Headlines
Six members of a traditional satirical group received a second prison sentence Monday from a Yangon-based court for mocking Myanmar’s military in a performance earlier this year during the country’s annual New Year’s celebration, the defendants and their lawyer said
More than 500 residents of Thayattapin village of Kyauktaw township meanwhile also fled their homes after Myanmar soldiers and police showed up in their community to question civilians, said a villager who requested anonymity for security reasons
judge in Malaysia sentenced a former gold trader to three years in prison Friday, convicting him under the nation’s strict terrorism financing law for sending less than $50 to a top Malaysian recruiter in Syria for Islamic State
Following the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s decision on Thursday to authorize an investigation into alleged crimes committed against Myanmar’s Rohingya population, Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s Director for East and Southeast Asia said, “his decision marks an important step in the fight for justice and accountability in Myanmar
It is obviously for this reason that the UN, 1970, Declaration on the Friendly States, cautions that ‘Nothing in the foregoing… shall be construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which could dismember or impair totally or in part the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the principles of equal rights and Self-determination of a people… and thus possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to territory without distinction as to race, Creed, and colour’.
The public arrests of prominent Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities is part of a bid by authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) to instill fear in the local population, according to Uyghur sources in exile
The triads first began to organize as part of a patriotic movement to restore Ming rule. But they gradually turned to crime, including the sale of drugs, such as opium, heroin, and cocaine. They gained control of gambling and prostitution rings. Much like mafia groups, members are expected to regard each other as blood brothers
Gambia on Monday filed a lawsuit against Myanmar in the highest court of the United Nations, accusing the Southeast Asia nation of state-sponsored genocide for the brutal military-led crackdown against Rohingya Muslims in 2017 that left thousands dead and drove more than 740,000 across the border to Bangladesh
Armenia remains a regional outlier; all of its neighbors have already banned smoking in most public places. (Some enterprises in Yerevan, however, have taken the initiative to ban smoking themselves.)
China’s army of petitioners, who flood the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official complaints departments daily, frequently report being held in unofficial “black jails,” beaten, or otherwise harassed, if they persist in a complaint beyond its initial rejection at the local level