BRIEF: Aung San Suu Kyi Barred from Office

YANGON, Myanmar – According to a new proposed constitution, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Laureate and leader of the opposition party, cannot stand for election because she was once married to a foreigner. Reuters obtained a copy of the charter and confirmed that it says a “person who is entitled to rights and privileges of a foreign government, or a citizen of a foreign country” cannot run for office. The provision is not a new creation but copied over from the 1947 and 1974 country’s constitutions. The proposed constitution will go to referendum in May, but voters are unsure how to vote because the public is not allowed to see the final version yet. The constitution is a key provision in the country’s seven-point “road map to democracy.”

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Proposed Myanmar Charter Bars Suu Kyi from Office – 31 March 2008

BRIEF: Human Rights Group Accuses Sri Lanka of Cover-Up

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Action Against Hunger/Action Contre la Faim (ACF), an international human rights organization, has claimed that the Sri Lankan government is responsible for and is covering up the massacre of 17 of their aid workers in 2006.

The mostly Tamil ACF workers were helping rebuild in the town of Muttur after the tsunami when they were murdered.  They were found on the ground of a ACF compound, shot in the head.

The University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), a Sri Lankan organization, recently published a study on the murders.  The report stated that a local guard and two police constables killed the ACF workers, and that senior police officers covered up the murders.  It stated that three witnesses to the event had already been killed, one was missing, and others had left the country in fear of their lives.  The report also mentioned that since the ceasefire between the government and rebel Tamil Tigers collapsed in 2002, there has been an environment of impunity which has prevented justice from being reached.

The Sri Lankan government originally claimed that the aid workers had been caught in civil war fighting and had been killed by the Tamil Tigers.  The government responded to this latest report by saying that they will conduct an inquiry into the deaths.

Rajan Hoole, a UTHR spokesman, said, “The killing of civilians during time of conflict is a war crime. The perpetrators and their superiors should be brought to justice.”

For more information, please see:

Action Against Hunger – The Muttur Massacre: ACF Demands International Inquiry into Sri Lankan Assassinations – 1 April 2008

BBC News – Sri Lanka accused over massacre – 1 April 2008

NGOs Push Greater Accountability in East Timor

By Hayley J. Campbell
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

DILI, East Timor — Over 170 non-government organizations met in East Timor to vocalize their dissatisfaction with the Timorese government for offering impunity to rebels responsible for the country’s past violence. The forum urged East Timor to be more accountable for both past and present indiscretions.   

The conference mainly focused on the violence that erupted in 2006 after the government fired 600 military members for protesting alleged discrimination. The army divided along factional lines sparking violence that killed 37 and drove 150,000 from their homes. Two years later, roughly 100,000, about a tenth of the population, remain displaced and living in camps outside the capital city, Dili.

At the conference, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao announced that the rebels responsible for the 2006 violence would not be prosecuted. The state, he said, was “not exempt from responsibility”  in allowing the soldiers’ dissatisfaction to escalate. Mr. Gusmao is proposing to pay ex-soldiers to rejoin the army.

But NGOs report that East Timor lacks the economy, security, and housing resources to help its homeless. The forum questioned why crimes committed after 2006 remain unsolved, and why “not one convicted person is in a legally recognized prison facility?”

In 2006, the government looked on as displaced people chased others out of homes and set fire to buildings. “Many people observe that those who commit political crimes go free even though they were recommended for prosecution by independent commissions,” read a statement presented at the forum.

Meanwhile, the International Crisis Group has warned that without greater investigation into the root of the problem, merely rounding up the rebels responsible for last month’s attacks on the President and Prime Minister, will not end the violence.


For more information, please see:
ABC News: Australia — East Timor government, partners, criticized — 01 April 2008

Bloomberg.com — East Timor Faces Unrest Unless Evacuees Resettled, Group Says — 01 April 2008

The Age: Australia — Timor urged to get tough on offenders — 31 March 2008

Pinoy Press: Phillippines — Timor-Leste’s Displacement Crisis — 31 March 2008

The Morung Express — Timor truth commission ready to report findings — 20 March 2008

Iran Human Rights Group Releases Report

By Laura Zuber
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, Middle East

NEW HAVEN, United States – On March 28, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a non-profit organization based in New Haven, Connecticut, released a report titled “Crushing the Reformist Students: A Commentary by Mehrangiz Kar.”  In this report, Kar describes the institutions the conservative Iranian government employed to counter the reform movement amongst Iran’s student population.

Kar argues that during President Khatami’s term in office, the student movement played a crucial role in calling for reforms.  To counter the reformist student movement, Iran’s conservative clerics established parallel student organizations, which were directly under the control of the Supreme Leader, Iran’s highest political and religious authority.  Kar argues that these student organizations used violence to intimidate reformist student groups.

In the report Kar describes how these and similar institutions were used to suppress the academic freedom and the freedom of expression on university campuses.  These institutions “subjected students arbitrarily to harsh punishments and expelled professors on trumped up charges.”

Recently, government suppression of free expression can be seen in the case of Babak Zamanian.  On March 3, Zamanian was sentenced to one year imprisonment on charges of acting against national security.  Zamanian’s lawyer, Behnam Daraiezadeh, stated that his client “was given the maximum sentence for acting against national security by propaganda against the system, which is punishable by three months to one year in jail.”

Zamanian is a student leader at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University of Technology, which is one of Iran’s leading universities.  Amir Kabir is also a long-standing hotbed of student activism.  In December 2006, Zamanian organized a protest against Iranian President Ahmadinejad.  Hundreds of students chanted “Death to dictatorship!” and “Dictator, go home!” while holding upside-down posters of the hard-line president.  The incident made international headlines.

While President Ahmadinejad publicly stated that he welcomed criticism and that he would not exact revenge, few believed him.  Zamanian was arrested in April 2007 and sent to Section 209 of Evin Prison, the infamous solitary confinement block run by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

During his 40 day detention, Zamanian claims that he was subjected to various types of physical abuse.  He stated that his interrogators wanted him to confess to trying to incite an uprising and corroborating with foreign governments to seek change in Iran.

In addition, three other Amir Kabir students, charged of publishing anti-Islamic images in reformist student newspapers, have been sentenced to jail terms of up to three years.  Denying the charges, the three students allege that the images were planted in order to discredit them.  The three were arrested in May 2007 and remain in jail.  In recent months, several students have been arrested during demonstrations calling for their release.

For more information, please see:
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center – “Crushing the Reformist Students: A Commentary by Mehrangiz Kar” (in Farsi) – 28 March 2008

Iran Human Rights Documentation Center – Press Release: Iran Human Rights Documentation Center Releases Report: “Crushing the Reformist Students: A Commentary by Mehrangiz Kar” – 28 March 2008

AFP – Iran Student Activist Sentenced to Jail: Report – 3 March 2008

Los Angeles Times – Broken by Prison, for a Cause all but Lost – 23 December 2007

Tibetan Protesters Arrested as They Storming the Chinese Embassy in Nepal

By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

KATHMANDU, Nepal – A group of 200 Tibetan exiles and Buddhist monks tried to storm the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal on Sunday. Tibetan exiles and their children tried to gain entry to the Chinese embassy’s visa office near the city center.  Shouting “stop the killing”, the protesters attempted to open the office’s metal gate before they were stopped by a police bamboo baton charge.  A Tibetan activist said a girl and a monk were badly hurt and taken to hospital.

At least 200 police officers surrounded the building and hauled the demonstrators away in police vans as they sought to approach the mission.  “A total of 227 Tibetan protesters, including 113 women, were detained and would be freed later,” Surnedra Rai, a police officer at the station where the protesters were held, said.

Nepal is home to around 20,000 Tibetans who began arriving in large numbers in 1959 after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.  Exiled Tibetans in Nepal have been protesting regularly since a riot broke out in the Tibetan, China on March 14.  Nepal’s government has said it cannot allow the protests because it recognizes China’s claim to sovereignty over Tibet.  The BBC Charles Haviland in Kathmandu says the authorities in Nepal have been adopting a “zero tolerance” attitude to Tibetan demonstrations for fear of annoying the country’s powerful neighbor, China.

The UN has criticized the continued mass arrests of pro-Tibetan protesters in Nepal, saying it violates the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. International rights groups, like New York-based Human Rights Watch have repeatedly criticized Nepal’s handling of the Tibetan protests and beating of the protesters.

For more information, please see:

BBC News – Nepal police halt Tibet protest – 30 March 2008

Reuters – Tibetans scuffle with Nepal police, 113 detained – 30 March 2008

Reuters – Nepal police break up Tibet protests, 284 held – 30 March 2008