By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine security forces rescued scores of hostages held by Muslim rebels in the southern city Zamboanga. Rebels struck back, taking the local police chief captive early Tuesday morning. He was released several hours later.

Senior Superintendent Jose Chiquito Malayo was engaged in negotiations with the rebels for the release of more civilians Tuesday morning when he was abducted at gunpoint and held hostage by the rebel group.

He was captured in a coastal mangrove area near Zamboanga city, a major trading center that has been paralyzed for the past nine days by the chaotic hostage crisis. “Pursuit operations” were undertaken to rescue him according to a spokesperson for the Philippine National Police, but he was released a few hours later, accompanied by 23 other hostages.

The setback coincided with a pronouncement by Philippine authorities that significant progress was being made against the rebels. Military officials said more than 120 hostages had been freed in the past 24 hours.

It is unclear how many people remain captives.

The Philippine armed forces have been carrying out operations to try to “constrict” the rebels, who came ashore early last week and took some 180 hostages in several coastal districts. Military attack helicopters fired rockets at rebel positions Monday in an effort to curb the rebel offensive.

The recent violence has substantially disrupted life in Zamboanga, a largely Christian city in the southwestern region of Mindanao, the southernmost island in the Philippines.

The crisis has led to increased fears of instability in a region where the Philippine central government has been attempting to pursue a new peace plan after decades of unrest.

President Benigno Aquino III and other top Philippine officials are overseeing authorities’ response. Authorities estimate the violence has left more than 100 people dead, most of them rebels, and displaced more than 80,000 residents. Military officials say they have captured scores of rebels and handed them over to police.

The unrest has also caused schools and businesses to close. Hundreds of houses have been burned during the fighting. Philippine authorities accused the rebels of deliberately setting the fires.

The rebels are believed to be a faction of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a separatist movement which was founded in 1971 by Nur Misuari. Their goal appears to be establishing an autonomous region for Muslims in the mainly Catholic Philippines. The MNLF signed a peace deal with the central government in Manila in 1996, but some of its members have diverged and continue a violent campaign.

Misuari issued a “declaration of independence” for the Moro nation — referring to Mindanao’s indigenous Muslim population — last month after complaining that the MNLF had been left out of a recent wealth-sharing agreement with another insurgent group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera — Offensive frees hostages in Philippine city — 17 September 2013

Gulf News — Dozens of hostages freed in Philippine city — 17 September 2013

Philippine Star — Captured Zambo police chief released by MNLF — 18 September 2013

CNN — Hostages freed in Philippines; Muslim rebels capture police chief — 17 September 2013

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

NEW DELHI, India– An Indian judge will announce Friday whether four men should hang after fatally raping a young woman on a bus last December. The case presents a major test for India’s paradoxical death penalty.

 

Indian judges hand down an average of 130 death sentences per year; they have executed only three people in 17 years. Despite this seeming reluctance to carry out the sentences,India voted last year against a U.N. draft resolution which called for a global moratorium on executions.

In November, India ended what many human rights groups had perceived as a de facto moratorium on capital punishment after executing Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, a militant convicted for the 2008 attack on Mumbai. Three months later, however, India hanged Mohammad Afzal Guru  for a 2001 militant attack on parliament.

“In the past year, India has made a full-scale retreat from its previous principled rejection of the death penalty,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

She called for the complete abolition of the death penalty.

Prosecutors want the “harshest punishment” to be given to bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit-seller Pawan Gupta, and unemployed Mukesh Singh for the rape and murder of the woman. The hope is to send a signal to society that such attacks would not be tolerated.

Comments on social media suggest that popular opinion favors executing the men, yet a survey by CNN-IBN-The Hindu newspaper in July showed Indians were divided on capital punishment.

The four men were found guilty this week of luring the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist onto a bus on December 16, raping and torturing her with a metal bar and then throwing her naked and bleeding into the street. She died two weeks later. Defense counsel A.P. Singh urged Judge Yogesh Khanna to ignore demands for the death penalty, which characterized as  “primitive and cold-blooded.

If the men are sentenced to death, a potentially multi-year appeals process lies ahead. The case will go the High Court and then the Supreme Court. If the courts confirm the sentences, the final decision will lie with the president, who has the power to grant clemency.

The death penalty should be imposed only in the “rarest of rare” cases, according to a Supreme Court ruling from the early 1980s. However opponents say the reality is quite different.

Indian courts sentenced 1,455 prisoners to death between 2001 and 2011, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. During the same period, sentences for 4,321 prisoners were commuted to life imprisonment.

There are 477 people on death row. Many have been there for years. Human rights groups are alarmed by the policy tendencies of President Pranab Mukherjee, who was sworn into office in July 2012. He has rejected 11 appeals for clemency, confirming the death penalty for 17 people.

Top politicians, including interior minister Sushilkumar Shinde, have said the death penalty is guaranteed in the case. Such comments could add pressure on the court to make a populist ruling to satisfy the public’s outrage.

For more information, please see:

Los Angeles Times — Indian police praised for handling of bus rape; other cases languish — 12 September 2013

Wall Street Journal — Rape Case: Sentencing Arguments — 11 September 2013

BBC — India Delhi gang rape four ‘deserve death penalty’ — 11 September 2013

Reuters — Delhi gang rape trial puts focus on death penalty paradox — 13 September 2013

By Brian Lanciault

Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

ASIA– Nearly 24% of men surveyed in a U.N. report looking at violence against women in parts of Asia have admitted to committing at least one rape. Some ten thousand men from six countries took part in the survey.

Researchers interviewed more than 10,000 men at nine sites in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia,Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka in a first of its kind, multi-country survey on the prevalence of rape. Of those who admitted rape, just under half said they had done so more than once.

The prevalence of rape varied between countries.

In Papua New Guinea, more than six out of 10 men surveyed admitted forcing a woman to have sex. It was least common in areas of Bangladesh, where it was just under one in 10 and Sri Lanka where it was just over one in 10. In Cambodia, China and Indonesia it ranged from one in five to almost half of all men surveyed.

The men in the survey were questioned by trained male interviewers, and were left alone to record the answers to the most sensitive questions. The word “rape” was not used. Men were asked indirect questions such as, “Have you ever forced a woman who was not your wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex?” The results averaged around 11% of the men surveyed. When the question was altered to account for forcible intercourse with a wife or girlfriend, the average rose to 24%.

Nearly three quarters of those who committed rape said they did so for reasons of “sexual entitlement”. Report author Dr Emma Fulu said: “They believed they had the right to have sex with the woman regardless of consent.”

“The second most common motivation reported was to rape as a form of entertainment, so for fun or because they were bored,” Fulu reported. Some indicated using rape as a form of punishment or because they were angry. According to Fulu, “the least common motivation was alcohol.”

Men who had suffered violence as children, especially childhood sexual abuse were more likely to have committed rape.

“These data justifiably create global outrage, accentuated by horrific recent high-profile cases, including the brutal gang rape of a student in New Delhi,” said Dr. Michele Decker from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

More than half of non-partner rape perpetrators first did so as adolescents, which affirms that young people are a crucial target population for prevention of rape.

“The challenge now is to turn evidence into action, to create a safer future for the next generation of women and girls,” said Dr. Decker.

For more information, please see:

Hindustan Times — Asia-Pacific study points to a seething crisis of rape — 10 September 2013

The Hindu — ‘One in four men across Asia admit to having committed rape’ — 10 September 2013

BBC — Almost a quarter of men ‘admit to rape in parts of Asia’ — 9 September 2013

Bloomberg — One in Four Men Surveyed in Asian Study Say They Raped — 10 September 2013