By Christine Khamis

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

 

BEIJING, China –

Human rights lawyer Wang Yu and her husband were arrested this week based on charges of political subversion. Ms. Wang and her husband, Bao Longjun, were held in detention for six months before they were formally arrested. Members of their law firm were also detained.

The couple and other members of their law firm, Beijing Fengui Law Firm, were held in “designated residential surveillance” starting in July 2015. Designated residential surveillance allows authorities to place detainees in solitary confinement in secret locations for time periods lasting up to six months. The month after their release, Ms. Wang and Mr. Bao, along with others from their firm, were arrested and charged with subversion.

Ms. Wang has not been permitted to meet with her lawyer, Li Yuhan, since her detainment. According to Ms. Li, police denied her requests to meet with Ms. Wang seven times during the detainment.

Ms. Wang is charged with subversion of state power and “causing a disturbance”, while Mr. Bao is charged with inciting subversion of state power. Their charges could mean sentences ranging from 15 years to life in prison. Because the Communist Party controls China’s courts, the couple will likely be convicted at trial.

Ms. Wang has defended other human rights activists, including free speech advocate Wu Gan, women’s rights activist Li Tingting, and activist Cao Shunli. She has also represented Uighur scholar and alleged separatist Illham Tohti and victims of sexual harassment, forced evictions, and illegal jails.

Critics of the Communist Party often face subversion charges. Chinese authorities have also increasingly cracked down on human rights activists and lawyers since President Xi Jinping came into power in 2013. More than 130 lawyers were detained in July 2015 after they were accused of starting protests outside of courtrooms.

Chinese authorities also detained a Swedish man, Peter Jespin Dahlin, earlier this month based on suspicion of state subversion. Mr. Dahlin is a co-founder of the China Urgent Action Working Group, an organization that assists lawyers in providing services to victims of human rights violations.

 

For more information, please see:

Jurist – Prominent China Human Rights Lawyer Arrested for Political Subversion – 14 January 2016

The New York Times – China Arrests Rights Lawyer and Her Husband on Subversion Charges – 13 January 2016

Reuters – China Arrests Most Prominent Woman Rights Lawyer for Subversion – 13 January 2016

Voice of America – US Concerned About China Rights After Lawyers’ Arrest – 13 January 2016

By Christine Khamis

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

 

HONG KONG, China –

A Hong Kong bookseller who recently disappeared may have kidnapped by Chinese authorities and brought to mainland China.

Lee Bo, who published and sold books critical of China’s government, was reported missing by his wife last week. Mr. Lee’s wife then withdrew the missing person’s report when she received a letter in his handwriting stating that he had traveled to mainland China to assist with a police investigation. Mr. Lee’s wife says that in addition to the letter, he has also contacted her by telephone. Human rights activists believe that Mr. Lee was under duress when he contacted his wife.

However, there is no official record of Mr. Lee traveling to the mainland. Mr. Lee also failed to take his travel permits with him, which are necessary for travel between Hong Kong and the mainland.

Mr. Lee is associated with Mighty Current Media, a publishing house partly owned by his wife. Mighty Current’s books were sold at the Causeway Bay Bookstore, in which Mr. Lee is a shareholder. Mighty Current is known for publishing gossip-style books about Chinese leaders. The publisher has released books about topics that many other publishers purposely don’t cover, such as Chinese president Xi Jinping’s love affairs.

Albert Ho, a legislator in Hong Kong, states that the bookstore was planning on releasing a book on President Xi Jinping’s personal life and was told not to do so. Mr. Ho believes that Mr. Lee was kidnapped and taken to mainland China.

Four of Mr. Lee’s colleagues have also disappeared recently, including another Mighty Current co-owner named Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen who went missing in Thailand in October. The other three were last seen in mainland China, according to the BBC.

Mr. Lee has dual citizenship of China and Britain due to Hong Kong’s status as a former British colony. However, the Chinese government does not acknowledge dual citizenship and any efforts on Britain’s part to retrieve Mr. Lee may not be successful.

Hong Kong is a former British colony that was returned to China in 1997 through an agreement between Britain and China. When China gained sovereignty over Hong Kong, it was under a “One Country, Two Systems” model that gave Hong Kong a separate legal system and freedoms of speech and press. As part of the “One Country, Two Systems” model, Britain and China agreed that Hong Kong would have autonomy for 50 years.

Mr. Lee has dual citizenship of China and Britain due to Hong Kong’s status as a former British colony. However, the Chinese government does not acknowledge dual citizenship and any efforts on Britain’s part to retrieve Mr. Lee may not be successful.

Many in Hong Kong fear that the disappearance of Mr. Lee and the other booksellers signifies China’s growing control over Hong Kong. Hong Kong citizens are beginning to feel apprehensive about what the mainland’s growing power will mean for their own civil liberties and legal rights.

 

For more information, please see:

 New York Times – Many in Hong Kong Fear Beijing’s Reach After Editor’s Disappearance – 7 January 2016

Hong Kong Free Press – The Missing Booksellers: If We Let This Go, Will Hong Kong Still be Hong Kong? – 7 January 2016

International Business Times – Who is British Dissident Bookseller Lee Bo, Feared Kidnapped by Chinese Authorities? – 7 January 2016

BBC – Hong Kong Bookseller Mystery Deepens After Letter Appears – 5 January 2016

 

 

 

By Christine Khamis

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

 

COLUMBO, Sri Lanka –

International human rights groups Freedom from Torture and the International Truth and Justice Project have released reports indicating that Sri Lankan authorities continue to allow torture and other abuses against the Tamil people. Human rights abuses have continued despite President Maithripala Sirisena’s promises to address such abuses when he came into power last year.

Freedom from Torture and the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) have presented evidence of torture and sexual abuse of Tamil minority victims at the hands of Sri Lanka’s intelligence and military officials. There have been 27 separate cases of human rights abuses in the last 12 months, according to their reports. Freedom from Torture, a UK-based organization that provides medical aid to torture survivors, was involved in eight of those cases.

Freedom from Torture has reported that it has medical evidence of torture by Sri Lankan military and intelligence officials. The victims were all from the Tamil minority group. Two of the victims that Freedom from Torture helped said that they had undergone detention and torture in a notorious military camp in northern Sri Lanka. Others reported that they had been tortured in a jungle camp. Most of the victims that Freedom from Torture helped have scars from being branded. Most of them were also sexually abused.

The report from the ITJP, an organization based in South Africa, includes testimony of 20 survivors and evidence from medical reports which corroborated the survivors’ accounts of torture and other abuses. The report also indicates that forced abductions, a practice that was common under Sri Lanka’s previous government, may also still be occurring. The ITJP says that the Tamils continue to undergo repression and torture at the hands of Sri Lankan officials.

Sri Lankan officials have denied the allegations in the reports. Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne says that Sri Lanka’s Defense Ministry has no information on the torture allegations and that it will investigate the cases if the organizations send them the evidence. Brig Jayanath Jayweera, Sri Lanka’s Army Spokesman, also denied the allegations, saying that Sri Lankan media would have reported on any abductions and torture.

When Mr. Sirisena became president in January 2015, he pledged to introduce widespread reform and bring reconciliation among Sri Lankan communities by addressing human rights abuses.Sri Lanka has also been under much international pressure to address human rights violations.

In September, the United Nations called for a special war crimes court to address the crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels during Sri Lanka’s civil war, which ended in 2009. So far, Sri Lankan’s government has launched a domestic inquiry into the alleged war crimes, with limited assistance from the international community.

Last month, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera announced that Sri Lanka’s government had signed an international agreement banning abductions by the state and agreeing to the protection of human rights.

 

For more information, please see:

BBC News – Tamils ‘Still Tortured’ in Sri Lanka, Say Rights Groups – 7 January 2016

The Guardian – Sri Lanka Accused of Allowing Continuing Human Rights Abuses – 6 January 2016

The Sunday Times Sri Lanka – Lanka’s Torture Machine Continues in Peacetime – 6 January 2015

Sri Lankan Guardian – Torture Casts a Shadow Over Sirisena’s First Year as President of Sri Lanka – 6 January 2016

 

 

By Christine Khamis

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

 

DHAKA, Bangladesh –

Two Bangladeshi students, Faisal bin Nayem and Rezwanul Azad Rana, were sentenced to death last week for the murder of atheist blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider in 2013. Mr. Rana, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the attack on Mr. Haider, is currently on the run and was sentenced in absentia.

Mr. Haider was hacked to death with a machete while returning home from a public rally in 2013. Mr. Haider was known to be critical of the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh. He was also one of several bloggers who called for the execution of Islamist leaders who committed war crimes in the 1971 conflict leading to Bangladesh’s founding.

Six others have received prison sentences for their involvement in Mr. Haider’s murder. Jasimuddin Rahmani, the head of Islamist extremist group Ansarullah Bangla Team, received a five year sentence. Ansarullah Bangla Team, which is a banned group in Bangladesh, has taken full responsibility for the killing of Mr. Haider.

The defendants’ defense lawyer, Mosharraf Hossain Kajal, plans on challenging the sentences in a higher court, stating that the prosecution failed to prove the allegations against his clients. Mahbubur Rahman, a state prosecutor, states that the evidence gathered helped to prove the charges against the accused beyond reasonable doubt. Mr. Rahman also plans on appealing the verdict because he expected at least five of the accused to receive the death penalty.

Four other atheist bloggers who spoke out about Islamic extremism in Bangladesh were also killed in 2015, along with a publisher. Bangladesh’s government has been criticized over the past year for failing to adequately protect writers and activists.

Anisul Huq, Bangladesh’s Law and Justice Minister, has stated that investigators are working to bring those responsible for attacks on other bloggers to justice. The convictions handed down in Mr. Haider’s case mark a positive step toward confronting the increasing violence toward bloggers in Bangladesh.

 

For more information, please see:

CNN – Bangladesh Court Hands Down Death Sentences for Blogger Killing – 1 January 2015

Time – Students Who Killed Atheist Bangladeshi Writer Sentenced to Death – 1 January 2015

Al Jazeera – Two Sentenced to Death for Murdering Bangladeshi Blogger – 31 December 2015

New York Times – 2 Sentenced to Death in Killing of Bangladeshi Activist in 2013 – 31 December 2015

By Christine Khamis

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

 

SEOUL, South Korea –

South Korea and Japan reached a settlement on Monday to resolve their long-standing dispute over the women forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese army during World War II. The women, otherwise known as comfort women, have been a major point of contention between the two countries since the end of World War II.

In the settlement, Japan issued an apology and pledged to give $8.3 million from its national budget to the South Korean government to set up a fund for the remaining comfort women. The fund will offer services such as medical care to the former comfort women. It is unclear at this time whether the women will receive direct payments from the fund.

Japan has conceded that its military authorities contributed to the enslavement of the comfort women. However, Japan has not admitted to having any legal responsibility for the acts of its military officials. It instead seems to consider the new fund as a humanitarian gesture rather than an effort at making legal reparations.

Tens of thousands of Korean women were forced to act as comfort women to the Japanese during Japan’s colonial rule of South Korea and throughout World War II. Most comfort women who survived World War II lived in silence instead of speaking out because of the stigma surrounding their role as sex slaves. In the 1990s, some of the women finally began to speak out about their experiences. Only 238 South Korean women have come forward throughout the decades. Currently, 46 former comfort women women are still alive.

South Korea says that it will consider the issue of comfort women “finally and irreversibly” settled as long as Japan follows through with its end of the deal. On its own part, South Korea has agreed to negotiate with local civic groups for the removal of a statue of a comfort woman which stands in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

Japan and South Korea’s agreement has already drawn criticism, some of it coming from former comfort women themselves. One such woman, 88 year-old Lee Yong-soo, says that the settlement does not reflect the views of former comfort women. Ms. Lee says that the former comfort women are not looking for money and that they want official reparations from Japan instead.

This is not the first time that Japan has apologized for its treatment of comfort women. In 1993, Japan formally acknowledged and apologized for its use of sex slaves. Japan also created a fund for the comfort women in 1995, financed by private donors. South Korea and some of the remaining comfort women criticized the fund because it did not come directly from Japan’s government. Many of the former comfort women refused to take payments from the fund. The fund was then disbanded in 2007.

Earlier in 2015, President Park of South Korea called for the settlement of the issue of comfort women with Japan by the end of the year. This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea.

 

For more information, please see:

Voice of America – Comfort Women Criticize Japan, South Korea Settlement – 29 December 2015

BBC – Japan and South Korea agree WW2 ‘comfort women’ deal – 28 December 2015

The Guardian – Japan and South Korea Agree to Settle Wartime Sex Slaves Row – 28 December 2015

The New York Times – Japan and South Korea Settle Dispute Over Wartime ‘Comfort Woman’ – 28 December 2015