By Kevin M. Mathewson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BANGKOK, Thailand – Gunmen in a pickup truck opened fire on an anti-government protest in Thailand’s east, killing an 8-year-old girl, and wounding dozens, as violence in the country’s three-month-old political crisis spread outside the capital of Bangkok, officials said Sunday.

Hours later, an explosion killed two people and wounded more than 20 others near an anti-government protest in the capital of Bangkok. A boy aged 12 and a 40-year-old woman died in the attack near the Central World shopping mall, officials said. A protest leader, Sathit Wongnongtoey, said Sunday’s blast in central Bangkok was caused by a grenade.

Both supporters and opponents of the protesters, as well as police, have been victims of the political violence. Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra condemned the attacks, describing them as “terrorist acts for political gain”.

The attacks are the latest in a string of protest-related violence in Thailand over the past three months, in which at least 16 people have been killed and hundreds injured. The protesters want Yingluck to step down in order to make way for an appointed interim government to implement anti-corruption reforms, but she has refused.

Thailand has been divided by violent political conflict since 2006, when then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck’s brother, was ousted by a military rebellion after being accused of corruption and abuse of power. Thaksin’s supporters and opponents have since then taken to the streets for extended periods in a power struggle.

No group has yet taken claim to either attack. Jonathan Head, BBC’s reporter in Bangkok says it appears to be the start of retaliation by the armed wing of the so-called “red-shirt” movement that backs the governing Pheu Thai party.

Red-shirt leaders organized a mass gathering in north-eastern Thailand this past weekend to decide how they should fight back against the campaign to overthrow the government.

A spokesman for the protesters, Akanat Promphan, described the attacks as “a massacre of innocents” that was “planned and organized terror.”

“The authorities must quickly find those terrorists responsible. Yingluck must show responsibility. Otherwise, we can only assume the government and . . . Yingluck’s involvement in this atrocity,” he said.

Both sides in the ongoing political dispute have blamed the other for instigating violence.

For more information, please see:

The Japan News – Thai political crisis violence spreads beyond capital – 24 February 2014

BBC News – Thailand crisis: Deadly attacks on opposition rallies – 23 February 2013

The Japan Times – Two killed by grenade at Bangkok anti-government protest – 23 February 2014

BBC News – Thailand police and protesters clash fatally in Bangkok – 18 February 2014

By Kevin M. Mathewson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

PYONYANG, North Korea – John Short, an Australian missionary who has been working in Asia for 50 years, has been detained in Pyonyang after apparently disseminating Christian pamphlets at a tourist site.  The 75-year-old carried Korean-language pamphlets advocating Christianity into the East Asian nation, which were later discovered by security personnel.

Australia has no representation in North Korea, leaving diplomats scrambling to prevent a potentially lengthy detention in the secretive regime. A spokesman from the Seoul embassy said he was seeking more information about his case.

“We are in close contact with Swedish officials in Pyongyang to seek their assistance in confirming the well being of Mr. Short,” the spokesman said.

With no representation in the authoritative country, the Australian government is essentially powerless to help Short directly. Instead, it is left to rely on Swedish officials in the North Korean capital to check on Short’s well being.

“John is still in North Korea in detention and being questioned as to why he was carrying Korean-language Christian materials,” Karen Short said via telephone in Hong Kong, where she co-owns a Christian publishing firm with her husband.

“He wanted to go as a Christian but not do anything untoward or unwise, because it’s a very closed country, the world knows that. He’s not cavalier in any way, but he is a man of faith.”

She said it was her husband’s second trip to North Korea and that he knew it was not a tourist destination, but said he “cares about the people and wants to help.”

It is unclear what charges, if any, Short may face. However, last year North Korea sentenced American missionary Kenneth Bae to 15 years hard labor after convicting him of trying to overthrow the state. Efforts from Washington to secure his release have proven unsuccessful.

Karen Short says that her husband is fit and healthy and has not yet suffered any physical harm.

Short is no stranger to testing circumstances. A former soldier in the Australian military, he arrived in Hong Kong in 1964 and worked at a refugee clinic during the turmoil of China’s Cultural Revolution. Even so, there is no disputing the tremendous peril he currently faces, including a possible 15-year prison sentence similar to Bae’s. “I pray for my husband to come back soon,” says Karen Short, “I miss him dearly.”

For more information, please see:

TIME – Concern, Little Sympathy, for Australian Missionary Detained in North Korea – 20 February 2014

The Australian – Visiting missionary arrested in North Korea – 20 February 2014

BBC News – North Korea detains Australian missionary – 19 February 2014

The Sydney Morning Herald – South Australian man detained in North Korea on suspicion of doing missionary work – 19 February 2014

abc NEWS – Family: Australian Missionary Held in North Korea – 19 February 2014

By Kevin M. Mathewson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

GENEVA – United Nations investigators say North Korea has committed crimes against humanity in an effort to sustain its political system and will call for an international criminal investigation.

A report to be released Monday draws on testimony of survivors and those who escaped the country. It is the most authoritative account yet of rights violations by North Korean authorities. The report details how North Koreans have been summarily executed, subjected to rape, forced abortions and enslavement, and have suffered persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds. There is even evidence of a widespread campaign of abductions of individuals in South Korea and Japan.

While the report does not examine individual responsibility for the crimes, it recommends steps towards accountability.

Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge and chairman of the independent Commission of Inquiry, said the report “calls for attention from the international community”.

“At the end of the Second World War so many people said ‘if only we had known… if only we had known the wrongs that were done in the countries of the hostile forces'”, he said.

“Well, now the international community does know… There will be no excusing the failure of action because we didn’t know,” he said at a news conference at UN headquarters in Geneva.

The three-member commission, led by Kirby, was set up by the U.N.’s top human rights body last March in an attempt to probe evidence of systematic rights violations in the authoritarian state notorious for its political prisons camps, and repression and famine that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the 1990s.

The commission, which was never allowed into North Korea to conduct public hearings, recommends that the U.N. Security Council refer its findings to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Yet, there are several procedural hurdles. For example, permanent council members that have veto power, such as Chine, are unlikely to support any referral to the court. Another obstacle is that the court’s jurisdiction does not extend to crimes committed before July 2002.

When the Human Rights Council authorized the commission last March, the North denounced it as politically motivated by “hostile forces” trying to discredit it and change its socialist system.

A spokesman for North Korea’s U.N. Mission in New York who refused to give his name told the AP, “We totally reject the unfounded findings of the Commission of Inquiry regarding crimes against humanity. We will never accept that.”

For more information, please see:

BBC News – World must act on North Korea rights abuse, says UN report – 17 February 2014

CNN – ‘Abundant evidence’ of crimes against humanity in North Korea, panel says – 17 February 2014

The New York Times – U.N. Panel Finds Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea – 15 February 2014

The Associated Press – Crimes against humanity in NKorea, UN panel finds – 14 February 2014

By Kevin M. Mathewson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan –The Lahore High Court (LHC) in Pakistan has ordered the government to produce an anti-drone activist, Kareem Khan, whose lawyers say was detained by the country’s intelligence agencies.

Kahn, whose teenage son and brother were killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan Agency in 2009, went missing days before he was due to testify to the impacts of the CIA-operative unmanned strikes in Pakistan’s troubled northwest border.

Since the death of his son and brother, Kahn has waged a legal battle against the United States.

His lawyers say he was picked up from his residence in Rawalpindi last week and has not been heard from since. Police deny any involvement.

Britain-based rights group Amnesty International, citing the eyewitnesses, has claimed that the Kareem Khan was picked up by a dozen men, some of whom were wearing police uniforms while others were in civilian clothes, on February 5.

“The Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court has sought reply from the intelligence agencies through the government, ordering the intelligence agencies to produce Kareem Khan on 20 February or give the reason behind his arrest in writing to the court,” his lawyer Shahzad Akbar told AFP news agency.

A decade after they first took to the skies over Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, U.S. drone aircraft’s are causing fierce controversy in both the United States and Pakistan.

U.S. officials argue the drone attacks are vital in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants based in the border area of Pakistan and that they take “extraordinary care” to ensure the strikes comply with international law.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has called for an end to drone attacks in his country, saying the attacks violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Several thousand people have been killed in the attacks, many of them militants – but precise numbers and the identities of victims are in dispute because local claims of the numbers of civilian deaths are almost impossible to prove.

For more information, please see:

BBC News – Pakistan court order over missing activist Kareem Khan – 12 February 2014

The Frontier Post – Pakistan court order over missing activist Kareem Khan – 12 February 2014

Al Jazeera – Pakistan pressed over missing drone activist – 12 February 2014

Pakistan Tribune – LHC Orders to Produce Missing Anti-Drone Activist on February 20 – 12 February 2014