Religious freedom

---Daily Dawn, Pakistan

Religious freedom
  Dawn Editorial
  Sunday, 02 May, 2010

This year’s report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, released on Thursday, puts Pakistan on the list of 13 “countries of particular concern” that are serious violators of religious freedom.

The country has escaped being ranked amongst the worst offenders which include Saudi Arabia, China, Myanmar and North Korea. Nevertheless, this indictment should cause serious concern. Abuse of the right to religious freedom is rampant as evidenced by the rise in religiously motivated crimes against minorities. There is on the one side growing intolerance fuelled in recent years by attacks organised by proscribed terrorist organisations such as the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan. On the other, as the societal mindset shifts towards the right, there is a growing lack of understanding of the rights of people of other faiths.

Reversing this trend requires steps at multiple levels. First, extremist organisations guilty of inciting religious hatred must be stamped out. Their leaders and members need to be identified and brought to trial, and the sources of their funding severed. Beyond that, awareness must be spread about the constitutional right to religious freedom and the minority communities’ status as equal citizens.

As the report notes: “Serious religious freedom concerns persist in Pakistan, where religiously discriminatory legislation has fostered an atmosphere of intolerance…. A number of Pakistan’s laws abridge freedom of religion or belief. Anti-Ahmadi legislation results in discrimination against individual Ahmadis and effectively criminalises various practices of their faith. Blasphemy laws have been used to silence members of religious minorities and dissenters within the majority Muslim community, and frequently result in imprisonment on account of religion or belief and/or vigilante violence.… The government’s response to sectarian and religiously motivated violence continues to be inadequate, despite increased security operations against extremists.” These shortcomings must be addressed on a priority basis.

©2010 DAWN Media Group. All rights reserved
URL : www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-conte...edom-250-hh-09

In Southeast Asia, human rights abuse is not yet history

---The Jakarta Post, Indonesia

Headlines Mon, 01/11/2010 8:58 AM

In Southeast Asia, human rights abuse is not yet history

Ary Hermawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The dark history of extra-judicial killings and disappearances of political or human rights activists seems so distant in democratic Indonesia, a decade after the collapse of Soeharto’s authoritarianism.

That, however, is no sign that human rights is no longer an issue in this country of 230 million people.

Only recently, a mob attacked a church that was still under construction in Bekasi, West Java, adding to the long list of cases of religious violence in the world’s largest Muslim country, which includes the banning of Ahmadiyah and the imprisonment of many whose faith has been deemed heretical and blasphemous by religious authorities.

While the mystery surrounding the 2004 killing of Munir Said Thalib has not been resolved, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono riled rights activists last week by appointing Lt. Gen. Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin as deputy defense minister, a move critics said highlighted Indonesia’s persistent culture of impunity.

The general is alleged to have been involved in a series of human rights abuses during the political turmoil in 1998. “The President’s step could tarnish Indonesia’s good reputation concerning human rights,” said Commission of Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) coordinator Usman Hamid.

And the situation is no less disheartening in other ASEAN countries.

Myanmar has not yet released opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from her house detention, and has barred her from participating in the 2010 elections under a new election law, defying calls from leaders around the world to free the country’s democracy icon.

The encouraging signs of the junta opening up to the outside world have not yet resulted in the release of hundreds of jailed political activists there either.

In the Philippines, civilians including journalists were brutally killed in an apparently election-linked massacre in November last year, an atrocity which prompted global condemnation and that was recorded in history as one of the darkest days for journalists.

In Malaysia and Vietnam, political freedom is not yet a reality, even in the blogosphere where anonymity usually provides greater freedom to digital gadflies. Vietnam has recently launched a crackdown on bloggers who are critical of Communist Party policies, sending them to jail for breaching the security law.

According to the Associated Press, the bloggers were arrested because they spoke against the government’s policies toward China.

The supremacy of Islam as the state’s religion in Malaysia has also raised concerns of diminishing religious freedom in the country. The latest example was the government’s insistence on banning a Catholic publication from using the word “Allah” for God, which it said was exclusive to Islam.

Five churches were attacked last week in relation to the “Allah” row after the Malaysian government appealed a high court decision that overturned the ban.

Rights activists have also criticized ASEAN’s handling of sepa-ratist movements in restive regions such as in the southern parts of the Philippines and Thailand, and the eastern part of Indonesia, which often deliberately ignore any human rights approaches to reconciliation.

Thailand last month reprehensibly deported thousands of the Hmong refugees back to Laos, prompting condemnation from the international community who feared the Laos’ ethnic minority who backed the US during the Vietnam War may face more persecution. Myanmar also committed heinous crimes against Muslim Rohingyas.

As if domestic rights issues were not that overwhelming, Southeast Asian countries have now become a transit point for migrants fleeing war-torn and poverty-stricken homelands — another issue that also needs to be addressed with regard to human rights norms.

URL: www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/01/11/in...not-yet-history.html