The Asia-Pacific region has been dominated by repression, but also resistance, as the two largest nations on Earth sought to impose a “bleak domineering vision” for the region, Amnesty International’s annual human rights review for last year says.
The review, released yesterday, paints a bleak picture for minorities across the region, with Uighurs in China interned in “re-education camps,” and a siege imposed across Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.
However, Amnesty said that while governments became increasingly repressive, they were countered by emerging public resistance; in Hong Kong, where protests against a proposed extradition law metamorphosed into broader demands around respect for democracy, human rights, free expression and peaceful assembly; in India, where millions turned out to resist new laws that discriminate against Muslims taking citizenship; and in West Papua, where people demonstrated against racist and discriminatory treatment, and reaffirmed demands for independence from Indonesia.
Photo: Reuters
The region is increasingly governed by strongman leaders; in Sri Lanka, former military chief Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president; in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” claimed hundreds more lives through extrajudicial killings; and Prime Minister Hun Sen consolidated his grip on power in Cambodia as political violence worsened.
“Across Southeast Asia, repressive governments entrenched themselves further, silenced their opponents, muzzled the media, and shrank civic space to the point where, in many countries, even participation in a peaceful protest can trigger arrest,” the report said. “In South Asia, governments appeared anxious to keep up, innovating new ways to perpetuate old patterns of repression — especially through the introduction of draconian laws that punish dissent online.”
Amnesty said that repression is often legitimized by governments demonizing critics as “as pawns of ‘foreign forces,’ who are at best ‘naive’ and at worst ‘treasonous.’”
While governments across the Asia-Pacific region sought to suppress dissent, protests and civil resistance have had an effect.
In Taiwan, the fight for equality for LGBT people resulted in same-sex marriage becoming legal in March last year.
In Sri Lanka, lawyers and activists successfully prevented the resumption of executions.
Pakistan passed laws to tackle climate change and air pollution in the interests of its citizens, while a massive, months-long campaign of protests on the streets of Hong Kong resulted in the withdrawal of a proposed extradition bill with China, which had become emblematic of widespread dissatisfaction among residents of the territory.
“The wheels of justice slowly began to turn for the Rohingya, as the International Criminal Court [ICC] authorized an investigation into crimes committed by the Myanmar military in 2017,” Amnesty wrote. “This followed a decision by Gambia to take Myanmar to the International Court of Justice for the crime of genocide.”
“There are also hopes that the ICC will revisit its decision to not authorize an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by all sides in Afghanistan, after capitulating to pressure from the US administration” of President Donald Trump, the report said.
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