Asia

China Prepares to Try Seven More in Crackdown on Dissent

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia 

BEIJING, China– Approximately seven Chinese activists who advocated for greater rule of law, fairer access to education and other issues are being put on trial this week as the government once again reinvigorates its campaign to stomp out dissent.

Xu Zhiyong faces trial for “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order” after organizing several rallies demanding educational and political reform. (Photo Courtesy of AP)

The premiere case is scheduled for Wednesday morning in Beijing as lawyer Xu Zhiyong, founder of the loose-knit New Citizens Movement, goes to court on charges of gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.

Xu is the highest-profile activist to be tried since Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison on subversion charges in 2009. Xu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Expectations had risen since then that new President Xi Jinping might be more open to free speech, but those hopes have largely subsided, and a media blackout on Xu’s case has left most mainland Chinese ignorant of the proceedings.

Prosecutors allege that Xu and others incited hundreds of people to gather in front of government buildings, train stations, and universities in Beijing in 2012 and 2013. The demonstrators, according to the government, unfurled banners and handed out leaflets regarding education reform and asset disclosure for government officials. The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

But it is the wider spectrum of Xu’s activities that have probably alarmed authorities, at least according to analysts and Xu’s close allies. Although Xu has been more cautious in his public statements than Liu, he has encouraged events such as dinner gatherings at so-called “dissident” discourse is permitted.

Feng Chongyi, an associate professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, who studies Chinese political movements, suggested that “They have been talking about a new sort of activism, the need to take new action, not only talk. The security people have made the judgment that they could be facing serious demonstrations. This is a preemptive strike…. They want to take out the leaders and organizers, and send a clear signal that no one is allowed to organize street protests.”

Xu’s rose to prominence in 2003 when he became involved in an unexpectedly successful campaign to abolish rules regarding police detentions of people found without urban residency permits.  His Open Constitution Initiative law firm took on several dicey cases, defending the editor of a hard-hitting newspaper and representing parents whose children had been sickened or killed by milk additives. In 2009, the firm was hit with tax evasion charges.

Xu then founded the New Citizens Movement, which he said is aimed at treading “a new path for the Chinese nation, a path toward liberty, justice and love.”

Xu was placed under house arrest in April, detained in July and formally arrested in August. His lawyer, Zhang Qingfang, said he visited Xu on Tuesday morning and that he seemed calm ahead of the trial.

Zhang said he and Xu planned to remain silent throughout the hearing as a means of objecting to what they deem to be an irregular and unfair procedure imposed by authorities. Xu plans to provide a brief concluding statement.

A major concern, according to Zhang, was prosecutors’ decision to hold separate trials for the activists.  Prosecutors have also refused to allow witnesses to appear in court and be questioned. Prosecutors had listed 68 witnesses against Xu, Zhang said, but would permit only their statements to be entered into the official record. Zhang’s efforts to bring five defense witnesses to the courtroom were rejected.

“This whole trial is being conducted in a black box, where we cannot actually see the entire process,” he said. “I always hope and strive to represent my clients in a fair trial, but this is not fair, so I will keep silent.”

For more information, please see:

New York Times–In China, a Week Full of Trials over Dissent–21 January 2014

Global Times–Xu Zhiyong set for Wed. Trial–21 January 2014

Voice of America–Prominent Rights Activist Faces Trial in China–21 January 2014

Los Angeles Times–Activists on trial as China steps up campaign against dissent–21 January 2014

India Investigates Gang-Rape of Danish Tourist, Calls for Judicial Reforms

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

NEW DELHI, India–Leaders of Indian ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) condemned the rape of a 51-year-odl Danish tourist.  The incident occurred near the New Delhi railway station.  AAP stressed a need for expedient court proceedings and a desire to reign in the authority of the Delhi Police, restructuring the institution under the state government.

Police investigate the crime scene where a 51-year-old Danish tourist was allegedly raped by six men at knifepoint. (Photo Courtesy of AP)

The 51-year-old was robbed and then raped by a gang of six on Wednesday afternoon when she asked for directions to her hotel.

“This is a dangerous situation, and he (Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal) has spoken to the lieutenant-governor (Najeeb Jung). Now the LG, the chief minister and the police commissioner will meet to review the rape incidents that have occurred in the last one year,” Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia told reporters.

“We will also request the Chief Justice of India to take all the rape cases to fast track courts, so that the strictest punishment is meted out to the culprits,” Sisodia said.

Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus. The government tightened laws on sexual violence last year after widespread protests following the attack.

AAP leader Kumar Vishwas stressed that the Delhi Police must be brought under the jurisdiction of the state government to preserve efficiency and integrity. Delhi Police are currently under the jurisdiction of the Union government.

“Delhi Police should be brought under the state government. This is an old demand of ours, so the chief minister and central government should make an effort,” Vishwas said.

He said that since Delhi Police remain under the central government, they cannot work properly.

Demanding a home minister on the state level, Vishwas said: “If any such incidents happen in Delhi, there should be a home minister, so that he can look after the Delhi affairs. It otherwise becomes a long affair which includes contacting and consulting the centre.”

The Danish woman, who came to India on January 1, went to visit a museum on Tuesday afternoon but then lost her way back to her hotel in Paharganj.  Paharganj is a major tourist city at the center of Delhi.

Around 4pm a group of men lured her to an isolated spot where she was robbed of her iPad and cash and then raped by six men, one of whom held a knife.

“She reached her hotel and reported the incident to the manager who called in the police and the investigation is now under way,” police spokesman, Rajan Bhagat said.

No arrests have been made yet, but police are questioning a number of men in connection with the attack

 For more information, please see:

Times of India–Danish woman’s gang rape: AA seeks control over Delhi police–15 January 2014

BBC News–Danish woman gang-raped in Indian capital Delhi— 15 January 2014

The Globe and Mail–Danish tourist gang-raped, robbed after getting lost in New Delhi— 15 January 2014

National Post–Danish tourist gang-raped in Inian capital after asking for directions, police say— 15 January 2014

Protesters Gather in Bangkok in An Attempt to Shutdown The Government

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BANGKOK, Thailand–Protesters have gathered in an attempt to topple Thailand’s prime minister.  A march was held in Bangkok on Tuesday to rally support for their plans to bring the capital to a halt next week by blockading major roads and preventing the government from functioning.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has announced an election for February 2.  Protesters, aware she would probably win with support in the rural north and northeast, want her to step down, seeking to replace her with an appointed “people’s council” to push through electoral reforms.

Protesters accused Yingluck of being a puppet of her self-exiled brother and former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, a man they say is a corrupt capitalist who used taxpaye money to buy electoral support with expensive populist giveaways.

The anti-government push is intended to block an election that looks increasingly uncertain. The government’s supporters fear that if protests fail to halt the poll, chaos or violence could erupt and arouse an intervention by either the military or the judiciary.

That prospect became more of a possibility on Tuesday when the National Counter-Corruption Commission lodged charges against 308 former lawmakers, mostly from Yingluck’s Puea Thai Party, for trying to change the constitution to make the Senate a fully elected chamber.

The Constitutional Court ruled the amendment illegal in November.The residual effect of a court ruling against those politicians (not including Yingluck) is not clear, but it could complicate the election, either before or after it takes place.

Puea Thai adviser Prompong Nopparit shrugged off the charges but questioned the timing of the NCCC’s decision to pursue them.

“I’m very curious to know why older legal cases concerning opposition lawmakers still haven’t moved forward, but charges against the government side have been rushed,” he told reporters.

The refusal by the army’s top general to rule out military intervention also puts Yingluck in a precarious position.  Top officers are notably close to the royalist establishment that backs the protests and engineered the overthrow of Thaksin in a 2006 coup, one of 18 successful or attempted overthrows in the past 81 years.

Fears of another coup grew this week when tanks and other military equipment were moved into Bangkok in preparation for an Army Day parade on January 18. Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha says he wants to keep the military above the fray but some of his recent comments have been ambiguous, including those he made on Tuesday.

“Don’t be afraid of things that haven’t yet happened,” he said when asked about a coup. “But if they happen, don’t be frightened. There are rumors like this every year.”

Yingluck threatened that military intervention would be a big mistake.

“We’ve learned from the past that no good comes from coups,” she told reporters. “I’d prefer to see a long-term solution … one that is accepted by the international community.”

Yingluck has refused to postpone the poll, a move that she says would be unconstitutional. Any delay would not only expose her to more criticism, but make it hard to run the country as her caretaker administration is not permitted to make policy decisions that commit the next government.

Several thousand demonstrators, determined to undermine her legitimacy, marched from Bangkok’s historic quarter across the river and back, avoiding the center of the city.

The protests have drawn 200,000 people at their peak and have been largely passive, although violence ensued between police and demonstrators outside an election registration building on December 26. Numerous people were wounded and several were shot by unknown gunmen. Four people, including two police officers, died from the shootings.

Authorities anticipate massive crowds, and have deployed 20,000 police, backed up by troops, for the first day of the planned “shutdown” on Monday.

For more information, please see:

Reuters–Thai anti-corruption body charges members of PM’s party–7 January, 2014

Voice of America–Thai Opposition Protesters Rally Support for ‘Bangkok Shutdown’–7 January 2014

Straits Times–Thailand’s anti-corruption body to charge Puea Thai politicians, but Yingluck in the clear–7 January 2014

Al Jazeera–Thai anti-government protesters march again–5 January 2014

An Op-Ed by Professor Mark V. Vlasic: When Museums Do the Right Thing

STONES and bones rarely make the front page, and even less frequently in the same month, but this has been no ordinary month. And it’s not over yet.

On May 4, The New York Times announced that the Metropolitan Museum of Art would voluntarily repatriate twin 10th century statues to Cambodia, after the museum received “dispositive” evidence that the pieces were products of the illicit antiquities trade.

A few miles away and a few days later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security celebrated the not-so-voluntary repatriation of a looted 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar (a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex) to Mongolia, having seized it from a self-described “commercial paleontologist” (and now confessed smuggler) named Eric Prokopi. Taken from the Gobi Desert, the dinosaur bones were seized last year after Prokopi tried to sell them in violation of U.S. and Mongolian law.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Cambodia publicly called upon other American museums to examine their Khmer collections and return any pieces that were plundered after the start of the country’s civil war in 1970.

With these two high-profile returns, attention may turn to Sotheby’s auction house next. The historic institution is fighting in New York courts to hawk a Cambodian sculpture that — along with the Met’s pair — once formed a three-dimensional tableau at the ancient temple of Koh Ker. These stone figures remained in situ for a millennium, until the country descended into war against the Khmer Rouge, when they were allegedly looted and trafficked overseas. Having traveled around the world through illicit and licit markets, the statues finally resurfaced in Manhattan.

In 2011, the Cambodian government asked Sotheby’s to return the piece in its possession, and enlisted the help of the U.S. government when the auction house declined. As a result, Sotheby’s now finds itself in the sights of the very federal agents and attorneys who so successfully investigated and prosecuted the T. bataar case.

Of course, Sotheby’s may still follow the Met’s lead, decide that its reputation is more important than a high-end sculpture, and repatriate the contested piece. But at the least, this month’s headlines offer a lesson. In both the Met and T. bataar cases, the looted items are going home. While the press and public are now honoring the museum, Prokopi is facing years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Of course, the return of treasures like these to Phnom Penh and Ulan Bator are still the exception, but they are growing as governments, law enforcement agencies and the public increasingly realize that looting cultural treasures is a crime — and not a victimless one. Just last year, the Dallas Museum of Art returned to Turkey a 194 A.D. mosaic, “Orpheus Taming Wild Animals,” which was likely looted from the floor of a Roman building in the southeastern part of the country.

But even as these returns are being made, looters are devastating ancient sites in search of prized artifacts to sell on the international market. To underscore the point, the very week that one of us visited the ancient Roman cities of Leptis Magna and Sabratha in Libya, we heard about the looting of a “heavyweight” statue in the middle of the night.

The smuggling of stolen cultural objects has become an underground industry that spans the globe. Though the F.B.I. estimates that the value of this black market is as much as $6 billion a year, we do not really know the actual extent of the trade in illicitly obtained antiquities. (Researchers at the University of Glasgow have received a $1.5 million grant from the European Research Council to attempt to quantify and qualify it.) Nevertheless, if looting on the current scale continues, by the time we have accurate numbers there will be much less of our world heritage to protect. This will not only be a loss for culture and science — there are additional if not readily apparent side effects. The black market in antiquities has been reported as a source of income for organized crime, rebel fighters and even terrorist groups.

The U.S. government, and specifically the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, should be commended for treating the illicit trade in cultural objects like the crime that it is, protecting the past, and improving America’s international relationships in the process.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York should likewise be praised for refusing to hold on to looted antiquities. Unlike Prokopi, museum authorities did not wait for a court order or lawsuit to return stolen property, thereby demonstrating that it is never too early to do the right thing. In light of this month’s news, it is hoped that Sotheby’s and others will realize that it’s never too late, either. As Edmund Burke said, “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Mark V. Vlasic, a senior fellow and adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, served as the first head of operations of the World Bank’s Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative and leads the international practice at Madison Law & Strategy Group. Tess Davis, a researcher at the University of Glasgow, served as the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, and is working with Cambodia to combat the illicit trade in the kingdom’s antiquities.

Bangladesh Opposition Leader Hanged, Violent Protests Ensue

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

DHAKA, Bangladesh–Bangladesh has hanged notorious opposition leader Abdul Quader Mollah over war crimes allegedly committed during the country’s 1971 war of independence.  Mollah is the first person to be put to death for massacres committed during the bloody struggle.

Bangladeshi opposition leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, was sentenced to death early last week. He was hanged on December 12, 2013, and deadly riots have ensued in the wake of the execution. (Photo Courtesy Reuters)

Abdul Quader Mollah, 65, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party, was hanged on December 12, 2013 around 10 am in a jail in the capital, Dhaka, government officials reported.

The case against Mollah has contributed to escalating political tension in Bangladesh less than a month before elections are expected to take place. Jamaat-e-Islami is barred from contesting elections but plays a key role in the opposition movement led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Security was tight around the jail where Mollah was hanged. Extra police and paramilitary guards were deployed on the streets of Dhaka. Meanwhile, hundreds of people gathered at a major intersection in the city to celebrate the execution.

Moqbul Ahmed, JI’s acting leader, said in a statement on the party’s website that people would revenge Mollah’s execution by deepening the role of Islam in Bangladesh. The party called a nationwide general strike for Sunday.

While a strong reaction to the decision from JI was expected on the streets of Dhaka, the city remained relatively calm.

However, tensions escalated, and protests broke out across the country.  At least five people were killed earlier near the port city of Chittagong as clashes broke out between opposition activists and police over the weekend.

On Monday, clashes in the southeastern district, Satkhira, resulted in the deaths of five people, killed as police attempted to quell the violent protests.  Since the execution, JI members have taken to the streets, some wielding homemade bombs, and lodged attacks against security personnel.  So far, 25 people have died in the wake of the hanging.

Party activists also clashed with police, torched or smashed vehicles, and set off homemade bombs in the cities of Sylhet and Rajshahi, TV stations have reported.

Scores of people were injured in the latest violence to hit the South Asian country, which has seen weeks of escalating tension as it struggles to overcome extreme poverty and rancorous politics.

In eastern Bangladesh, security officials opened fire to disperse opposition activists, leaving at least three people dead and 15 others wounded, Dhaka’s leading newspaper reported.

Violence spread to Laxmipur district, a few miles east of Dhaka, during a nationwide opposition blockade after elite security forces raided and searched the home of an opposition leader following the execution.

The Supreme Court passed the order of a review petition filed by Mollah against its verdict, awarding him the death penalty for his wartime offences. He had originally been due to be hanged on Tuesday, his lawyer said, but the court delayed the execution to re-consider his latest petition.

His original life sentence had been overturned by the Supreme Court in September, after mass protests called for him to be hanged.

A panel of five judges led by Chief Justice Mohammad Mojammel Hossain rejected the petition after hearing arguments on the appeal against the death penalty, a state prosecutor said.

Mollah is one of five opposition leaders sentenced to death by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), set up in 2010 to investigate atrocities during the 1971 conflict. The conflict is marked by over three million deaths.

Critics of the tribunal say it has been used as a political tool by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is locked in a political feud with BNP leader Begum Khaleda Zia, as a way of weakening the opposition ahead of January elections.

“The execution of… Mollah should never have happened,” said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International’s Bangladesh researcher. “The country is on a razor’s edge… with pre-election tensions running high and almost non-stop street protests.”

But many Bangladeshis support the Court, believing that those convicted of war crimes should be punished, underlining how the events of 42 years ago still resonate in the deeply divided nation of 160 million people.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera– Bangladesh hangs opposition leader— 12 December 2013

LA Times– Five die in Bangladesh clashes over hanging of opposition leader— 16 December 2013

CBS News– Bangladesh opposition leader’s execution sparks deadly riots— 13 December 2013

New York Times– Opposition Leader’s Execution Spurs Protests in Bangladesh— 12 December 2013