David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch; Asia

SRINAGAR, India – Protest erupted Saturday in northern Indian-administered Kashmir, in a village, after the Indian army killed a young student in his twenties late Friday night.

The family of the victim alleged the boy had been taken out of his home by the soldiers and his body was found early Saturday.  But, the Indian army said the man was shot after he walked into an ambush it laid after getting specific information about movement of militants in the area.

Mohammad Shafi Rather, district magistrate the death occurred, told CNN that a murder case has been registered against the army unit, and an investigation has been ordered into the killing of the man, identified as Manzoor Ahmad Magray.

Television footage showed thousands of people marching in the streets on Saturday to voice their anger. Residents assembled and staged a protest shouting pro-freedom slogans as the villagers carried the man’s body to a highway and laid it there, blocking traffic.

It was only after the district magistrate promised an investigation; the villagers took the body to a graveyard for burial.

The Indian army issued a statement Saturday morning regretting the man’s death, but maintaining that “the troops had adhered to standard operating procedure (SOP) in the incident.”

The army’s statement said Magray had walked into the ambush along with another individual. After being challenged to surrender, the two started running away, at which point the troops opened fire.

“We deeply and sincerely express our heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family on this incident,” said Lt. Col. J.S. Brar, a Srinagar-based defense spokesman.

Relatives of Magray rejected the army’s statement that the young man had refused to stop and charged that he had been killed “in cold blood”.

“Torture marks were visible on the body of Magray. There was only one bullet wound in the lower part of the leg,” said Shabir Ahmad, a relative.

Security forces have been accused by human rights organizations of extrajudicial killings and acting with impunity.

“How can one not condemn the death of 21-year-old Manzoor at the hands of the Army late last night? Another needless death in a bloody Kashmir,” Mr. Abdullah posted on Twitter.

Separatist organizations too condemned the killing, saying that security forces had not changed their policy of “killing innocents in Kashmir”.

A long summer of pro-independence unrest was sparked in Indian administered Kashmir last year by the killing of an 18-year-old boy in police action in the capital, Srinagar.

“Over 120 innocent persons have been killed by the security forces during the last [few] months but action has not [been] taken [on] any person so far,” she said, adding that the way the government was responding to such cold-blooded murder reflected its insensitivity towards human tragedies.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Muslim-majority Kashmir, a Himalayan region split between India and Pakistan.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah condemned the killing and said it could have been avoided had his suggestions at the Unified Headquarters been taken seriously.

People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti regretted that while the count of the dead, comprising mostly youngsters, kept mounting, the government was busy deceiving people, filing mere FIRs.

For more information, please see:

CNN – Protest follows killing of man in Kashmir village – 5 February 2011

Voice of America News – Kashmiris Protest Army Shooting – 5 Fedruary 2011

The Hindu – Protests rock Handwara after killing of youth by Army; Omar upset – 5 February 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch; Asia

BAHAWALPUR CITY, Pakistan – Controlled by Muslim law, Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law has awarded a death sentence to Muhammad Rafiq in the Punjab province district court, presided by Judge Malik Riaz Ahmed.  Liberal politicians and human rights activists in Pakistan said the blasphemy law, which carries a maximum sentence of death, is often misused to settle personal scores and encourages Islamist extremism to persecute religious minorities.

Rafiq was convicted for committing blasphemy against the companions of Prophet Mohammed.

Police official Chaudhry Safdar said Rafiq was caught by local residents with a wooden slab around his neck that was inscribed with blasphemous remarks about the ”Sahaba Ikrams”.

Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was assassinated last month by a police guard who said he was angered by the politician’s opposition to the blasphemy law, leading to what correspondents say is a climate of fear with few people daring to even mention the legislation.

The religious right praised the bodyguards actions.

The blasphemy law has been at the center of a heated debate since a court in Punjab sentenced Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, to death last year for allegedly committing blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed.

Last month, an imam and his son were sentenced to life imprisonment by another court in Punjab after being convicted on blasphemy charges.

Caving in to pressure from religious hardliners not to change the law, the government has said it has no plans to amend the statute.

Human Rights Watch has called on the Pakistani government to release a teenager who has been charged under the country’s controversial blasphemy law.

Muhammad Samiullah, 17, is under arrest in the southern city of Karach, he is accused of blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad

“Pakistan has set the standard for intolerance when it comes to misusing blasphemy laws, but sending a schoolboy to jail for something he scribbled on an exam paper is truly appalling,” said Bede Sheppard, senior children’s rights researcher, at Human Rights Watch.

The alleged incident, reported by an invigilator, took place during high school final examinations, called intermediate exams, in Karachi’s North Nazimabad neighborhood.

Although the privately educated, 17-year-old Muslim apologized to the exam board, the apology was not accepted and the matter was reported to police.

Police refused to divulge the offending comment made in the exam out of fear that they would fall foul of the blasphemy law for repeating it.

The boy has been charged under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s penal code, which makes the death penalty mandatory for blasphemy. HRW said Pakistan has applied the blasphemy law to children before as well.

Hundreds of people have been charged under the law since it was added to the penal code in 1986 by the then military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

For more information, please see:

BBC –Pakistan urged to free schoolboy arrested for blasphemy – 2 February 2011

CNN –Pakistani teen jailed for blasphemy in school exam – 1 February 20122

OneIndia News – Man sentenced to death under blasphemy law in Pakistan – 3 February 2011

By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – As thousands of anti-government demonstrators poured onto Cairo’s streets to demand freedom in the past couple of days, China’s reaction was quick and simple: censor it.

Many state-controlled internet pages and news articles, including sina.com and sohu.com censored the word “Egypt.” When the word was typed in a search engine, it prompted a following response: “According to the laws in force, the results of your search cannot be given.” User comments regarding Egypt were also deleted from Internet forums.

The recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia are giving pause to many authoritarian regimes around the world and China is no exception. The ruling Communist Party is wary of issues of political reform, demands for democracy and disturbances to public order, even if all these events are taking place abroad. That is why Beijing is notorious for closely monitoring the 450 million Chinese Internet users to prevent organized dissent and democratic movement as well as mention of the issue of human rights.

“Of course, the government doesn’t want to see more comments on (the protests), because stability is what they want,” said Zhan Jian, a professor with the Media Department at the China Youth University for Political Sciences.

Censoring the Internet is not the only approach, however. Beijing is also trying to get out ahead of the discussion, framing the Egyptian protests in a few editorials and articles as a chaotic affair that embodies the pitfalls of trying to plant democracy in countries that are not quite ready for it — a line China’s leaders have long held.

An editorial in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper, said such uprisings will not bring true “democracy”, as defined by Westerners.

“As a general concept, democracy has been accepted by most people. But when it comes to political systems, the Western model is only one of a few options. It takes time and effort to apply democracy to different countries, and to do so without the turmoil of revolution,” the paper said Sunday.

Two days later, the same publication took a hit against the United States for supporting authoritarian governments in pursuit of its interests in the Middle East, saying that “contradicts their so-called democratic politics.”

China’s message to its own people is clear, said Jeremy Goldkorn, who runs Danwei.org, a website that tracks the media and Internet in China.

“The Chinese government’s take is that chaos is harmful for a developing country: ‘Look what happens when people go in the streets,'” he said. “The Global Times frames everything as ‘This is the danger of Western-style democracy.'”

For more information, please see:

AFT – China micro-blogging sites censor ‘Egypt’ – 29 January 2011

Forbes – China restricts reports on Egypt protests – 2 February 2011

IHT – Wary of Egypt Unrest, China Censors Web – 31 January 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity  Watch; Asia

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Sentenced to less than a year by a military tribunal, were three Indonesian soldiers, whom being caught on videotape, tortured two men in the country’s restless Papua Province, a remote site of sporadic fighting between separatist rebels and Jakarta. This was a grave disappointment for angry human rights activists who have denounced the legal proceedings as a farce for soldiers tried for human rights violations.

Presiding judge, Lt. Col. Adil Karo-Karo found the three soldiers guilty on charges of insubordination for failing to inform their superiors that they had detained and tortured the two Papuan civilians, Tunaliwor Kiwo and Telangga Gire, on May 27 last year.

The release of the video outraged activists and residents in the province and prompted an uncharacteristic admission of wrongdoing by the military, which has long been accused of brutality in Papua.

The 10-minutes of torture caught on video, taken on a cellphone, incited international horror when it was displayed on YouTube in October.

The video captured Tunaliwor being burned on the genitals with a smoldering stick, soldiers at a military post kicking and suffocating Mr. Kiwo, and soldiers holding a knife to the face of Mr. Gire. Mr. Kiwo said he was further tortured over a period of three days.

The harshest sentence, 10 months in jail, was received by the commander of a military checkpoint near Gurage village in Puncak Jaya district, where the torture took place, Sgt. Irwan Rizkiyanto.

“Although this court-martial has concluded, there is hope for a torture charge given the need to try these soldiers at an independent human rights tribunal,” Poengky told the Jakarta Globe.

The government ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture in 1999, but activists say this has remained a paper measure. “The government and the House of Representatives must amend the law on military tribunals, which has been a major obstacle in prosecuting military officials under civilian law.”

The Military Criminal Code and its Code of Conduct so far also do not recognize torture as one of the punishable crimes within military tribunal.

Elaine Pearson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, highlighted irregularities in the court-martial.

“There were six men depicted in the video but only three were brought to trial,” she told the Globe.

The pursuit of insubordination charges, rather than those of torture, in the second trial and the focus on a small number of low-level perpetrators appears to be aimed at denying the existence of widespread abuses in Papua, Ms. Pearson said.

“If they had been prosecuted for torture, then that requires complete evidence,” Colonel Priyatna said. “If we couldn’t come up with the evidence at the hearings, then our worry is they could have been freed.”

Local and international rights groups have long accused the Indonesian police and military of human rights violations in Papua despite Indonesia’s overall transition to democracy after the 1998 ouster of the dictator Suharto. Since then, Indonesia has become a democracy.

For more information, please see:

Jakarta Global – Anger at Light Sentence for Papua Torture – 25 January 2011

New York Times – Indonesian Military Trial Angers Activists – 24 January 2011

Voice of America News – Indonesian Soldiers Charged With Torture Sentences to Prison – 24 January 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch; Asia

MUMBAI, India – Thousands of government workers in India have continued to protest against the brutal killing of an official in the western state of Maharashtra. Yashwant Sonawane was burnt to death while investigating a fuel racket.

Mr. Sonawane had apparently tried to prevent a criminal gang from stealing fuel on the Nashik-Manmad highway some 200km (124 miles) from Mumbai, when he was attacked and burnt alive after being doused by kerosene.

The killing has drawn people’s attention to the issue of corruption, which has been a major concern in the country in recent months after a series of scams, says the BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi.

Nine people have been arrested in connection with Tuesday’s murder which has shocked people across India.

The government has blamed the so-called fuel mafia – criminals who steal petrol and mix it with kerosene before selling it, for the murder.

State police have turned their attention toward an oil adulteration mafia within Maharashtra today raiding 200 places and arresting around 180 people after an official was burnt alive while the Centre unveiled steps to reduce scope for diversion of subsidized kerosene. Additional Director General (Law & Order) K.P. Raghuvanshi said in Mumbai.

Hundreds of thousands of government officials are refusing to work in protest at the killing. They held a meeting in the state capital, Mumbai (Bombay), to mourn Mr. Sonawane and demanded that they be given adequate protection while carrying out their duties.

“We will attend office but not work,” GD Kulthe, secretary of the Maharashtra Gazetted Officers Mahasangh, told the BBC. “We are going to present a memorandum demanding strict action against all involved and better protection for government officers.”

The new Petroleum Minister S Jaipal Reddy unveiled steps including re-introduction of a chemical marker in kerosene in six months to eliminate the scope for adulteration of diesel using this subsidized fuel.  He also suggested that states use GPS-based vehicular tracking system for trucks transporting petrol and diesel to track the movement, any route deviations being taken or long stoppages.

Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil said the ‘might’ of the oil mafia is increasing day by day.

“Those who are involved will not be spared and will be given the highest punishment,” he said in Mumbai.

“We have not come across any politician’s name in our investigation. Allegations about NCP leaders being involved have not come to me. If I am given proof, I will take stern action,” Patil said.

Ravindra Dhongade, president of the Maharashtra Gazetted Officers Mahasangh, said, “We have not announced the protest as a strike but we are shunning work to register our protest against this gruesome act which has shaken the government employees.”

The government servants have demanded better protection, a comprehensive probe and strictest possible punishment for Sonawane’s killers.

“Such people should be hanged till death,” said a distraught Maharashtra Government employee. Some others went as far as saying that the killers should also be burnt alive because death sentence would not be enough for the people who have committed such a heinous crime.

More raids are expected in the days to come and the challenge is to maintain the momentum triggered by this mass protest.

Fore more information, please see:

BBC – Indian official Sonawane’s murder prompts mass protest – 27 January 2011

Deccan Chronice – Crackdown against ‘mighty’ oil mafia; 180 held – 27 January 2011

IBN Live – Govt employees protest Sonawane’s murder – 27 January 2011