LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has attributed Wednesday’s attacks on Shia processions to the continued failure of the state to confront the causes and perpetrators of extremism and violence in the country.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the HRCP said, “The attacks on religious processions in Lahore and Karachi have once again highlighted the fact that besides posing a threat to the integrity and stability of the state the militants, operating under the umbrella of belief, will inevitably step up violence against the sects they disagree with.
“As a rule, such attacks have been followed by an exclusive focus on the security aspect and not at all on the extremist organisations that orchestrate these attacks or the root causes of intolerance. One such organisation has claimed the responsibility of the attacks in Lahore. The government may have banned extremist groups in theory, but they retain their ability to strike at will,” the statement added.
Source: Daily Times – 03.09.2010
Representatives of the Saarc member states in a two-day inter-governmental meeting that began yesterday have almost finalised the draft of ‘Saarc Charter of Democracy’, said Foreign Secretary Mijarul Quayes.
Emerging from the ongoing meeting at Hotel Sheraton in the city, Quayes said at a press briefing that they would come up with the complete outcome on the draft today.
“We’ve progressed much…we can say nearly 80 percent work is done. We hope we’ll be able to come up with the final outcome today,” he said.
Asked about the contents of the draft, Quayes declined to divulge anything. He said, “We’ve the responsibility of preparing a draft…it’ll go through two more processes once the draft is done. We’re working on it and all the members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries are very sincere about the issue.”
Earlier, the two-day meeting tasked with finalising the draft of the ‘Saarc Charter of Democracy’ began at Hotel Sheraton in the morning.
Representatives including parliamentarians, high commissioners, high officials from the eight member countries–Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives–are attending the meeting. Read more »
The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) yesterday said the organization did not support the proposed amendments to the 18th amendment of the constitution stating that the electoral process would be severely affected.
CMEV National Coordinator, D. M. Dissanayake said that if the appointment of the heads of the seven commissions is done by the President through the 18th amendment the independence of the commissions may be lost. “It is vital to have an independent Election Commission in order to ensure that there will be free and fair elections. If we don’t have one then there is no certainty that elections will be held properly,” he said. Read more »
By Yohan Perera
Campaign for Free and Fair Election (CaFFE) yesterday charged that the proposed 18th Amendment to the constitution would inflict a severe blow to Sri Lanka’s democracy because the new amendment allowed the president to appoint members to the ‘Independent’ Commissions.
CaFFE spokesman Keerthi Tennakoon said the reforms replaced the present 10-member Constitutional Council (CC) with a five-member committee comprising the Speaker, the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition as ex officio members but eventually the president would have the final say in appointments to the independent commissions.
“The new five-member committee will only be consulted by the president who will have the power to appoint members to the independent commissions including the elections commission,” he said. Read more »
AUGUST 11, 2010
(New York) – A US State Department report released on August 11, 2010, shows that Sri Lanka has not yet conducted an effective investigation into laws-of-war violations by government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the final months of the war that ended in May 2009, Human Rights Watch said today. The report states that one post-war government inquiry was “ineffective” and that a second inquiry, just under way, raises concerns about its mandate and composition.
“The US State Department report shows that nearly 15 months after the war, the Sri Lankan government has accomplished nothing for the victims of war crimes,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “Real progress on justice demands an international investigation.”
The 18-page State Department report, mandated by the 2010 Appropriations Act and prepared by the Office of War Crimes Issues, examines two ad hoc bodies that the Sri Lankan government established after the 26-year armed conflict ended in 2009.
The State Department report concludes that the “Group of Eminent Persons,” a committee created to examine more than 300 alleged laws-of-war violations detailed in an October 2009 US State Department report, was “ineffective” and “did not produce any discernible results.”
The report states: “The Department of State is not aware of any findings or reports of the Group. The Group did not appear to investigate allegations or to make any recommendations pursuant to its mandate.” The Group of Eminent Persons missed several deadlines for its report, the last in July, and now has been subsumed into the new commission. Read more »
An Interview with Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch
by Raza Rumi of the Friday Times
AUGUST 13, 2010
Following the August 2 murder of the MQM leader Raza Haider, ethnically opposed factions have killed 86 people in Karachi and the violence continues. Three ‘secular’ parties are in the driving seat – the PPP, MQM and ANP – but all with past records of mutual hostility. The Friday Times speaks to Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch on the implications of recent events…
Where does responsibility for the current spate of targeted killings in Karachi lie?
The assassination of MQM provincial assembly member Raza Haider is condemnable and his killers should be apprehended. But the fact is that the subsequent and preceding killings in Karachi are equally unpardonable. Well over 80 people are dead and hundreds have been injured. While the MQM’s anger is to be expected, as a coalition partner in the Sindh government, it is incumbent upon the MQM to uphold the rule of law and not become party to its disruption. There are very many actors seeking to destabilize Karachi, such as radical Islamists and those seeking to damage the transition to democracy in general. The violence in Karachi is a collective political failure of the MQM, the PPP and the ANP and unless it is arrested, all three parties will suffer. In such a situation, only militants and extra-constitutional forces will be the beneficiaries. Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Chief of Immigration has terminated the visa given to Ms. Elizabeth Ogaya who is the Project Co-ordinator of the Human Rights Defenders Protection Programme (HRDPP). Ms. Ogaya, the Kenyan born HR professional is attached to the US-based Non Violence Peace Force (NVPF) in Colombo and was given until the 30th of August to prepare to leave the country. Ms. Ogaya becomes the fourth foreign national to have their visa terminated by the Immigration department from the NVPF organisation.
Florington Asirwatham, the Country Director for NVPF, said that no reason had been given. He was of the view that this cancellation was to do with the general tightening up of visas for NGO’s in the country, as opposed to a direct conflict with the government on the Human Rights Defenders programme, which is still active in the North and East of the island.
Source: The Sunday Leader – 26.08.2010
By Gazala Anver
The Human Rights Commission (HRC) says that over 5000 cases of human rights violations in Sri Lanka are still pending, unresolved, due to the non-appointment of commissioners. The commissioners who are appointed by the Constitutional Council itself is no longer operative.
Up to date, during 2010 alone, there have been around 7500 reported cases, not counting cases carried forward from the previous year. These 7500 cases include torture, harassment, arrest and detention, missing persons, death in custody, termination of employment, pension benefits, and medical negligence among many others. Of these 7500 cases, 2200 cases have been disposed of mostly through mediation.
HRC Secretary, Chandra Ellawala said that they cannot issue recommendations to resolve the balance cases without the presence of the commissioners. “We do the preliminary investigations and prepare things for the commissioners to look into but we cannot issue recommendations to complainants, without them,” Ellawala said. He was however unsure if the commissioners are in the process of being appointed.
Source: The Sunday Leader – 26.08.2010
KATHMANDU, AUG 30 -
I have been covering crime for the last three years, and the kind of issues that I write about I am afraid don’t count as good news. It is a monotonous routine, and the things I write about usually come from the human underbelly. Of course, a few of the things I have written about have had wide readership. For instance, the arrest of glamourous models on charges of human trafficking.
A lot of crime reporting includes the daily tallying up of what police sources tell us. But, occasionally it also involves shining the light on the police themselves. The media has a short attention span, and what that means for many of the burning social issues is that they get overlooked or ignored even after being visible. Such is the level of impunity within the police force that very rarely feathers get ruffled by media reports.
So it came as no surprise that Inspector Dol Raj Shahi, who was accused of helping an inmate escape from the Dillibazaar jail on August 14, was freed from judicial custody on the orders of the Kathmandu District Court. No surprise either, that the police officers accused of misdemeanor always get a clean chit from the judiciary. What is intriguing in the case of Shahi is that no reporter knew when he was taken into judicial custody. Things became public only when he released. The grapevine has it that he was released at the behest of a former police chief. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The abduction of businessman Sanjay Surekha is mired in a controversy of its own magnitude. Kidnappers let Surekha off the hook only after his kin paid more than US$ 200,000 ransom. Police later managed to arrest the culprits. But Additional Inspector General of Police Kalyan Kumar Timalsina, going beyond his jurisdiction, put pressure on the investigators to release the detained kidnappers on bail, promising that they would remain in contact with the police, which they never did. A probe panel formed by the Police Headquarters found AIG Timalsina guilty. The probe panel submitted the findings to Police HQ and Home Minister recommending action against AIG Timalsina, but the punishment never came about. Read more »
KATHMANDU, AUG 30 -
Nepal’s civil war may be over, but the fate of over 1,350 disappeared remains uncertain.
Kamala Tamang, 29, lost her husband Santosh Tamang seven years. He never came back.
On Monday, watching “Shadows of Hope’, a documentary film about the family members of those who went missing, and produced by the International Community of the Red Cross and Nepal Red Cross Society, she recalled how her husband disappeared and her ordeal began.
“Not knowing whether he is dead or alive, I am still hopeful he will be back someday,” she says, holding her 9-year-old daughter.
As the international Day of Disappeared is being commemorated worldwide, Kamala, a conflict victim, cannot even demand of the concerned authorities that they trace the whereabouts of her loved one. Read more »
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