Headlines
In a bid to evict prominent rights lawyer Li Heping from his Beijing home, the landlord smashed a window of his apartment and issued a death threat, Li’s wife told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
Chinese authorities have handed down an eight-year jail term to a veteran rights activist after he set up a website calling for constitutional democracy, his sister said on Thursday.
A few years ago, Chonticha “Lookkate” Jangrew braved tear gas and rubber bullets on the front lines of protests calling for reform of Thailand’s monarchy and its military-scripted constitution.
Lazy persons, drunkards, and “other persons with insufficient inner motivation” must be subjected to “repeated … thought education” to ensure they take part in state-sponsored “poverty alleviation” campaigns to pick cotton in China’s Xinjiang region, a previously unpublished internal government document ordered local cadres.
Civilian deaths are growing in Myanmar’s civil war amid a jump in airstrikes by the military junta, whose ground forces have faced stiff resistance from rebels and ordinary citizens who have taken up arms.
In the past six months, in addition to their increased targeting of civilians as part of its “four-cuts” strategy–denying the opposition access to food, finances, intelligence and recruits–the Myanmar military has made a concerted effort to target the shadow National Unity Government’s nascent civil administration and the provision of health and education.
Bangladesh-based Rohingya who were taken to Myanmar’s Rakhine state Friday to see preparations for refugee repatriation said they wouldn’t return without citizenship rights, recognition of their Rohingya identity, and a guarantee that they could resettle in their home villages.
Bangladesh is moving full steam ahead with a China-backed project to begin repatriating Rohingya to Myanmar, a plan that Human Rights Watch warned would put the lives of the persecuted refugees at “grave risk.”
Intense fighting has caused the number of internally displaced persons in Myanmar to grow by more than 680,000 between January and April 20, according to independent research group ISP-Myanmar.
Sparring between Thailand’s two main pro-democracy parties may undermine their common goal of defeating the military-inclined ruling establishment in the May 14 general election, analysts said.