Sara Duterte will stand alongside son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 2022 elections in move that has alarmed rights activists
The Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter has registered her candidacy for vice-president in next year’s elections and was chosen as the running mate of Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son of the late Filipino dictator, in an alliance that has alarmed human rights activists.
Sara Duterte backed out this week from her reelection bid as mayor of Davao City in the south, then took the place of a largely unknown vice-presidential candidate of her political party, Lakas CMD, in a move that allowed her to seek the second-highest post even after a deadline lapsed for candidates in the 9 May elections.
Uyghur representatives file third attempt to have international criminal court investigate China
Chinese officials are operating in foreign countries to get Uyghurs deported back to China by creating visa problems and coercing them into becoming informants, evidence given to the international criminal court alleges.
The submission by Uyghur representatives is the third attempt to have the ICC investigate Chinese authorities for alleged crimes against humanity and genocide, including the use of forced deportations of Uyghurs back to China.
A man with learning disabilities who is facing the death penalty in Singapore for smuggling a small amount of heroin has had his appeal adjourned and been given an indefinite stay of execution after testing positive for Covid.
Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a Malaysian man arrested in April 2009 when he was 21 for attempting to smuggle 43 grams of heroin into Singapore, has been on death row since 2010. His execution had been scheduled for Wednesday.
Counter-meeting attendees urge leaders not to let China off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation
Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.
Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.
Authorities using predictive policing and human surveillance on Muslims in Xinjiang, thinktank says
Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.
The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions.
Letter from 137 lawmakers urges fund to drop stakes in firms accused of human rights violations or linked to Chinese state
A cross-party group of more than 137 parliamentarians, including 117 MPs, have called on parliament’s pension fund to disinvest from Chinese companies accused of complicity in gross human rights violations or institutions linked to the Chinese state.
The signatories include Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, and former Conservative cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Tebbit. Others include the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, and shadow foreign affairs minister Stephen Kinnock. The Conservative MP David Amess was also a signatory, one of his last political acts before his death on Friday.
Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents
Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.
An international peace webinar drew speakers and an audience from across the world who condemned the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance. Jim McIlroy reports.
Biden administration announces plan after meeting between US national security adviser and China’s top diplomat
The US president, Joe Biden, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are planning to meet by video link before the end of the year, a senior US official said on Wednesday.
There is an “agreement in principle” for the “virtual bilateral”, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Protesters parading an effigy of Rodrigo Duterte in Manila call for policies that prioritise people and planet
A monstrous effigy of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was paraded through the country’s capital Manila on Friday as protesters joined a worldwide youth climate action.
About a hundred young people wearing masks gathered in one of several socially distanced demonstrations around the country in support of the global climate strike by the international Fridays for Future movement.
Case is ‘major blow’ in country with weak workers’ rights and puts trade deals in question, says Human Rights Watch
One of Thailand’s most prominent union leaders is facing three years in prison for his role in organising a railway safety campaign, in a case described as the biggest attack on organised labour in the country in decades.
Rights advocates say the case involving Sawit Kaewvarn, president of the State Railway Union of Thailand, will have a chilling effect on unions and threatens to further weaken workers’ rights in the country.
4Mins Read Green Queen Media publishes “APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report – APAC Acceleration”, the 2nd edition of its award-winning Asia Alternative Protein Industry Report 2021.
Campaigner for human rights in Indonesia from soon after independence and for freedom in regions it controlled
Carmel Budiardjo, who has died aged 96, campaigned for human rights and justice in Indonesia, and contributed significantly to the cause of freedom and self-determination in regions it controlled – East Timor (now Timor-Leste), Aceh and West Papua.
In the 1950s Carmel, a Londoner, and her Indonesian husband, Suwondo Budiardjo (known as Bud), began working in Indonesia, helping to build a new independent nation after the long period of Dutch colonial rule. Carmel was an economics researcher for the foreign ministry and Bud was deputy minister at the sea communications department.
Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province
Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.
Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.
Despite the risks, Anchana Heemmina wants justice for victims of the Malay Muslims’ decades-old insurgency – and for herself
Much of Anchana Heemmina’s work involves listening to stories of immeasurable pain, all part of her campaign to stop the cycle of violence that has long haunted Thailand’s troubled southern provinces.
Her work striving for human rights and to prevent torture by state authorities has put Heemmina’s life in danger.
I was scared that the comments would get so bad that they would encourage people to kill me
Friends rally support from Canberra to Washington to ask Chinese government to show compassion to Lei who is separated from her children
Two months before she was detained by Chinese authorities on opaque national security grounds, the Australian journalist Cheng Lei was catching up with her colleagues from the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) for dinner.
Gathering at a Japanese restaurant in Beijing, the group enjoyed multiple courses and a few drinks, while sharing banter about work.
Analysis: Proof of vaccination is nothing new and any requirement that people use a ‘health pass’ will involve balancing various rights
With greater numbers of people being vaccinated and countries looking to reopen borders safely, the introduction of some form of vaccine passport seems increasingly likely.
For New Zealand, where the elimination strategy has been largely successful but which remains vulnerable to border breaches, proof of vaccination may well be a condition of entry.
‘We will chop them up’: an Indonesian police chief implicated in alleged human rights abuses against a group of West Papuan activists was trained by Australian Federal Police
Charles Sraun was chatting with five friends at a house in Merauke, the easternmost city of the disputed Indonesian territory of West Papua, when police stormed the building.
The 39-year-old health worker says he and his friends, all members of a pro-independence organisation called the National Committee for West Papua, were beaten with batons, made to lie face down and some forced to undress, before being cable-tied and bundled into the back of a vehicle belonging to the Indonesian paramilitary police unit, Brimob.
Signs that detainees were victims of trafficking are being overlooked, say campaigners
Lawyers are challenging the Home Office policy of deporting people to Vietnam who could be victims of trafficking after the UK sent a second charter flight to the country within a matter of weeks.
The challenge follows concern from lawyers and charities that some victims of trafficking could be wrongly removed from the UK under a speedy processing system for migrants in detention known as “detained asylum casework”.
Two UK warships will permanently deploy to the Asia-Pacific region, the defence secretary Ben Wallace has announced. He said the UK would use the ships to carry out freedom of navigation missions. In practice, the UK wants to compete with China, the major regional power. Elite commandos will also deploy in the near future.
Wallace announced the decision in Japan. He had recently arrived from the US where he had toured military bases and made a series of speeches about cooperation and military plans.
Following on from the strike group’s inaugural deployment, the United Kingdom will permanently assign two ships in the region from later this year
The HMS Queen Elizabeth strike group Wallace referred to is currently en route to the region. It’s expected to start a series of military exercises with allies in the Indian Ocean on 26 July.
At the announcement, Japanese defence minister Nobuo Kishi echoed Wallace.
We reconfirmed our shared position that we firmly oppose attempts to change the status quo by coercion, and the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific based on the rule of law
Both countries and the US are keen to limit Chinese power in the region. The three have become increasingly close in recent years.
More military deals
Behind the rhetoric and posturing, the UK is also working on military deals with the US and Japan.
Wallace and Kishi said they also agreed to accelerate discussions on possible collaboration on Japan’s next-generation FX fighter jet, focusing on engine systems and subsystems.
At the end of his US tour, Wallace and US counterpart Lloyd Austin extended an existing maritime and aircraft carrier cooperation deal. They also emphasised the “interoperability” of the two militaries. As was reported in April, the Queen Elizabeth carrier has more US than UK fighter aircraft aboard it.
Free navigation?
Wallace’s comments on freedom of navigation are important. Only recently a diplomatic row developed over a UK warship sailing close to Crimea. As a result, Russian ships and aircraft buzzed the destroyer, which was in waters Russia considers its own.
As in the Asia-Pacific, the background was one of military deals. In that case, between the UK and Ukraine. The ship had BBC journalists onboard to record the incident.
A week later, a trove of secret documents was found at a Kent bus stop. Parts of these were published in the press. And they seemed to show that the UK had intentionally used the ‘freedom of navigation’ exercise to draw a Russian reaction for propaganda purposes.
Anti-China alliance
The deployment, and those visits to Japan and the US, come amid what is termed the ‘Asia-Pacific tilt‘. The UK has decided to escalate its military activity in the region in a bid to counter China. While the main aim is to dominate the area, the new mission will turn a tidy profit for defence firms.
Muslims in other countries, including India and Pakistan, are celebrating Eid al-Adha today. Solidarity of the Muslim Ummah after the Eid prayers, Special prayers were offered for the security, development, prosperity and eradication of the Corona pandemic.
Due to the Corona pandemic, Eid-ul-Adha is being celebrated in a limited way in some countries, including Pakistan and India. People also gathered for Eid prayers at the Jama Masjid in Delhi, India
The temperature of many people was also checked on arrival at the Eid Gah to help determine if a person was infected by corona. In such cases, these people are told to return home and isolate. Under normal circumstances, Muslim families meet their relatives and friends on the occasion of Eid and offer Eid prayers together, but the Corona pandemic disrupted traditional Eid celebrations.
Eid prayers were held in all cities, districts and villages of Pakistan, scholars highlighted the importance of the philosophy of sacrifice. After Eid prayers, special supplications were offered for the unity of the Muslim Ummah, security of the homeland, development, prosperity and eradication of the Corona pandemic.
Supplications were also offered for the liberation of occupied Kashmir and Palestine and for the end of the ongoing strife in Muslim world. Animals are being sacrificed following the Abrahamic tradition after the prayers.
On the occasion, special security arrangements have been made across the country under which a heavy contingent of police has been deployed outside mosques and Eid venues.
This important festival of Eid-ul-Adha lasts for three days and for animals sacrificial.
Loghman Sawari was 17 when he was placed in a men-only centre on Manus Island. Nearly a decade on, and another child refugee wants to know why he’s still in detention
One of the child refugees unlawfully detained on Manus Island alongside Loghman Sawari has said it is “unbelievable” he remains detained, eight years on, while an Australian family has said they have repeatedly offered their own home as sanctuary for him if he were released from detention.
This came as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees again urged Australia to end offshore asylum processing which “undermined the rights of those seeking safety and protection and significantly harmed their physical and mental health”.
Greste, who spent more than 400 days behind bars after he and two colleagues were charged with terrorism offences while on assignment for Al Jazeera in Egypt, said the press freedom tracker would record incidents, both attacks on press freedom and positive steps forward, and help the AJF and other stakeholders assess the state of press freedom in the region.
Peter Greste wants to help the Australian public understand the challenges facing press freedom in Australia.
Journalism professor Peter Greste … biggest challenge facing press freedom in Australia is making the public understand the threats facing media. Image: Screenshot/Pacific Media Watch
“It’s designed to be something that looks at the state of press freedom, the direction of travel and whether it’s up or down across the Asia-Pacific region,” he said.
“We’re also being very careful not to rate countries because we don’t think that’s necessarily helpful. What we’re looking at, though, is a way of comparing and contrasting the way that various countries handle press freedom across the region and the broad direction of trends.”
Greste said the AJF would use it as a tool “for opening political and diplomatic conversations and as a tool for advocacy”.
The AJF was formed in 2017 by Greste, lawyer Chris Flynn and former journalist and strategic communications consultant Peter Wilkinson. Flynn and Wilkinson worked with the Greste family to free Greste from an Egyptian prison.
Complement advocacy work
The press freedom tracker, which was launched in Brisbane yesterday, will complement the AJF’s advocacy work and how the organisation engages with governments to discuss press freedom issues.
Greste said the AJF was also working on its “regional dialogue” project, which is a series of semi-formal meetings between news companies, governments and security agencies designed to help each understand the other better and find better ways of working together.
“One of the chief arguments is that there’s often talk about the trade-off between press freedom and national security, the balance between press freedom and national security, which implies that if you have more of one, by definition, you have less of the other,” he said.
“We disagree with that characterisation. We think that press freedom is actually part of the national security framework. It indirectly helps government function better, it helps the system work more effectively, it helps expose corruption within governments and organise crime.”
The biggest challenge facing press freedom in Australia, said Professor Greste who is also UNESCO chair in journalism and communication at the University of Queensland, was making the general population understand the threats facing media.
“Opening up a daily newspaper, it doesn’t feel as though Australia press is limited in any way. We don’t have explicit censorship and not seeing journalists thrown in prison. Up until the [Australian Federal Police] raids [on the ABC and a News Corp journalist], we weren’t seeing police kicking down the doors of journalists in a rage reaction. So it doesn’t look as though journalism is in a crisis,” he said.
Greste said that if the public had a better understanding of how “dangerous it is for sources within government to speak to journalists anonymously, confidentially”, and the effect that has on stories that are not being told, he believed it would be more widely recognised that journalism in this country was “not as healthy as we’d like to believe”.
No constitutional protection
“The challenge is getting the public to understand the role that journalism plays, and appreciate that role, and recognise the loss of press freedom that we’ve seen since 9/11. The impact that the national security legislation has had on press freedom.”
In Australia specifically, the AJF is pursuing the creation of a media freedom act that would help provide protections to journalists and compel the courts to consider press freedom in any case that would affect the state of press freedom in the country.
“Australia is about the worst Western liberal democracy in the world when it comes to legal and constitutional protections for things like freedom of speech and press freedom,” Greste said.
“We have no constitutional protection at all.”
The AJF hopes a media freedom act would help protect news organisations from police raids such as the AFP’s 2019 raid on the ABC’s Sydney headquarters by insisting judges be obligated to consider press freedom and the public interest before signing warrants to allow such raids to take place.
Greste said that while a parliamentary inquiry in August last year recommended sweeping reforms, politicians need to find the will to implement the recommendations.
“The opportunity for the AJF is to help the public understand this and to find and develop political support for media freedom,” he said.
“We’re getting some support, we’ve had a number of politicians approach us. We’re in the process of drafting an act. We’ve been speaking to a number of independent MPs about working on the idea and certainly politicians in the Coalition and in the Labor Party privately have been expressing support for the idea.”
“It’s just that it’s hard to put on the political agenda and get the kind of moment that we need to see a piece of legislation go through.”
Republished with permission from the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.
Myanmar’s junta authorities nominated Aung San Suu Kyi on more corruption charges, her lawyer said on Tuesday, adding to charge sheet that could see the Nobel laureate jailed for more than a decade.
A mass uprising in Myanmar against the military’s February coup has been met with a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 890 civilians, according to a local monitoring group.
Suu Kyi, 76, who is under house arrest, is already on trial for sedition, illegally importing walkie talkies and flouting coronavirus restrictions during elections last year, her party clean sweep and won.
She will face four more charges of corruption, her lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told reporters on Tuesday, adding to those she already faces over claims she illegally accepted $600,000 in cash and around 11 kilos of gold.
Her legal team has yet to see “the first information reports and other documents”, he said, adding that the charges would be heard by a court in the second city of Mandalay from July 22.
Tuesday’s hearing on charges Suu Kyi violated Covid restrictions was adjourned, as no prosecution witnesses showed up, Khin Maung Zaw said.
On Monday a prosecution witness failed to testify after becoming infected with the coronavirus.
Infections are spiking in Myanmar, with the State Administration Council as the military junta calls itself reporting more than 5,000 new cases on Monday, risen up from fewer than 50 per day in early May.
An earthquake struck eastern Tajikistan on Saturday morning, killing at least five people, according to authorities in the mountainous Central Asian country.
Tremors from the 5.9 magnitude quake could be felt in the capital of Dushanbe, 165 kilometres (100 miles) southwest of the epicenter.
“Dozens of houses were destroyed,” the Tajik committee for emergency situations said.
“Power lines were also partly damaged” in three villages in the district of Tajikabad, where all the victims lived.
The quake struck at 7:14 am (0214 GMT) and at a depth of 10 kilometers, according to the committee and state news agency.
Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has ordered a commission of enquiry headed by the prime minister, Russian media reported.
Turkmenistan, bordering Afghanistan, is frequently hit by earthquakes.
Non-binding resolution also calls for governments to impose further sanctions on China as tensions rise
The European parliament has overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on diplomatic officials to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in response to continuing human rights abuses by the Chinese government.
In escalating tensions between the EU and China, the non-binding resolution also called for governments to impose further sanctions, provide emergency visas to Hong Kong journalists and further support Hongkongers to move to Europe.
