Asia-Pacific Archive

HONG KONG — Pakistan’s main lawyer’s organization plans to fight until Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is removed from power, according to an attorney representing Chief Justice Iftikar Chaudhry, whose dismissal from Pakistan’s Supreme Court earlier this spring sparked a nationwide backlash that threatens Musharraf’s grip on power. Musharraf suspended Chaudhry March 9, leading to the largest political protests Pakistan has seen in 24 years. Pakistan’s lawyers, or “blackcoats” as Pakistanis have taken to calling them, were among the first to protest in the wake of Chaudhry’s suspension. Television images of lawyers battered by government police forces helped galvanize the nationwide […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new weekly column covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. GOING DIGITAL ON DARFUR — Amnesty International launched a new program Wednesday to monitor villages in Darfur in the hopes of putting pressure on the Sudanese government to admit a large United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force. Under the program, the rights group is using satellites to track some of the most vulnerable villages in war-ravaged Darfur, posting images online and urging members of the public across the world to log on to www.eyesondarfur.org and […]

Russia has put a price tag of half a billion dollars on plans to build a nuclear “research” center in Burma, one of the world’s poorest countries, where electricity is a luxury for most inhabitants. Rangoon’s new diplomatic friend North Korea set a precedent for a destitute country managing to find the means to develop nuclear capabilities. But many Burma watchers take the view that on the issue of nuclear power there is little comparison between the North Korean and Burmese regimes. The former is run by a dynastic demagogue, while the latter is controlled by self-enriching generals who rarely […]

KABUL, Afghanistan — The arrival of close to 100,000 deported Afghan migrants from Iran over the past month has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in a country already strained by poverty, corruption and a robust insurgency in its southern and eastern provinces. Iran says the mass expulsion is targeting only those Afghans working illegally and plans to forcibly remove one million people by next March. But there are reports some migrants have been deported in spite of having proper documentation; others have allegedly been beaten, split up from their families and whisked away without any personal belongings. “We lost […]

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, hastily ended a brief visit to India last weekend after failing to reach an agreement with Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon on the long-anticipated U.S.-India nuclear deal. Both countries, however, appear hopeful that the issue is going to get a renewed push from the highest political level this week when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush meet on the sidelines of the Group of 8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. The way the proposed deal is laid out now, the United States would ship nuclear fuel […]

KABUL, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday reaffirmed the United States’ long-term commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan and hailed “real progress” made by NATO forces this year against the Taliban insurgency, despite rising violence in the southern and eastern provinces and the arrival of deadly Iranian-made weapons. Gates, on his second visit to the country since taking the helm of the Pentagon, said that after a round of talks with President Hamid Karzai, NATO commanders and other Afghan officials involved in training the national army, he believes the security situation has improved in recent months. “The Afghan alliance offensive […]

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Often praised as a model pluralistic society, Malaysia is showing signs of increased religious tension, and many wonder whether Kuala Lumpur’s reluctance to protect non-Muslims’ rights could lead to serious problems. Non-Muslims make up roughly 40 percent of Malaysia’s 26 million people, and among them follow Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism. Their rights are protected by a civil legal system that runs parallel to the Islamic courts, governed by Sharia. The latter system regulates religious, civil, family, marriage and personal rights for the country’s Muslims. However, the demarcation line between the two systems is somehow blurring, […]

State-sponsored censorship of the Internet has increased significantly in recent years, according to a study of 41 countries conducted during 2006 and 2007 by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a consortium of researchers from four major universities, including Harvard and Oxford. “The conclusions from this first year of global testing highlight that Internet filtering is growing in scope, scale and sophistication worldwide,” an ONI summary of its work states. “At least twenty-five of the forty-one countries ONI tested are engaged in some form of technical Internet filtering.”That’s up from just five states conducting systematic filtering five years ago, John Palfrey, executive […]

HONG KONG — As China grapples with the problem of producing enough electricity to meet the needs of its staggering economic growth, a pollution crisis is beginning to plume over Hong Kong. Power generation in China’s southern province of Guangdong has failed to keep pace with rapid economic development — forcing it to turn to Hong Kong for electricity. As a result, China Light and Power (CLP), Asia’s largest private power utility and the biggest polluter in Hong Kong, is attracting local political criticism for selling an increasing amount of excess electricity to mainland China for profit. In 2006, electricity […]