Dissident Li Hong, healthy prior to incarceration in 2007, suddenly fell ill and died last week at the age of 52. (Photo Courtesy of The Epoch Times)

By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – Chinese dissident writer Li Hong passed away on December 31, 2010 at the age of 52. Mr. Li Hong was the founding editor of the popular Zhejiang News and also former chief-editor of the Chinese literary and news website Aegean Sea. At the time of his death, he was in his hospital bed, surrounded by a number of domestic security police.

Following Li’s death, Chinese authorities prevented other dissidents and human rights activists from attending his funeral, and also censored news of his death. This is due to Li’s long history of activism, which the communist government regarded to be “dangerous.”

Another dissident writer Chen Shuqing reported to The Epoch Times that police contacted Chen on the evening of Li’s death and told him not to leave Hangzhou for Ningbo. Chen, fearing if something had happened to Li in Ningbo, asked the police if anything was wrong with Li, but did not hear anything back.

“Quite a few others in Hangzhou have also received such warnings not to go to Ningbo,” Chen said.

Li Hong, born in Zhang Jianhong, was renowned for his writing career, which included poetry and plays. Li was charged in January 2007 with “inciting subversion against the state” and tried off the record in the Ningbo Municipal Intermediate Court. Li refused to plead guilty on any of his charge throughout the trial.

According Li Jiangiang, Li Hong’s lawyer, the charges were based on 62 articles he had written, most of which were regarding reports about live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, and his support for human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng’s hunger strike.

“Li Hong, a freelance scholar who does not practice Falun Gong, stood up at the first moment to condemn these crimes committed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is believed that as a scholar in China Li Hong touched the CCP’s sensitive spot: the CCP fears the public’s awareness and condemnation of its live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners,” the New Epoch Weekly editorialized in January 2007.

Although healthy and hale prior to incarceration, Li’s health rapidly deteriorated and was soon diagnosed in August 2007 with muscular dystrophy. The Chinese authorities denied Li’s family’s repeated requests for medical parole, until June 2010, when his body was completely paralyzed and was not able to speak.

Li was then released for medical treatment on June 5 and was taken directly to the Ningbo Number Two People’s Hospital for intensive care, where he stayed until he died last week.

Zhu Yufu, Li’s colleague and one of the founders of Chinese Democratic Party formed in 1998, said with anger, “The authorities have killed Li Hong! It is yet another crime of theirs. Now they are frightened and are trying very hard to cover up the truth. They are keeping us from attending his funeral and expressing our condolences.

“Because Li Hong persisted and refused to compromise, they hated him and wanted him to die.”

For more information, please see:

The Epoch Times – Renowned Dissident Writer Li Hong Dies, Authorities Prevent Funeral – 4 Jan 2011

Human Rights in China – Human Rights in China Mourns the Passing of Dissident-Writer Li Hong – 7 
January 2011

Chinese Human Rights Defenders – Dissident Writer Li Hong Passes Away – 3 Jan 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch; Asia

GUWAHATI, India – Local police reports show that four people have been killed and more than 10,000 are left homeless after ethnic clashes between two rival tribes in India’s northeast in the past 24 hours.

The victims were travelling in a bus from Tura, the district headquarters of West Garo Hills in western Meghalaya, towards Assam, police said.

Police say the violence was sparked on New Year’s Eve after Garos were accused of failing to adhere to a Rabha strike. Clashes escalated and eight villages were burnt down.

On Wednesday, three Garos were stopped by Rabhas and clubbed to death. Eight others were critically wounded, police said. While another was shot by police allegedly trying to control mob tensions between rival villages.

In retaliation, the Rabhas went on a rampage torching several houses belonging to the Garo dominated areas in Torikas, Berubaris, Darakonas, Nebaris and Rongketchis.

Around 40 people from the Rabha community are still missing, according to local villagers.

Government officials said up to 10,000 people, mostly Rabhas, have fled their villages after the attacks, and have taken refuge in nearly a dozen makeshift shelters along both sides of the state border.

“Rabhas living in Meghalaya suffered the most as 200 of their houses were set on fire, forcing  them to our side,” said P.C. Goswami, a senior civil servant in Assam.

On Thursday, thousands of Garos armed with machetes, locally-made guns and spears descended from the East Garo Hills district of Meghalaya into Assam’s Goalpara district and set fire to hundreds of houses in seven Rabha villages around the Krishnai area.

There is a history of tension between the two groups. India’s far-off northeast has for decades been hit by insurgencies and tribal conflicts. The Garo tribe has been protesting about strikes orchestrated by its rival, saying they disrupt movement and day-to-day activities.

Last year, a road blockade by ethnic communities crippled Manipur, another state in the region, for months. The crisis badly hit supplies of food, fuel and life-saving drugs to the state.

The latest round of trouble in Meghalaya and Assam erupted from retaliation to a longstanding demand for an autonomous council by one of the groups.

“India’s remote northeastern states have been withered by 50 years of bloody clashes, and the region is a turbulent mix of languages, races, religions and civilizations, including 400 tribal and sub-tribal groups, many of whom fear loss of identity.

Authorities have imposed an indefinite curfew in Assam’s Goalpara district and Meghalaya’s East Garo Hills district where the fighting took place, but tension remained high, police said.

Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma and Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi have both appealed for peace and hundreds of armed policemen and border guards have been sent to the area

The state leader of opposition Conrad K. Sangma, accused the ruling Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance government of ‘taking the ethnic clash lightly’.

‘I strongly feel that there is no seriousness on the part of the (Meghalaya) government to sort out the issue in the initial stages to diffuse the simmering tension,’ Conrad said.

For more information, please see:

CNN – Officials: Thousands flee tribal violence in northeast India – 7 January 2011

BCC – Four die in tribal clashes in India’s north-east – 6 January 2011

Reuters – Tribal clashes uproot thousands in NE India – 6 January 2011

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Two senior police officials were arrested Wednesday in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.  A court refused bail for the two officials, Saud Aziz and his assistant Khurram Shehzad, said special public prosecutor Chaudhary Zulfiqar Ali. Aziz, the police chief in the Rawalpindi district at the time of Bhutto’s assassination, was the head of her security team. The two police officials are scheduled to appear for a hearing January 7.

Bhutto returning from a self-imposed, eight-year exile to running in the country’s general elections in 2007, to later escape an attempt on her life but was subsequently killed on December 27 by a 15-year-old suicide bomber while campaigning for parliament in Rawalpindi.

Security breaches and allegations of covering up are the charges. The actions which bring their condemnation are the hosing down of the crime scene and failing to conduct a post-mortem examination on Bhutto.

The attorney for the two officials argued that Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, the current president, had asked the police not to carry out a post-mortem. Evidence of this conversation, via audio of that request, was played in court Wednesday.

The court decided that both men failed their legal obligations as officers of the law. Five suspected militants are already facing trial for alleged involvement in Ms. Bhutto’s murder.

A Pakistani government investigation blamed the then top leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud. He denied being involved in the assassination and was killed in a suspected US missile attack in August 2009.

It was the United Nations panel and their insight into Bhutto’s assassination which came to the conclusion that Pakistan’s military-led former government failed to sufficiently protect her and the intelligence agencies stalled the ensuing investigation.

The panel’s report in April said the suicide bombing which killed Bhutto “could have been prevented” and also that police deliberately failed in pursuit of an effective investigation into the killings.

The government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf rejects the allegations saying that Bhutto had in fact been afforded adequate protection.

“No one believes that this boy acted alone,” the U.N. report said. “A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms. Bhutto, and second to investigate with vigor all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing.”

Bhutto’s family, including Zardari, said they suspected some elements in Pakistan’s intelligence agencies might have been involved in the assassination.

Police said they had earlier arrested five suspects in connection with Bhutto’s murder. Almost all of them are alleged to have been associated with the local Taliban fighting government forces in the country’s tribal region along the Afghan border.

Bhutto had taken a firm stand against Taliban militants before she returned to Pakistan in October 2007, ending a decade of self-imposed exile to take part in elections.

For more information, please see:

CNN – Two police offiicials arrested in Bhutto assassination – 22 December 2010

BBC – Pakistan police detained over Benazir Bhutto murder – 22 December

Sify News – Two police officers arrested in Bhutto murder case – 22 December

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

DHAKA, Bangladesh – The British government has been training a Bangladeshi paramilitary force condemned by human rights organizations as a “government death squad”, leaked U.S. embassy cables have revealed.  Death Squad, or RAB (Rapid Action Battalion), members have been taught “interviewing techniques” and “rules of engagement” by the UK authorities for 18 months, according to the leaked cables.  Another cable makes clear that the US would not offer any assistance other than human rights training to the RAB, and that it would be illegal under U.S. law to do so knowing the battalion commits gross human rights violations with impunity.

Pervasive claims have alleged that they operated an “arrest-interrogate-kill” policy towards alleged criminals.

The RAB was set up, 9,000 strong in 2004; RAB is accused of more than 550 killings. In addition, officers from the paramilitary force are alleged to have been involved in kidnaping and extortion, and are frequently accused of taking large bribes in return for carrying out crossfire killings.

A cable dated, May 2009, published by the Guardian, that the US ambassador to Dhaka, James Moriarty, wrote: “The US and UK representatives reviewed our ongoing training to make the RAB a more transparent, accountable and human-rights compliant paramilitary force.

Sabir Mustafa, BBC Bengali editor, say’s several hundred criminal suspects have died in RAB custody since 2005, and there are strong grounds to doubt what the unit’s claims, that these deaths occurred as a result of “encounters” or “cross-fire”.

The lack of prosecution for these fatalities is creating the impression that they operate under the guise of impunity, even though killings by RAB have been declining since 2008, but have not stopped completely.

Brad Adams, the organization’s Asia director, said: “RAB is a Latin American—style death squad dressed up as an anti—crime force. The British government has let its desire for a functional counter—terrorism partner in Bangladesh blind it to the risks of working with RAB, and the legitimacy that it gives to RAB inside Bangladesh”.

Amnesty International has also repeatedly condemned the RAB, while the Bangladeshi human rights organization Odhikar has scrupulously documented the RAB’s involvement in extra—judicial killings and torture since the creation of the force in 2004.

Successive Bangladeshi governments have promised to end the RAB’s use of murder. The current government promised in its manifesto that it would end all ‘extra judicial killings’, but they have continued following its election two years ago.

Yesterday, the 21^st of December, the RAB announced it had shot dead a 45—year—old man and three men in separate incidents, Anisur Rahman, said to be a member of the Communist party in the west of the country.

One cable describes U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty as saying the battalion is the “enforcement organization best positioned to one day become a Bangladeshi version of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

British High Commission officials in Dhaka told the BBC that the UK training program for the RAB was due to finish in March 2011.

For more information, please see:

The Hindu – U.K. police trained Bangladesh ‘death squad’ – 22 December 2010

BBC – UK training Bagladesh ‘death squad’ – 22 December 2010

MSNBC – WikiLeaks: U.K. trained ‘death squad’ – 21 December 2010

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Suspected Sri Lankan ‘war criminal’, Shavendra Silva, former top military commander, played an alleged key role in the slaughter of 40,000 civilians and is also accused of clipping down separatist political group leaders, killed at gun-point, in the midst of surrender; now sits in a pool of full diplomatic immunity at the United Nations. The Srilankan government has expressed no interest in holding this human rights abuser accountable, as evident with their latest appointment of a war criminal as ‘deputy permanent U.N. representative’.

“Thousands were killed or starved. There were massive human-rights violations and he’s the No. 1 suspect,” said the investigator, a human-rights group expert who asked not to be identified.

Now, the UN panel has a war criminal, a man with first-hand knowledge of the slayings, coming into the UN to represent Sri-Lanka.

Human-rights groups are outraged that Shavendra Silva, 46, a top ex-military commander, was named Sri Lanka’s deputy permanent U.N. representative in August, after which he moved to New York.

His arrival came a year after his troops defied international pleas and shelled a no-fire zone packed with women, children and elderly refugees, according to observers.

“It’s a slap in the face,” said an investigator familiar with Silva, who last year oversaw the final months of a brutal 26-year civil war against Tamil separatists on the island nation off India’s southeastern tip.

The war started in 1983 after the Tamils, a Hindu ethnic minority, were denied power by the ruling Sinhalese, Buddhists, and formed a violent resistance group, the Tamil Tigers.

Maj. Gen. Shavendra Silva’s presence in New York coincides with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon setting up a panel of experts to advise him on accountability for human rights violations during the final stages of the conflict in Sri Lanka.

It was after the New York Times published an article critical of the Sri Lankan Government’s appointment of Major General Shavendra Silva as the Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN that a journalist questioned the acting Dpt. Spokesman of UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon whether Silva will be interviewed by the expert panel.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a panel of experts to advise him on Sri Lanka’s alleged violations of human rights and humanitarian law during the last stages of the war against LTTE.

He was further questioned on whether the final report of the findings of the Expert Panel will be made public, the Farhan Haq, Acting Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General said that, “We’ll have to see.  As you know, it is an internal body, but it will be up to the Secretary-General to determine what he makes public once he received that information.”

In a phone interview from London, Mr. Keenan said it appeared to be more than a coincidence that Gen. Silva would be appointed to the mission in New York at the same time as Mr. Ban set up the panel of experts.

“So it seems fair to assume that he is trying to influence it, which is the right of the Sri Lankan government. But I think that is disturbing that someone who himself was involved in the very incidents that the U.N. has begun looking into should have any chance to influence the panel’s operations,” Mr. Keenan said.

For more information, please see:

The Washington Times – Sri Lankan war crimes suspect get post as representative to U.N. – 5 December 2010

Live Lanka – UN not sure whether Expert Panel will interview Shavendra Silva – 11 December 2010

FOX news – ‘War criminal’ gets a UN job – 21 November 2010

Free Malayasia Today – ‘War Criminal’ gets a UN job – 8 December 2010