Pakistan's Persecuted Minority
September 30, 2009, Asia Sentinel, Hong Kong
Last month Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari observed the country's National Minority Day by calling minority groups "a sacred trust for Pakistan" and lamenting the 'extremist elements' responsible for their insecurity in the country. But his words fell flat for Pakistan's Ahmadis, for whom a fresh surge of hostile incidents, some linked to the state itself, is capping decades of persecution.
A Thankless Task
As a truth commission secretary MCM Iqbal helped gathered evidence on thousands of forced disappearances in Sri Lanka, only to see it disappear itself
August 22, 2009, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
August 27, Sri Lanka Guardian, Sri Lanka
As President Mahinda Rajapaksa speaks of ushering Sri Lankans into a new era of peace, a slight, bespectacled man in his sixties watches him from across an ocean with the weariness of a man who has tried and failed to call his bluff. MCM Iqbal was secretary to two of Sri Lanka’s ‘truth commissions’, presidential commissions of inquiry into the 30,000 or more forced disappearances that took place in the late eighties and early nineties in the south, during a dirty war that many believe has yet to run its course.
In Sri Lanka, victims of police torture are harassed, intimidated and even killed for speaking out agains their tormentors. But a new witness protection bill may make walking the legal path a little safer.
July 5, 2009, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Caught on a rare tea break, Father Nandana Manatunga bats at the 'tsunami' flies that whirl around his head and ponders a Sri Lankan newpaper headline: "Witness protection bill boost to human rights". You get the feeling he'd like to be batting at something - or someone - else.
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'My son was murdered and the police did nothing'
September 8, 2009, Guardian Weekly, UK
Inside Burma
June 26, 2009, Guardian Weekly, UK
Fred Taino is a Burmese-speaking human rights defender who regularly visits Burma. Following a recent trip to Burma's biggest city, Yangon, he describes the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, how locals are fighting repression, human rights abuses and how tourists have deserted the country.
'It was a whole traumatised society'
May 21, 2009, Guardian Weekly, UK
International criminal lawyer Carla Ferstman, who works for human rights organisation Redress, talks about her experiences of seeking justice for victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as well as the rights of torture victims across the world, and why she prefers not to talk about work at weddings.
Can Sri Lanka's Civil Society Be Rebuilt?
Murders and assaults allegedly perpetrated by an increasingly authoritarian government make it look unlikely.
May 20, 2009, Asia Sentinel, Hong Kong
With the rebel Tamil Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran finally dead and the military declaring total victory after 26 years of war, Sri Lanka's traumatized citizens are hoping that their society can finally be regenerated. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in a Tuesday speech in Parliament, promised the formerly Tiger-controlled areas would be reconstructed and that the rights of Tamils would be respected and protected.
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Man on a mission for women's justice
Nasir Aslam Zahid has led the struggle for equal rights in Pakistan, where women remain in chains. But the former judge vows to fight on.
March 8, 2009, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
For a free man, Nasir Aslam Zahid spends a lot of time in jail. “It does sometimes baffle callers,” says the Pakistani in clipped, wry tones, at the Asian Legal Resources Centre in Hong Kong. “Most of my phone calls these days are taken from prison.” The former chief justice runs LAO, a legal aid organization based out of Central Prison Karachi, which helps women and children incarcerated across his home province, Sindh.
Sri Lanka's civilian tragedy
February 4, 2009, Guardian Weekly, UK
Sri Lanka's government is winning its 25-year-long war against rebel group the Tamil Tigers, according to the country's president, Mahinda Rajapaska. But at what cost to its human rights credentials, asks Father Peter Nayanamithra, a Catholic priest who regularly crosses the border into the conflict zone and has seen with his own eyes the indiscriminate bombing and persecution that takes place there. (Under a pen name)
Hope for Sri Lanka's child victims
January 1, 2009, Guardian Weekly, UK
Torture has become a familiar feature of criminal investigations in Sri Lanka, where children as young as seven have experienced abuse under interrogation. At a small human rights unit in Kandy city, a Catholic priest has created a vital support system for the victims of police brutality. Father Nandana Manatunga relates the – often tragic – cases he has tried to help with.
Election pledges a matter of life or death for inmates
October 22, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
There will be little sleep tonight for the inmates of Adiala jail’s death cells, but though the rooms in Pakistan’s notorious northern prison are concrete, cold and small –they measure about eight by five feet – discomfort is currently a side issue. This is because for the first time in years the men and women on Pakistan’s death rows have been given some hope about their futures. Continue...
Losing Ground
150,000 Cambodians are at risk of eviction from their homes as developers exploit a corrupt system which fails to protect property rights
October 7, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
In June 1975 waves of black-clad guerilla fighters entered Phnom Penh and emptied it – by persuasion, coercion and violence – in just a few days. The Khmer Rouge north had beaten the south, and as a first step, more than two million bewildered people were banished from the city and sent to live in the countryside. Today, facing the prospect of its first skyscraper, a rash of Special Economic Zones and numerous foreign-backed developments, Cambodia is boasting of a new era. Yet some things haven’t changed.
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Courage under Fire
A Catholic priest is helping to give hope to young human rights victims
July 7, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
With a rakish side parting and a smile behind his eyes, it’s hard to imagine Father Nandana Manatunga at work, not because his job involves kids – for that he seems well suited – but because of the situations his wards come to him in. Dancing eyes seem at odds with the grim task of torture rehabilitation.
A Judge of Character
Jo Baker meets a lawyer who backed Pakistan’s rebel judiciary, and lost more than his freedom
May 18, 2008, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
People have given up all kinds of things for their country, but Pakistani lawyer Muneer Malik’s forfeit was both brutal and peculiar. The more predictable sacrifices had already been made – his family was harassed, his colleagues beaten and his freedom temporarily taken away – but in solitary confinement in Pakistan’s notorious Attock Fort last November, Malik’s jailers chose to deprive him of one more thing: working kidneys.
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Safe as houses
Architect Cameron Sinclair is on a mission to save the world, one design at a time
June 29, 2007, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
Cameron Sinclair is a man who values his sleep. As he juggles a new baby, a travel schedule so frenetic he has a ‘Where is Cameron’ web page, and a battle against shoddy housing worldwide, he’s seen sleep
go from being an enjoyable daycapper to quite the luxury. “In the next two generations
we’re going to double the number of buildings on Earth,” the 33-year-old says. “One in three people at that time will be living in slum settlements."
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AHRC:
March 13, 2009, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
For a government that came into power promising to champion the rights of lawyers and restore the independence of the judiciary, the cabinet of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has done a dramatic about-turn.
The State of Human Rights in Eleven Nations
2008, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
Pakistan (P180): Chapters One through Four. The Right to Life, Religious Freedom and Movement, The Rights of Women, Honour Killing and the Jirga, and Chapter Seven, Children's Rights.
On July 2, 2008, in a heartening step, the federal cabinet of Pakistan announced that it would commute current death sentences into life imprisonment, suggesting that debates on abolition may be possible in the coming year. However the party has been very slow to start implementing the decision through legislation; at least four inmates have been hanged in the period since and black warrants continue to be served.
Jirga courts and the extra-judicial murders they commit
November 3, 2008, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
In March 2008 a 17-year-old girl in Sindh province was pressured by her uncle to convince her parents to hand over acres of farm land. On her refusal, the uncle and his accomplices brought in her father and made him watch as the girl was mauled by a pack of dogs and then shot.
Getting away with murder in Pakistan
October 24, 2008, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
Several months ago eight women, three of them minors, were buried alive in Balochistan, reportedly by the same men. Those responsible have close ties to the provincial government and to the police, and investigations into the case have gone through a Kafkan array of delays and setbacks.