Asia – Page 9 – FoRB in Full

Members of the Dalit community celebrating of the festival of Holi in India.

A Uniform Civil Code: What is it and could it work in India today?

Posted on 28/09/202328/09/2023 by cswpress in Asia, India

A Uniform Civil Code (UCC) means that all citizens shall be governed by a common law, irrespective of their religious background. This includes personal laws that apply to marriage, divorce, inheritance, succession of property, maintenance and adoption. In India, the debate over a UCC for all citizens of India has been a contentious issue since the colonial era, and has remained so despite independence and the creation of the modern Indian state.

Every few years, the subject is brought to the fore and debated hotly by proponents and opponents before retreating to simmer in the background of public discourse.

In June 2023, public debate was reignited when the 22nd Law Commission of India solicited public opinion and comments from selected religious organisations on the subject of the UCC. Then, on 27 June Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong public pitch for the UCC for all citizens, garnering strong reactions from several opposition parties and religious groups.

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Ruins of Nan Lan Village in Myanmar. Credit: Free Burma Rangers.

The brutal ‘Four Cuts’ strategy is causing untold suffering in Myanmar, yet the international community remains slow to react

Posted on 04/09/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Burma

The ‘Four Cuts’ strategy, designed to sever insurgents’ supplies of food, funds, information and recruits, is an approach that has been used for decades by a series of military dictatorships in Myanmar/Burma. This devastating tactic is once again being employed, but in one of its bloodiest forms yet.

Breaking society

In a remarkable piece of reporting, in a country where foreign journalists have no official access to the true story of Myanmar’s civil war, Sky News recently released details of an undercover mission deep into southeastern Myanmar. Chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay encountered first-hand the Myanmar military regime’s devastating campaign of violence.

Ramsay and his team discovered shocking evidence of sustained attacks on civilian homes and infrastructure, including daily artillery and aerial bombardment as well as arson attacks, which are forcing people from their homes with over 1.5 million people currently displaced and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

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Chinese human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong and his wife Jin Bianling and daughter. Source: Twitter @jinbianling

‘Worse than physical torture’ – how China uses exit bans to inflict suffering on human rights defenders and their loved ones

Posted on 30/08/2023 by cswpress in Asia, China

‘Today, I received terrible news that our dream of reunion has once again been dashed.’

On 22 May 2023, Jin Bianling learnt that her husband Jiang Tianyong’s applications for a passport and a travel pass for Hong Kong and Macau had been turned down again. It had been ten years since the disbarred award-winning human rights lawyer was separated from his wife and daughter.

Being blocked from leaving China by the authorities has become common under Xi Jinping’s rule. Some have had their passport applications or renewals turned down, others have been stopped at the airport by police, such as the exiled activist Lin Shengliang’s 12-year-old daughter, while still others have had their boarding passes torn up by airport security guards. In the case of 80-year-old historian and writer Zhang Yihe, just a word from one of the government departments was enough to bar her from leaving China. She revealed on 8 June 2023 that she had become ‘a prisoner of the state’ as of the day before, unable to travel abroad.

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Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei. Credit: Radio Free Asia

China, stop targeting overseas human rights defenders

Posted on 23/08/2023 by cswpress in Asia, China

‘Three policemen have come. They want to take me away. I can’t send you messages anymore.’

Zhang Chunxiao recalled these as the last words her husband left her before his detention in Laos on Friday 28 July 2023.

Lu Siwei was taken by Lao police while trying to travel to Thailand, where he would board a flight to the United States to reunite with Zhang and their 14-year-old daughter.

Mr Lu is a well-known Chinese human rights lawyer, whose license was revoked by authorities in 2021 following years of representing clients deemed to be dissidents by the authorities.

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Joseph Colony in Lahore, Pakistan, which was infamously attacked in March 2013 after Sawan Masih was accused of blasphemy.

Pakistan needs to wake up to its blasphemy law crisis before it is too late

Posted on 24/07/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Pakistan

Last month, the desecration and burning of the Quran in Stockholm, Sweden sparked worldwide condemnation. Pakistan witnessed widespread protests and termed the act as blasphemous and deeply damaging to the sentiments of the Muslim community. A banned extremist group in the country, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, labelled it as an attack by Christians on Muslims and called on their followers to attack Christian settlements and kill Christians, while further vowing that they will make Pakistan a ‘hell for Christians’.

Last week, in the city of Sargodha, in Punjab province, a blasphemous poster was found near a local mosque. It prompted locals to gather in protest and demand that the police find a Christian from the nearby Christian settlement of Maryam Town. Since then, tensions in the area have been high with most of the 3,000-4,000 Christian families fleeing their homes due to fear of a mob related attacks.

Tensions over blasphemy have already had devastating consequences in Pakistan this year. On 6 May, a local cleric in the city of Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, was killed by a mob after he was accused of making a blasphemous reference during a political rally of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party. In February a mob in the city of Nankana Sahib, Punjab, stormed the police station and proceeded to lynch and kill a man accused of blasphemy.

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