David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

MANAMA, Bahrain – At least 50 people were wounded when soldiers opened fire on an apparently peaceful protest Friday.

Anti-government protesters streamed back into their former stronghold of Pearl Square in Bahrain’s capital Manama, witnesses said, after the army and riot police withdrew.

Pearl Square, which has become for Bahrain what Cairo’s Tahrir Square, was for Egypt.

The protesters were kissing the ground in joy and taking pictures of about 60 police vehicles leaving the area.

“We are victorious,” the protesters chanted.

“Down with the king, down with the Khalifas,” they cried, referring to the kingdom’s ruling family. Anger among the overwhelmingly Shia Muslim demonstrators towards the Sunni dynasty that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years is now virulent.

The protest has called for the dissolution of the 2002 constitution and the formation of a new panel to draw up another new constitution.

They have called for the release of political prisoners and an end to torture and prosecution of journalists and human rights activists.

“They have done nothing for us in the past except discriminate against us,” said one nurse, sobbing against a hospital gurney. “Now their new trick is to kill us.”

Later reports show that 60 to 80 people were taken to Salmaniya hospital after being hit by rubber bullets or inhaling teargas. A doctor said the hospital was full and did not have enough oxygen to deal with the casualties.

The crown prince was asked by the king to start a national dialogue “with all parties” to resolve the crisis in the island kingdom, where six have died and hundreds have been wounded since protests by the Shiite majority began five days ago.

Bahrain’s Shiite opposition on Saturday responded by rejecting any dialogue with the Sunni royal family until “tanks are off the streets” and the army stops “shooting at peaceful protesters.”

Khalil al-Marzook, a senior member of Al Wefaq opposition bloc, said the “atmosphere for dialogue,” led by the crown prince “is not right.”

Some doctors and medics on emergency medical teams were in tears as they tended to the wounded. X-rays showed bullets still lodged inside victims.

This is a war,” said Dr. Bassem Deif, an orthopedic surgeon examining people with bullet-shattered bones.

“Police attacking protesters here at hospital in Bahrain. Tear gas inside. Panic,” tweeted New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof.

“…They were shot to kill; they were not shot to break down their gathering.”

“We don’t care if they kill 5,000 of us,” a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain’s raging youth. “The regime must fall and we will make sure it does.”

“No to Sunni; no to Shia,” they cried at one point. “We are all Bahraini.”

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, and again urged his government to show restraint against “peaceful protesters,” the White House said.

“If the US walks away from us, this regime will continue to come for us,” said Ismail in the shadow of the graveyard. “There is no option but to press ahead. This is our moment.”

For more information, please see:

MSNBC News – Bahrain protesters reclaim central square – 19 February 2010

The Guardian – Bahrain protest: ‘The regime must fall, and we will make sure it does’ – 18 February 2010

International Business Times – More protest in Bahrain as religious fault line widen – 18 February 2010

Kim unlikely to be affected by Egyptian Revolution due to information control (Photo courtesy of AP)

By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea – As Hosni Mubarak stepped down last week after 30-year rule of Egypt, following the same fate of his Tunisian counterpart the previous month, the leaders of China and North Korea are wary of domestic upheaval.

Of course, some critics find it naive to hope that the fallout from dramatic events in the Middle East and North Africa can spill beyond the region to stir distant, repressed populations with no cultural or historical affinity.

This is especially so for countries like North Korea, where information is so tightly controlled that it will not likely be affected immediately by the evolving social network service that has played a pivotal role in Egypt’s popular revolution.

One of more effective way of disseminating information to North Korean people is rather old-fashioned. This week, South Korean activists hoisted helium balloons into the air and watched them drift into North Korea with a message attached: discard your leaders, just as the Egyptians did.

“The Egyptian people rose up in a revolution to topple a 30-year dictatorship,” said one of the leaflets. “The North Koreans too must revolt against a 60-year-old dictatorship.”

North Korea is known to have one of the worst human rights records. The strain of poverty and inefficient government in North Korea matches or exceeds that of Arab autocracies currently marred by street protests.

There is no sign of an organized opposition in North Korea, where most people do not have access to outside TV and radio, or the Internet. “They are just completely cut off from the outside world. They have their local system which is in no way physically connected to the Internet” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul.

According to the scholar, possession of a short-wave radio to listen to news from abroad carries a 5 to 10 year prison term. “Any publications, including publications from other communist countries, are off-limits for people,” he said.

This is a stark contrast to Egypt, where protesters used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize the uprisings. It is reported that North Korean state media have not reported events in Egypt, and it is doubtful that the leaflets of the South Korean activists, who also send short-wave radio broadcasts to the north, will reach or convince many people.

Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the Sejong Institute research center near Seoul, speculated that top heads in North Korean government were “definitely aware” of what is happening in Egypt. But a similar uprising is unlikely, he said.

“There are so many differences in terms of ideology, in terms of power structure, in terms of domestic and external relationships,” Paik said. “North Korea is basically an isolated, socialist regime, protected by a most reliable and most supportive big power, China.”

Estimated up to 2 million North Koreans are believed to have starved to death in the 1990s due to years of flooding, poor harvest and economic mismanagement.

Despite a lack of Internet access, a growing number of North Koreans are being exposed to modern information technology and South Korean pop culture through USB devices, according to Lankov.

“In the long run, it will make a tremendous change,” he said.

For more information, please see:

The Korea Times – Pyongyang, Beijing wary of change in Egypt – 16 February 2011

The Associated Press – Egypt revolt becomes global case study – 19 February 2011

Yonhap News – N. Korea not likely to be affected by Egyptian revolution due to information control: expert – 16 February 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Schools and businesses across Dhaka and other major cities shut down, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) aims to exploit the government’s ability to run the country effectively.

Bangladesh is one of Asia’s poorest nations; 150 million people populate the nation and nearly 40 percent of who live below the poverty line.

The BNPs nationwide strike has disrupted transport services as thousands of riot police were patrolling the streets of the capital and schools and businesses were shut on Monday.

The BNP, led by former prime minister and Hasina’s arch rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, is one of the two biggest political parties in Bangladesh along with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League.

Power has rotated between the two women for decades, and the BNP is expected to be a major contender in the next election, due by the end of 2013.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina took office in early 2009 and general elections are due in 2013. The BNP campaign piles pressure on a government struggling with discontent over high prices, high unemployment and lacking public services.

A homemade bomb reportedly exploded on the campus of a Dhaka university, injuring two people.

These recent actions are an attempt to destabilize the country according to the government of Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, whom denies the allegations.

The BNP hopes to exploit discontent over food inflation rising to double digits in recent months, and the crash in the stock market.

Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque, reporting from Dhaka, said 10,000 police officers were deployed across the country to deal with strikers who “want a total shut-down of the entire country”.

Monday’s strike counts as the third that the BNP has called since it suffered defeat in the December 2008 elections.

Small protests and marches were held across Dhaka chanting antigovernment slogans.

In the northwestern city of Rajshahi, opposition supporters threw stones at police, and officers responded with tear gas.

The riot police were armed with water cannons surrounding the governments head office.

Hasina’s government was widely applauded for its initial success in bringing down food and other commodity prices, and reducing diesel and fertilizer prices to help farmers, the mainstay of the country’s agrarian economy.

But soaring prices in global markets and corruption have partly driven costs higher, with food inflation hitting 11 percent in December; its highest level in three years, with the central bank warning it could go up further. The government does supply cheap rice to the poor, but this fails to meet demand.

Most of Hasina’s cabinet ministers are untainted by charges of personal corruption; they are blamed for supporting graft by junior officials.

Bangladesh ranks as one of the world’s most corrupt nations.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Strike cripples Bangladesh cities -7 February 2011

Reuters – What next for impoverished Bangladesh’s rotating PM? – 8 February 2011

Winnipeg Free Press – Bangladesh police raid opposition headquarters, fire tear gas after protests turn unruly – 6 February 2011

David L. Chaplin
Impunity Watch, Asia

BEIJING, China – A high-profile, blind Chinese grassroots lawyer and his wife were severely beaten after secretly filming a video documenting their house arrest.

“For five months the blind activist says he has lived under this 24 hour surveillance”

The Telegraph cites Human Rights Defenders, an NGO, as saying that an “inside source” had confirmed to them that Chen and his wife had been beaten senseless in punishment after authorities learned of the video’s existence. “They cannot move from bed, and they have not been allowed to go to hospital,” said a statement.

The blind, self-taught lawyer was sent to prison in 2006 after gaining international attention when he publicized claims that Chinese officials in the eastern province of Shandong were enforcing late-term abortions and sterilizations – in an attempt to control population growth.

The video is the first word from Chen Guangcheng since he was released from prison in September.

Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association, a Christian rights group, said “somebody has to fight for justice. He was very direct. One thing that really surprised me was his spirit of boldness, bravery, defiance to the regime itself.”

“Soft detention” is a common tactic used by the Chinese government to intimidate activists, with some essentially put under house arrest for years.

“I have come out of a small jail and walked into a bigger jail,” Chen says in the video, wearing black sunglasses and a black jacket inside his modest home. He says his house is watched by 22 people.

In the video, Chen says authorities have created a security zone that includes blocks on cell phone calls and intimidation of his family and neighbors.

Bob Fu of China Aid, which has offices in Texas, made an impassioned plea for Chen’s release. “Chen Guangcheng is a hero to many people around the world, a peaceful advocate for human rights and a defender of society’s most vulnerable, its women and children,” he said. The video is the first news of the Chinese advocate’s whereabouts in five months.

Chen says. “I cannot take even half a step out of my house. My wife is not allowed to leave either. Only my mother can go out and buy food to keep us going,” said the activist, who used to offer legal advice to local people.

“I can be jailed again at any time, it is very easy. They can say I am a criminal and just lock me up.”

Mr. Chen said he could be beaten at any time and that any such action would be ignored by the authorities. “They are trying to provoke me, if I dare to fight back they can accuse me of assault and jail me,” he said.

China Aid said it was releasing the video to show the persecution Mr. Chen is facing at the hands of the government.

“Mr. Chen is living in miserable conditions, cut off from all outside contact, and detained illegally in his home,” said Bob Fu, China Aid’s founder and president.

“We cannot believe that China is serious about the rule of law when Chen Guangcheng and other rights advocates are jailed, disappeared, or harassed.”

Mr. Chen has been held ever since he completed a four-year prison term in September.

The government does not allow any challenge to its authority and keeps a tight rein on the media. Beijing censors newspapers and television and has also invested considerable resources in trying to control what Chinese people see and read on the internet.

For more information, please see:

Time –  Chinese Video of Detained Lawyer Released – 10 February 2011

The Huffington Post – Chen Guangcheng, Chinese Civil Rights Activist, Beaten Over Secretly Recording House Arrest (Video) – 10 February 2011

BBC – China activist Chen Guangcheng ‘beaten’ – 10 February 2011