PNG Police Kills Underage Detainee
By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea – A Papua New Guinea (PNG)policeman shot a 15 year old boy who had been held in police custody. The police was arrested immediately and was charged for willful murder.
The Post Courier newspaper reports Micah Anaiwe, provincial police commander, as saying, the policeman is alleged to have gone into a cell and shot the underage suspect many times. The teenager was in police custody after he stabbed a supermarket manager during a robbery in the Oro province town.
According to reports, the the policeman was under the influence and had allegedly been drinking with owners of the supermarket before the shooting took place.
This is the second time a shooting by a police officer of a suspect in custody has happened in the province.
Just last month, a suspect arrested by two police officers was taken to a nearby stream and shot.
Superintendent Dominic Kakas says PNG’s Police Commissioner, Gary Baki, takes such matters very seriously and investigation will be underway.
“We’ve done our level best to try and win back public confidence. He’s taken on a number of initiatives to also improve policing and so on and this sort of like sets back a lot of positive developments that have taken place.”
Beginning of this year, there has been an investigation by the United Nation that there is a high incidence of police brutality and torture at PNG police cells, and the government was urged to address the issue and improve the situation.
For more information, please see:
Radio New Zealand – PNG Police Commissioner concerned at shooting in custody – 27 October 2010
Radio New Zealand – PNG policeman arrested following fatal shooting of jailed child – 27 October 2010
Radio Australia – PNG Policeman kills detainee in cell – 26 October 2010
Vietnamese Bloggers Held Indefinitely for Government Critiques
David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia
HANOI, Vietnam – In South Vietnam, the police arrested two bloggers in a new crackdown on public criticism against the state. The government’s politically motivated prosecutions of independent bloggers and critics of the government violates their rights guaranteed under international law and spotlights the country’s poor human rights record, Human Rights Watch said.
The current governing Communist Party is planning to hold its five-year congress in January, when party leaders will be selected in a secretive election process and will map the country’s course for the next five years. The “pre-Party Congress crackdown” have heightened their scrutiny and government critics are being targeted.
“The Vietnam government is shameless in constructing charges and rationales to keep peaceful critics like Dieu Cay behind bars,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. ”
It was the latest in a series of rights violations against politically-oriented bloggers, Human Rights watchdogs said.
“In a country where the state controls all traditional media outlets, independent bloggers have emerged as important sources of news, information, and social commentary,” Robertson said. “The government should embrace the key role that independent bloggers are playing in society instead of harassing and imprisoning them.”
“They’re just making it up as they go along,” he said.
“The Vietnam government is shameless in constructing charges and rationales to keep peaceful critics like Dieu Cay behind bars,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. ”
Authorities submitted an unofficial statement saying Dieu Cay, the name for a traditional pipe, was being investigated under Penal Code Article 88, which covers “propaganda against the state”.
Dieu Cay is the founder of an independent group called the Club of Free Journalists. The tax charges were widely viewed as a pretext to muzzle his criticism of the government and its policy toward China. On October 18th, police in Ho Chi Minh City also arrested Phan Thanh Hai, another member of the group. Two other members, Ta Phong Tan and Uyen Vu, both bloggers, were placed under intrusive police surveillance at their homes. Police also briefly detained a democracy activist, Do Nam Hai, on October 19 according to the New York based Human Rights watch dogs.
Vietnam bans opposition political parties and independent media require all associations, religious groups and trade unions to come under government control.
The 17th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which begins on October 28th in Hanoi, provides an excellent opportunity for ASEAN heads of state and other governments to raise concerns about the persecution of government critics, Human Rights Watch said.
Dieu Cay, charged with tax evasion was sentenced to a 30 month jail sentence after inspiring people to protest at the Olympic torch ceremonies in Ho Chi Minh City shortly before Beijing Olympics. Cay criticized China’s policies in Tibet and Vietnam’s handling of the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea.
For more imformation, please see:
Human Rights Watch –Vietnam: Free Peaceful Bloggers and Government Critics – 22 October 2010
Qatar Tribune – Vietnam blogger’s jail-term ends, but yet to be freed – 26 October 2010
GMA News – Vietnam arrests 2 bloggers over anti-govt remarks – 26 October 2010
Guyana Sugar Workers Strike For Higher Wages
By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America
GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Thousands of workers in the sugar industry recently carried out a strike on the Guyana Sugar Corporation, the largest sugar producing company in the country. The workers are protesting unfair wages and calling for a 15 percent pay increase.
With hopes of producing 264,000 tons of sugar by the end of the crop, the state run Guyana Sugar Corporation said that the one-day strike would not result in an actual loss of production but would reduce the number of available production days of dry-weather to plough the fields.
Although the Guyana Sugar Corporation seems unwilling to accommodate the demands for the pay increase demanded by the workers, Paul Bhim, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, stated that “[t]he crop is still in an early stage because we are so far behind and as we go towards completing the crop, we’ll have more of an idea of what we could actually offer the workers in terms of a wage increase.”
In a statement released to the public, the Guyana Agricultural and General workers Union said it will not apologize for calling for the strike even though the sugar company is underperforming.
It is traditional for the sugar corporation to indicate whether there will be pay raises every year during the month of October. However, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union claims that the strike is in response to the sugar company’s silence on the issue.
The Guyana Sugar Corporation claims that it has been holding talks with the union regarding the pay issue and the need for the workers to improve their attendance, which averages 57 percent attendance for working days.
Guyana is the Caribbean’s leading sugar producer and one of a handful of countries in the region that continues to export sugar to the United States and Europe.
In an interview with demerarawaves.com, Bihm indicated that the striking workers would lose one day’s pay for their actions.
For more information, please see:
Caricom News Network – Sugar Workers on Strike for Higher Wages – 19 October 2010
Caribbean News Now – Thousands of Sugar Workers Strike in Guyana – 19 October 2010
Bloomberg Businessweek – Guyana Sugar Workers Launch 1-day Strike – 18 October 2010
Nation News – Guyana Sugar Workers on Strike – 18 October 2010
Arranged Marriage Has 3 and 5-Year-Olds Engaged in Syria
By Eric C. Sigmund
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
DAMASCUS, Syria – Two children in Syria, a boy of five-years-old and a girl of three, became engaged last week after being forced into the relationship through an arranged marriage. The children’s parents contend that both children consented to the engagement and that they love each other. Although the parents of the children say that there will be no formalization of the marriage for at least a decade, the issue of arranged marriages has again received international attention.
The boy’s father reported that he vowed to have his son, Khalid, engaged by the age of five and claims that his son fell in love with the girl, Hala, on a family trip. He explained that after their encounter, both children suffered from “loneliness” when they were apart. After returning home, Khalid refused to return to his day care center unless Hala attended with him reported the boy’s father. Khalid’s parents note that their son’s new fiancé felt similar symptoms and that upon discussing the matter with Hala’s parents, agreed that the children should be engaged.
Arranged marriages are common in the region and often involve negotiations for the exchanged of goods or favors for a promise to marry. Khalid’s father told Gulf News that he will “bear the education expenses of both the children till they graduate.”
Both families are facing growing criticism from within and outside of the country. Articles in numerous Syrian newspapers and online discussion forums expressed their disapproval of the engagement. “How can these idiotic and clearly blind parents not see that they are merely encouraging the destruction of their children’s childhoods?” comments one woman on an online forum. But Forward Magazine, a Syrian magazine written in English, notes that Syrian marriages are traditionally arranged at an early age. Typically, when a boy reaches puberty, his mother will search for a suitable female, usually younger than their son, to be his wife explains the magazine. Despite the prevalence and custom of arranged marriages in Syria however, the ages of Khalid and Hala makes this case very unique.
The United Nations has recommended that nations set a minimum age for marriage at 18 for both men and women, warning that child marriages often reinforce poverty and low education. A number of international human rights agreements protect children from underage marriages however, enforcement of these agreements is often lax especially when a society’s customs and beliefs are implicated.
Khalid’s father notes that it is possible that the children may change their minds when they are older but failed to comment on whether the engagement could be broken off. “We know that Khalid or Hala might change their mind in the future” states Khalid’s father “but what we do know at this stage is that they are very happy and talk to each other everyday.” Khalid is waiting until he is 15 to marry Hala.
For more information, please see:
CBS News – Syrian Boy, 5, Engaged to Girlfriend, 3 – 25 Oct. 2010
Huffington Post – Syrian Boy, 5, Proposes to 3-Year-Old Girlfriend – 25 Oct. 2010
New York Daily News – Boy, 5, Engaged to Girl, 3, in Arranged Marriage in Syria – 25 Oct. 2010
Gulf News – Five-Year-Old Khalid Pops the Question to Hala, Three – 21 Oct. 2010