AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

SOUTHEAST ASIA ACTION NETWORK

August 2011

Countries In This issue: Countries in this Issue: Cambodia,p. 32 Indonesia p. Indonesia, p. 4 Myanmar, p. 4 Myanmar, p. 54 Philippines, p. Philippines, p. Thailand, p. 5 6 Thailand, p. 7 Vietnam, p. 5 Viet Nam, p. 7

Australia Update, by Leila Chacko, Country Specialist

The governments of Australia and Malaysia signed a deal in July to send 800 asylum seekers from Australia to Malaysia. Australia, in exchange, agreed to resettle 4,000 refugees from Malaysia. The Australian government claimed it would help curb human trafficking and smuggling by showing smugglers that potential asylum seekers would not be welcome in the country. Australia receives thousands of asylum seekers each year, and the country is illequipped to deal with the numbers of people.
Photo from Adam

Amnesty Australia condemned the exchange of asylum seekers. The UNHCR says there are 90,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia. Therefore, those transferred to Malaysia would not have adequate access to social support. Furthermore, asylum seekers in Malaysia have been subject to torture in the past, and Malaysia is not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, nor has it ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Earlier this month, the High Court of Australia halted the deal, saying that it needs further review. It could, however, still be implemented in the future. SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 1

Special Report from Cambodia By the SEAsia Co-group

August 2011

On 2 August 2011, the well-respected Cambodian NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) received a letter from the Ministry of Interior ordering it to suspend [its] activities until the end of the year, citing vague administrative and procedural breaches, such as failing to Land grabbing is a modify its leadership structure. According to massive social and political legal experts, there is no legal basis issue in Cambodia today, whatsoever for this sudden, shocking, and affecting tens of thousands arbitrary order. STTs primary work has been of people nation-wide documentation, research, and advocacy whose land and property is concerning land rights of the urban and rural poor. In a context of widespread forced seized and residents evictions the involuntary removal of displaced to make room persons from their homes or land, directly or for commercial enterprises indirectly attributable to the State (UNHCR, logging, mining, cash 1996). Land grabbing is a massive social crop plantations, urban and political issue in Cambodia today, property development. affecting tens of thousands of people nationwide whose land and property is seized and residents displaced to make room for commercial enterprises logging, mining, cash crop plantations, urban property development. According to a recent article in The Guardian, an estimated 30,000 people are displaced annually in Cambodia. Forced evictions have increasingly gained international attention, and are a focus of Amnesty Internationals work in Southeast Asia. A week after the suspension of STT, the World Bank suspended new lending to Cambodia in a dispute over a property development project in Phnom Penh that is filling in a city lake and displacing thousands of people to make way for luxury accommodation and high-end shops. There are enormous concerns that the suspension of STT is an ominous sign of things to come, and it has greatly amplified concern over a proposed NGO and Associations law which would impose burdensome, complex, and expensive formal registration processes on any civil society group. The proposed law effectively opens the door to government strangling civil society, because of provisions that would allow officials to deny groups permission to operate (or simply leave them pending indefinitely), without any transparent processes or avenues of appeal. It should be emphasized that it would not be the first time that arbitrary bureaucratic mazes have been imposed in Cambodia to effectively undermine peoples rights. SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 2

Amnesty International is continuing to monitor and vigorously campaign for freedom of association in Cambodia.

August 2011

Check out recent Southeast Asia UAs

Indonesia:
Issued 5 August 2011 FEARS FOR SAFETY OF INDONESIAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST Human rights defender Yones Douw has received medical treatment after he was beaten by military officers on 15 June. However, he continues to fear for his safety and the safety of his family after he received information that he is under surveillance by members of the Indonesian security forces. Issued 19 August AUTHORITIES REFUSE PRISONER MEDICAL CARE Papuan political prisoner Kimanus Wenda is in urgent need of medical treatment. He has a tumour in his stomach, and needs to be transferred to a hospital to undergo an operation. Prison authorities have refused to pay for his transport and medical costs.

Your Country Team at Work and Play:

Myanmar Country Specialist Nancy Galib (left), and Co-Group Coordinator Claudia Vandermade (center) tabled at the Steve Earle concert at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA on August 13th. After the show we were able to meet Steve, and gave him a Filep Karma t-shirt.

SEAsia Action Network Newsletter

August 2011

Update: Indonesia In the News:

President Obama will be traveling to Bali in November for a summit of East Asian leaders, the first attended by a U.S. president. In advance of that trip, rights groups and critics in Congress warn that the administration is too eager to brand Indonesia as a democratic success story. Referencing the minor sentences of troops involved in torture and murder in Papua, Tim Rieser, senior policy advisor to Senator Patrick Leahy said: "If they were serious about accountability, these kinds of crimes would be severely punished. (Report from the Jakarta Globe.)

Amnesty News:
Papuan activist Melkianus Bleskadit has been imprisoned in West Papua province for his involvement in a peaceful protest and for raising an independence flag. His sentence highlights the continuing use of repressive legislation to criminalize peaceful political activities in the province. Amnesty International calls for his immediate and unconditional release. Amnesty International calls on the Indonesian authorities to halt attacks on the countrys Ahmadi minority after a radical Islamist group led an attack on the Ahmadiyya in Makassar, South Sulawesi. Hundreds of members of the group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) attacked some ten Ahmadiyya in their place of worship on a recent Sunday. Armed with machetes and bamboo sticks, the FPI members stormed the building at around 1am and attacked worshippers, inflicting serious head injuries on at least one Ahmadiyya member. Three local human rights defenders, two from the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (LBH) in Makassar and one from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI) were beaten by the mob while trying to stop the attacks. According to them, police officers who were present did nothing to stop the violence or protect the victims.

New Action on Filep Karma:

Amnesty International has received information from credible sources that Filep Karma has complained of pain in his abdominal area and fears he may be suffering from internal bleeding. He requires full and immediate medical treatment, however has been denied access to the Abepura prison doctor. Click for Action. Chalk drawing of Filep Karma at our most recent rally at the Indonesian Embassy in Washington. SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 4

August 2011

New Indonesia Action: Arbitrary and Excessive Use of Force and Firearms in North Sumatra.
On 27 June 2011 security forces in North Sumatra province reportedly used arbitrary and excessive force and firearms in an attempt to forcibly evict a community in Langkat district. At least 700 families from the villages of Barak Induk, Damar Hitam and Sei Minyak in the Besitang and Sei Lapan subdistricts have been involved in an ongoing land dispute with local government authorities who claim that their villages are located within the Leuser Mountain National Park (Taman Nasional Gunung Leuser, TNGL).

Police form a blockade during the attempt to forcibly evict the communities in North Sumatra, June 2011 Private

According to local sources, on the morning of 27 June 2011, at least 5,000 people from the three villages were invited to meet with officers from the TNGL and others to discuss the ongoing dispute. After waiting for more than three hours, villagers from Sei Minyak received news that their houses were being destroyed in an attempt to forcibly evict them from the land. Click for Action.

Update: Myanmar In the News:

The government of Myanmar has taken an unusual path in the last few weeks. First, state-run newspapers have stopped their long-held practice of publishing daily criticisms of the BBC and other international broadcasters. Then, all the major Burmese journals carried pictures of Aung San Suu Kyis face-to-face meeting with President Thein. Previously, no photos of Suu Kyi were allowed in the papers, though recently small pictures would appear on inside pages. However, the UN envoy to Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, recently visited the country and secured no guarantee for the release of political prisoners. In SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 5

his statements he said, Another concern is the continuing allegations of torture and ill treatment during interrogation, the use of prisoners as porters for the military, and the transfers of prisoners to prisons in remote areas where they are unable to receive family visits or packages of essential medicine and supplemental food.

August 2011

Update: Philippines New Action:

James Balao helped found the Indigenous peoples' organization Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) in 1984. He has since worked as a researcher for Indigenous peoples' rights. He helped draft provisions on Indigenous Peoples' rights in the Philippines' constitution. He disappeared from his home on September 17 2008. Before he was abducted, he had sent an email to his family detailing the surveillance that he said he had been under since June 2008. He described being tailed by a blue-and-white van. People who have been kept under surveillance in this way in recent years have later been extrajudicially executed. Click for Action.

Amnesty News:
A vote in the Philippine Senate on 23 August opened the way for the country to become a party to the International Criminal Court (ICC). After more than 10 years of campaigning by Amnesty International and others, the vote to approve the Rome Statute brings the Philippines closer to joining the global effort to end impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Earlier this month, Amnesty International Philippines submitted a petition of more than 8,000 signatures by Philippine citizens urging the Senate to approve ratification. States that ratify the Rome Statute commit to investigate and prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes before their national courts and agree that, if they are unable or unwilling to do so, the International Criminal Court may step in. They also agree to cooperate fully with the work of the ICC in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed around the world. Amnesty International calls on the Philippine authorities to release Ericson Acosta or else promptly bring him to trial. Amnesty International expressed concern that the 37-year-old activist and journalist has been held in detention without trial for six months now. On 13 February, Acosta was SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 6

arrested by the military in San Jose, Samar. The military alleged he was an official of the once-banned Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Acosta said he was detained at a military camp and subjected to 44 hours of interrogation with only two hours of sleep. He also said that interrogators threatened to kill him.

August 2011

Update: Thailand In the News:

The trial of Chiranuch Premchaipron, a wellrespected online media editor, will resume on September 1st in Bangkoks Criminal Court. Dr. Agnes Callamard, the executive director of ARTICLE 19 said, Chiranuchs trial is a litmus test for Thailands tolerance of freedom of expression. Using a combination of lse majest and computer crime charges, the Thai authorities have created a climate of fear in which any form of debate around the lse majest law and the role of the royalty in Thai society is hushed or faces severe consequences. On 10 August 2011 a Bangkok court sentenced a torture victim to two years in prison for speaking out against his alleged torturers. According to the Asian Human Rights Commission, Thus, the human rights priorities of the state in Thailand are made patently clear: not to investigate alleged abuses of human rights but to investigate, prosecute and imprison persons who allege such abuses. Not to criminalize torture and imprison torturers, but to criminalize the complaint of torture and imprison the tortured.

The quality of our society reflects the extent of our justice - our sense of fair play and our notion of compassion. If we can't understand that we must extend these principles and virtues to our foreign workers, regardless of their race and nationality, then we are doomed as a society.
From the editorial desk of Asia News Network, regarding trafficking in Thailand.

The UN Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Joy Ngozi, spent two weeks in Thailand recently. Abuses on fishing trawlers were recently the subject of an article in the Bangkok Post.

Update: Viet Nam Amnesty News:

Amnesty International calls on the Vietnamese authorities to immediately release a French-Vietnamese blogger who has been sentenced to three years in prison on national security charges. Professor Pham Minh Hoang, a maths lecturer who holds dual nationality, was accused of writing articles that blackened the image of the country by the judge at the trial in Ho Chi Minh SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 7

City. He told the court his writings were not aimed at overthrowing anyone, and that Vietnam needs to be more democratic, reports said.

August 2011

An article in the New York Times focused on the stigma of Vietnamese women and girls who have been rescued from trafficking in the village of Hop Tien. Fearful that a fallen woman would cast shame on the whole family, several households quickly disowned their kidnapped daughters. Some of the girls built makeshift tents, blue specks that can still be seen tucked high into the mountainside, a wide distance from town. However, Vang Thi Mai, a 49-year-old woman of the town, began to take the women in, and eventually brought them into a small textile cooperative founded by her and her husband.

Meet your amazing and dedicated team of Country Specialists:

Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia Indonesia Jeanne Marie Stumpf Max White (and Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea) Gartini Isa Carole Marzolf Laos, Thailand Myanmar Tyrell Haberkorn Jim Roberts Nancy Galib Anil Raj Philippines Perfecto Boyet-Caparas Leila Chacko (and Pacific Islands) Vener (Nerve) Macaspac perfecto.caparas@gmail.com leilachacko@gmail.com tyrellcaroline@gmail.com jroberts@aiusacs.org anthropologyisfun@yahoo.com max33@comcast.net isgartini@yahoo.com carole_marzolf@yahoo.com

Vietnam Co-Group and RAN Coordinator, Newsletter editor

Jean Libby Claudia Vandermade

venermacaspac@gmail.com
editor@vietamreview.net claudiev@gmail.com

Have a question about AIs work in a particular country? Wondering how to take your country work a step further? Contact a Country Specialist, or the Co-Group Coordinator, Claudia Vandermade.
SEAsia Action Network Newsletter 8