Victims assistance & protection

PHILIPPINES: Police investigators concludes torture victims’ testimony as hearsay to justify refusal to prosecute policemen

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) writes to inform you that the local police have concluded that it will not prosecute policemen accused of torture because the victims’ testimonies are hearsay. They will not take action unless they are “formalized as complaint”. We earlier asked for an investigation on the victims allegations that […]

NEPAL: Conflict victims harassed and thrown out of their homes for seeking justice

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding the murder of a young man in Chitwan in 2004 by Maoist cadres in the midst of the civil war, following a personal dispute. No investigation has been held into the circumstances of his death as the alleged perpetrators have benefited from high […]

PHILIPPINES: Police detain an ailing man as a substitute for a wanted man

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is forwarding an appeal about the ongoing illegal detention of an ailing man. The police illegally arrested and detained the victim, an Arabic teacher, at the hospital where he was being treated for a heart ailment as a substitute for a wanted man for whom there is […]

INDIA: In observance of International Rivers Day, tribes protest the Chakpi Multipurpose Hydroelectric Project

Dear friends: The Asian Human Rights Commission has received information regarding peaceful rallies that took place on March 12, 2013, in observance of International Rivers Day, regarding opposition to the Chakpi Multipurpose Hydroelectric Project. The dam is proposed to be built over Chakpi River in Chandel District, Manipur in the Northeast of India near the […]

PHILIPPINES: Notes on the trial observation of falsely charged activist

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is sharing with you the notes taken during the trial observation of falsely charged activist, Temogen ‘Cocoy’ Tulawie. As mentioned earlier, the trial of Tulawie’s case had already been transferred to Manila and he is presently now detained in that city. After his trial was moved to […]

PAKISTAN: When will cases of Blasphemy be filed against the Muslim attackers?

Sections 295 and 295A of the Pakistan Penal Code do not differentiate between Islam and Christianity These are just two of the photos, among many, taken during the attack on Joseph Colony, a Christian residential area in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. The pictures tell the real story of the attack by Muslims extremists […]

PAKISTAN: Christian houses were burned with connivance between the government of Punjab and land grabbers

(Photo courtesy of the Daily Express) The small incident of a quarrel between three Christian and Muslim friends during a drinking session (of alcohol) turned into the ransacking, looting and burning of 180 Christian houses in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. The fighting between the friends happened on Tuesday, March 5 but after three […]

PAKISTAN: More than ten thousand flood victim families have been denied compensation since 2007

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that more than ten thousand flood victim families have been denied approved compensation by the authorities since 2007 and are displaced without having a proper source of income. The floods of June 2007 destroyed thousands of fruit trees, acres of agriculture land and hundreds […]

PAKISTAN: Endangered life and livelihood of indigenous fisherfolk in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information regarding atrocities by fisheries contractors against fishermen who are raising their voice to defend their basic rights in the district of Dera Ismail Khan (DIK), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It is alleged that the local police officials at Paroya Police Station and Cantonment Police Station […]

PHILIPPINES: Supreme Court takes judicial action on plot to kill falsely charged activist

Dear friends, After almost four months, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has been informed by the Supreme Court (SC) that it has issued a Resolution as its judicial action to our appeal on the plot to kill Temogen “Cocoy” Tulawie in jail. Tulawie is an activist from Sulu being prosecuted over fabricated charges. Though […]

PAKISTAN: Police protect perpetrators who poisoned a young man after sexually assaulting him

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that a 19-year-old tea vender was sodomised and poisoned, and that he later died in hospital. The rapists threw him in the mud after sodomising him, intending that he should die on the roadside. Police have still not arrested any perpetrator; instead, they have […]

PAKISTAN: A Dark Christmas in Balochistan

As the joy of Christmas dawned worldwide from Manila in the east to Managua in the west, and places in between, the spirit celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace bypassed Pakistan. Most of the country was distracted by the frenzy of a cricket match against rival India, while its tiny Christian population was […]

PHILIPPINES: Trial of falsely charged Sulu activist now in Manila

NEW REPORT: Special Report: The Philippines’ hollow human rights system http://www.article2.org/pdf/v11n0203.pdf Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has been informed that the trial of Temogen “Cocoy” Tulawie, an indigenous activist who is prosecuted on evidence of forced confession, would now be heard in Manila. Temogen would be moved from a prison in Davao […]

PAKISTAN: The Wali Khan Baber case — the best example of absence of witness protection

Mr. Wali Khan Baber, a correspondent of a television channel, the Geo News, was shot dead on January 13, 2011 when he was going to home after performing his duty. He was prominent on the reporting of target killings, land grabbing and drug related issues. The case has been pending in the Anti Terrorist Court […]

PHILIPPINES: Indigenous activist accused of being a rebel is exonerated

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is pleased to inform you that an indigenous villager, one of the claimants of a disputed ancestral land whom the police had earlier suspected of being a rebel who was wounded in a fight, has already been cleared. The police investigation which they conducted after an appeal […]

BANGLADESH: Three cases of sexual violence in Chittagong Hill Tracts require credible investigations

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that two young women have been raped and one girl narrowly has avoided an attempted rape due to her neighbours’ assistance in three separate jurisdictions of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. The police have allegedly been biased against the non-ethnic settlers instead of […]

BANGLADESH: State’s unpardonable failures deserve credible investigation

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission and Odhikar The entire governmental machinery of Bangladesh, with its retinue of law-enforcement units, intelligence agencies, and security forces, have totally and abysmally failed to protect minority communities in the South Eastern region of the country.  A large number of monasteries, temples, houses and establishments of the […]

PAKISTAN: The daughter and son-in-law of the chief minister of Punjab must be arrested and prosecuted for torturing and abducting a sweeper

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information that the daughter and son-in-law of the Chief Minister of Punjab province entered a bakery near its closing time and severely tortured the sweeper with the help of police officials for not entertaining the daughter. The police refused to file a case for almost […]

PHILIPPINES: Trial of two men tortured and falsely charged seven years ago drags on

Dear Friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) writes to inform you that the trial of two men whom police tortured and forced to confess to charges of murder seven years ago is dragging on. They were charged for allegedly bombing a public market on December 12, 2004; however, their allegations of being falsely charged […]

BANGLADESH: Three persons faced detention in a fabricated case, lodged by illegal-sand-miners, who are being aided by ruling party parliamentarians

Dear friends, The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received updated information regarding illegal sand mining in the Meghna River adjacent to the Mayadip and Nunertek islands. There has been an investigation conducted by the government of Bangladesh, following intervention by the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing of the United Nation, which itself followed the […]