past, now they are being bullied by scoundrels from their own land."

Calls to Jiao's cell phone on Tuesday met with a recorded message saying the phone's service had been terminated.

Freedom of speech

Beijing-based rights lawyer Mo Zhixu said he had heard from Jiao's relatives that the former journalism professor had been criminally detained.

"The person who told me this is very reliable, and has been in touch with Jiao Guobiao's wife," Mo said. "I also know that they had a guard on his house on Sept. 12 and 13, the time that he was arrested."

Mo said he regretted that the authorities had taken such measures against someone for something they wrote. 

The Hong Kong chapter of Chinese Independent PEN also called for Jiao's release.

"Jiao Guobiao's case shows very clearly that freedom of speech in China is the worst it has ever been," said Pan Jiawei, director of the group's Hong Kong office.

In 2004, Jiao launched a blistering attack on the Communist Party's propaganda officials, saying they were effectively lending a helping hand to evildoers and corrupt officials by muzzling the country's news organizations.

Jiao, who made his views known in an online article titled "Crusade against the Propaganda Department," later lost his associate professorship at Peking University's Center for Media and Communications Studies.

China's propaganda officials "suppress everything in the name of stability" and muzzle news reporting at every turn, the article said.

He accused the department of stifling the media and of taking away the right of the people to know what is going on.

Chinese reporters say they are caught between top-down directives from Party propaganda bureaus and the vested interests of local corrupt officials and criminal organizations.

According to a report last year by the CPJ, 27 Chinese journalists were behind bars on Dec. 1, 2011.

Reported by Grace Kei Lai-see for RFA's Cantonese service and by Xin Yu for the Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Copyright © 1998-2011, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. http://www.rfa.org.

Editorial: Backsliding in Burma and Malaysia?

By Luke Hunt

Malaysia and Burma remain poles apart in most aspects of life—religion, ethnicity, and politics—but where they seem more akin in recent times has been in trying to improve relations with the West while introducing much needed reforms at home.

Those reforms have been welcomed by the people of both countries and the international community but it remains a difficult process with Malaysia again raising fears of a revival of media oppression and Burma living up to its past with the detention of  political activists.

 Read the full story at The Diplomat