By: Jessica Ties Impunity Watch, Asia ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani journalist Sayed Saleem Shahzad was abducted in Islamabad Sunday night while driving from his home to a television station. On Tuesday, his body was discovered 155 miles outside of Islamabad and showed indications of torture.

A colleague of Shahzad, Zafar Mehmud Sheikh, described Shahzad as “an extremely critical writer” and stated that “his writings in Asia Times were not liked by many circles…he was always getting threats, direct life threats not from one side, from all sides.” Amnesty International is demanding that an investigation into the death of Shahzad include Pakistan’s security and intelligence agencies. Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has issued a statement denying its involvement in the killing of Shahzad. The ISI is known for its support of Islamist militants and has been accused of detaining political activists for months or years without formally charging them. Speculation of the ISI’s involvement in the killing of Shahzad arises partially from an article in the Asia Times in which Shahzad wrote that Pakistan had freed a detained Afghan Taliban commander. According to an email sent by Shahzad to Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan, he was summoned to the ISI office shortly after the article was published and was pressured to reveal his sources or retract his story. Shahzad refused to do either. In an email sent to a friend following the meeting at ISI headquarters, Shahzad stated that he was told by an official that a hit-list had been recovered from a recently arrested terrorist. The official then stated, “If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know.” While Shahzad interpreted the statement as a threat, the ISI maintains that the meeting “had nothing sinister about it” and that “it is part of the Wing’s mandate to remain in touch with the journalistic community…ISI also makes it a point to notify institutions and individuals alike of any threat warning received about them.” The ISI had reportedly delivered several warnings to Shahzad regarding his writings however, it is also possible that his death was the result of his writings provoking one of the various militant groups he was in contact with who felt that Shahzad had gained too much information. For more information, please see: Amnesty International –Pakistan must probe intelligence agencies as body of journalist is found – 31 May 2011 Associated Press of Pakistan – Salim Shahzad death source of concern for entire nation: ISI official – 1 June 2011 CNN – A Pakistani journalist is killed and many questions remain unanswered – 1 June 2011 MSNBC – Pakistan spy agency denies role in killing – 1 June 2011

By Greg Donaldson
Impunity Watch, Asia

BANGKOK, Thailand — Lerpong Wichaicommart, an American citizen, was arrested last Tuesday for defaming the Thai King through the use of his blog. Wichaicommart, who also goes by “Joe Gordon,” is accused of posting a link to the book “The King Never Smiles,” written by American journalist Paul M. Handley and published by Yale University Press. The book, which is banned in Thailand, takes a critical look at the actions of King Bhumibol during his reign.

Furthermore, in an interview with the New York Times, Tharit Pengdit, the director of Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation, said “He violated the law by writing articles and posted them on a website.”

Wichaicommart has been charged with lèse majesté, inciting unrest and disobedience of the law in public, and disseminating computer data which threatens national security. Lèse majesté prohibits anyone from defaming, insulting or threatening the king, queen, or crown prince. The debate about the recent aggressive enforcement of the law is expected to heat up this summer as parliamentary elections take place July 3.

Over twenty Department of Special Investigation officers arrested Wichaicommart at his house in Nakhon Ratchasima, confiscated his desktop computer and mobile phone, and transferred him to department headquarters in Bangkok for interrogation. Wichaicommart’s friends brought a land deed worth over 1.7 million baht as bail to release Wichaicommart but the court denied bail, citing that this was a serious case concerning national security, and that the accused might tamper with evidence reported the Thai-language prachatai.com news website.

Prior to his arrest, Wichaicommart taught English to children. Wichaicommart was born in Thailand but settled in Colorado more than thirty years ago. Wichaicommart never planned on returning to Thailand he said, but chose to come back to his hometown to receive treatment for an illness after the death of his wife.

BBC’s Rachel Harvey said free speech advocates claim the law is being misused to silence legitimate debate. Charges have also been brought against a Thai academic who has publically called for the reform of monarchy, and a prominent opposition politician who is a leader of the anti-government “red shirt” movement. A BBC correspondent said that approximately 2,000 web addresses are being blocked by state censors for containing links or references deemed offensive to the monarchy.

While the U.S. Embassy is still gathering information on the charges, an official from the embassy visited Wichaicommart in prison and told him the embassy will try to help him as much as possible.

For more information, please see:

BBC Asia-Pacific — Thailand arrests US citizen for ‘insult to monarchy’ 27 May, 2011

New York Times — American Arrested for Insulting Thai King 27 May, 2011

Asian Correspondent — American arrested in Thailand for posting link on blog [updated] 27 May, 2011

Prachatai — A Thai with American citizenship arrested for lèse majesté and denied bail 27 May, 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

ROHTAK, India – India’s Supreme Court says family members convicted of ‘honour killings’ should face the death penalty, going further than life sentences of old. Honour crimes are perpetrated by families against their very own family. These crimes are committed in the name of honor, pride, and tradition when dealing with marriage outside of one’s caste.

The male, female intermingling and marriage outside of caste and religion remains a taboo, not only for largely rural illiterate populations who have lived under a system of feudalism for centuries, but even for educated, well-off families in urban India.

In traditional Indian societies, women are often regarded as family property. Marriages are carefully arranged by parents and elders and relationships outside of caste are frowned upon.

Many victims incite their families by marrying outside their caste. Often “honour” crimes against them are endorsed, or even encouraged, by village-based caste councils.

A dominate issue remains the proximity to cities and access to education often promoting modern influences, creating a conflict between traditional beliefs and modern aspirations in the minds of the young.

The Supreme Court of India warned senior officials who failed to act against the offenders with threats that they too would be prosecuted. The Court asked state governments to suspend district magistrates and senior police officers for failing to act against these councils.

Despite India’s rapid modernization and growing cosmopolitanism, which has been driven by accelerated economic growth, discrimination against low-caste communities known as Dalits and minority faiths such as Muslims persists in this predominately Hindu country.

“It is time to stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation,” the court said.

India’s media highlighted the case of 22-year-old journalist Nirupama Pathak who allegedly was killed by her mother in their home in the eastern state of Jharkhand, after she was found to be pregnant by her lower caste boyfriend.

Cases of “honour killings” are regularly reported from the neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, but in the capital they are uncommon.

The All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has welcomed the Supreme Court judgment underscoring the gravity, barbaric and feudal nature of killings in the name of ‘honour.’

“The judgment exposes the failure of the government to take appropriate action and bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice. It has been a long-standing demand of AIDWA that such killings and crimes in the name of ‘honour’ be dealt with by a comprehensive stand-alone legislation,” said AIDWA.

The AIDWA has also demanded that the police be forced by the government to ensure that such crimes are properly investigated and criminals are apprehended.

On Sunday, two widows were bludgeoned to death in a Haryana village by a man who accused them of being in a lesbian relationship.

The 23-year-old killer was the nephew of one of the women. He was on parole, having served a sentence for rape.

He said he had killed the women to protect his “family’s honour”.

Eyewitnesses told police he killed his aunt and the other woman in full view of other villagers, after he accused them of being in a lesbian relationship.

The two bled to death as the villagers watched. Correspondents say such killings have often not been reported or widely discussed in the past because families usually accept the verdicts.

Oppositional voices to the Supreme Court’s decision say that the “[l]aw is for the society and not vice versa. Honour is one of the most important elements for a being,” Om Parkash Dhankar said.

He further stated, “There are adequate provisions of punishment in the Indian judicial system for every kind of crime. Making a separate provision for murder cases is uncalled for.”

He added that in a majority of cases, the family members kill their relatives in a fit of rage. “Even Rama killed Ravana for honour, because he was keeping a bad (an evil) eye on his wife,” he said.

The Justice department vehemently disagrees, stating that “[a]ll persons who are planning to perpetrate ‘honour’ killings should know that the gallows await them,” said Justices Markandeya Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra.

There are no reliable statistics on the number of “honour killings” in India, but most have reported that for every case that gets recorded, several others go unreported.

For more information, please see:

The Hindu – AIDWA demands law on on ‘honour’ killing – 10 May 2011

Times of India – Honour Killings: Khaps reject SC observations – 11 May 2011

Indian Express – Inter-caste marriages in national interest – 20 April 2011

India Reuters – Supreme Court cracks down on tradition of “honour killings” – 20 April 2011

BBC – Indian ‘honour’ killers should hang, Supreme Court says – 10 May 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

BEIJING, China – In Ai Weiwei, the globalized contemporary art world has found its first true star. His arrest has sparked world-wide condemnation, while his international schedule of exhibitions continues to unfold. In London, two are set to open next month, one at the Lisson Gallery, and another in the Somerset House courtyard.

The artist has disappeared into the Kafkaesque black hole of the Chinese legal system.

Can China just shrug off outrage about Ai and his fate?  Chinese has expressed indifference toward international opinion regarding Ai.

Ai has been missing since officials stopped him at Beijing airport on 3 April. Authorities say the 53-year-old artist is under investigation for economic crimes, but police have not notified his family of detention.

Several friends and colleagues have also disappeared, although his lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan returned home on Tuesday after several days’ absence. His friend Wen Tao, his driver and Cousin Zhang Jinsong, accountant Hu Mingfen and designer Liu Zhenggang remain missing.

Despite widespread expressions of concern from, among others, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not a word has been heard from him. His family, it was reported by the BBC, still don’t know where he is, whether he has been charged with an offense or even whether he has been formally arrested.

The social campaigns website Change.org has alleged Chinese hackers have launched a distributed denial-of-service attack on it, after it hosted a petition calling for the release of detained artist Ai Weiwei. The founder of the US-based site said the initial attacks had all been traced to IP addresses in China, although hackers often use several computers to disguise their whereabouts.

“We do not know the reason or exact source of these attacks,” said Ben Rattray, the founder of Change.org.

On April 14, a state-backed publication in Hong Kong, the Wen Wei Po newspaper, stated that Ai was being investigated for tax evasion (crimes of bigamy and putting obscene images on the Internet also were mentioned).

“Ai Weiwei has had quite a good attitude in co-operating with the investigation and has begun to confess,” the report continued. Since then, nothing more has been heard about that.

This and other publication are believed to be state motivated articles to pierce the strength of protest behind Ai’s disappearance.

Ai is 53 suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes, according to his wife. Two years ago, in August 2009, he was struck violently on the head by a Chinese policeman, one of several who burst into his hotel room in the early hours of the morning. He asked for identification, and that was the reply.

Dozens of rights lawyers and activists have been detained or lost contact with friends and relatives since February, when fears of contagion from Middle East and North Africa uprisings triggered a crackdown by China’s domestic security apparatus.

A Chinese rock musician, Zuoxiao Zuzhou, was briefly detained by police after voicing support for prominent artist and rights campaigner Ai Weiwei, a Hong Kong-based rights group said on Thursday.

During a gig at the 2011 Modern Sky Folk& Poetry Festival in eastern China, he displayed the words “Free Ai Weiwei” on a large screen, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said in a statement.

Critics say Hong Kong is under political pressure from Beijing to arrest the artists, potentially testing the limits of tolerance in the free-wheeling capitalist hub which was once a British colony but reverted to Chinese rule in 1997.

“The Ai Weiwei case, in essence, is not a human rights matter, nor is it about freedom of speech. No one is above the law. Just like in other countries, acts of violations of the law will be dealt with by the law,” the embassy wrote in the letter, carried in the English-language China Daily.

The China Daily said the letter had been written in response to an article in a British newspaper written by author Salman Rushdie calling on China to set Ai free.

For more information, please see:

Wall Street Journal – In Absentia, a Retrospective for Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei – 6 May 2011

Guardian.uk – Ai Weiwei campaign website ‘victim of Chinese hackers’ – 20 April 2011

Bloomberg – Ai Weiwei Won’t Be Intimidated by Chinese Thugs: Martin Gayford – 27 April 2011

Reuters – Chinese rocker reported detained after backing Ai Weiwei – 28 April 2011

Reuters – Pro-Ai graffiti in Hong Kong sparks warning by Chinese army – 29 April 2011

Reuters – China says Ai case nothing to do with freedom of expression – 29 April 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

SEOUL, North Korea – North Korean political prisoner camp is a place where public executions, death by starvation and torture are rampant.

Human Rights group, Amnesty International, conducted an investigation into this death camp. Amnesty held interviews with fifteen former inmates and prison guards, expressing their daily experiences in the camps and describing the lack of food, conditions of hard labor.

200,000 people are reported to held in these camps, which according to satellite imagery obtained by the Amnesty, are being built across central North Korea.

“North Korea can no longer deny the undeniable. For decades the authorities have refused to admit to the existence of mass political prison camps,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International Asia Pacific Director.

Satellite images show four of the six camps occupying huge areas of land and located in vast wilderness sites in South Pyongan, South Hamkyung and North Hamkyung provinces, and producing products ranging from soy bean paste and sweets to coal and cement.

As facilities expand common detainees include house prisoners accused of criticizing the leadership, those believed to be part of anti-government groups and even those caught listening to South Korean broadcasts.

“As North Korea seems to be moving towards a new leader in Kim Jong-un and a period of political instability, the big worry is that the prison camps appear to be growing in size.” reports Amnesty.

“Guilt-by-association” is reported to keep thousands confined to these camps.

Amnesty estimated that 40% of inmates die from malnutrition. And testimonials reveal that every former inmate at one camp had witnessed a public execution.

Conditions in these camps are very poor for children who are often tortured through inhumane living conditions.

One child was held for eight months in a “torture-cube-cell” so small it was impossible to stand or lie down.

Many witnesses say that other more common forms of torture include sleep deprivation, bamboo slivers under the fingernails, water-boarding and suspending prisoners whose feet and hands have been bound behind them.

One former inmate told Amnesty how he and his father were forced to witness the public execution of his mother and brother.

A former prison guard expressed how inmates would eat snakes, rats and pig feed for survival. In particular a former inmate told how she had picked, cleaned and eaten corn kernels from cow dung.

Education was limited or non-existent inside these camps; the youth are frequently worked until they collapse.

Aidan Foster-Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at Leeds University in England, said: “It is difficult to get hard data (on North Korea) for obvious reasons, and it could be that the numbers of people in the camps are growing. What may be happening is that as part of the changing political situation the government has conducted a purge of people opposed to the succession (of leader Kim Jong ll by his son Kim Jong-un).”

In its most recent human rights report on North Korea, the U.S. State Department describes the country’s human rights record as “deplorable.”

Amnesty International believes an estimated 40% of inmates at Yodok, the prison camp, died from malnutrition between 1999 and 2001.

“These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for last 60 years are ignored.”

“Hundreds of thousands of people exist with virtually no rights, treated essentially as slaves, in some of the worst circumstances we’ve documented in the last 50 years,” said Sam Zarifi.

Amnesty International is urging North Korea to close its prison camps and release political prisoners.

For more  information, please see:

CNN – Report: Torture, starvation rife in North Korea political prisons – 4 May 2011

Amnesty International – Images reveal scale of North Korean political prison camps – 3 May 2011

Arirang – Korea for the World, The World for Korea – 4 May 2011

Bangladesh News – North Korea jail camps ‘growing’ – 4 May 2011