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

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