Peacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
The political standing of women has “improved” in Nepal in comparison to many countries in Asia and the Pacific where works are being done to enhance women’s participation in politics, according to a new Asia Pacific Human Development Report on Gender.
“The political voice of women has improved in Nepal with the recent secured 1/3 quota in the Constituent Assembly. In comparison, only about 1/3 of countries in Asia and the Pacific have quota systems to enhance women’s participation in politics,” says the report titled, “Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific” launched on the occasion of International Women’s Day in the capital on Monday.
Aid donors to Cambodia, including the US, EU, Japan, China and the World Bank, should send a strong message to the government that they will not countenance the bankrolling of Cambodia’s military by private businesses, Global Witness said today.
The call follows the announcement last week by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen of the formation of 42 official partnerships between private businesses and Cambodian military units.
Some victims of the Khmer Rouge say they are worried the reconciliation process will be hurt by limited civil party participation and an already long trial process at the UN-backed tribunal.
Of 4,000 victim applications to participate as civil parties, only around 500 are likely to be accepted, according to tribunal officials.
The tribunal process includes civil parties, who participate in trials alongside the defense and prosecution, as a third body in the proceedings.
At a forum of 200 people in Kampot province on Saturday, Thun Saray, head of the rights group Adhoc, said such a low number among the civil parties would stir disappointment among Khmer Rouge victims.
As the acclaimed 3D film ‘Avatar’ was today nominated for an Oscar in the Best Film category, tribal peoples around the world have claimed the film tells the real story of their lives today…
The highest court in military-ruled Myanmar dismissed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s latest bid for freedom Friday, turning down an appeal to end 14 years of house arrest, her lawyer said.
The Supreme Court’s decision had been expected since legal rulings in Myanmar rarely favour opposition activists, and the junta appears determined to keep Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, detained through elections planned later this year.
Defence lawyer Nyan Win told reporters he would launch one final “special appeal” before the court after determining why the recent appeal had been rejected. “The court order did not mention any reasons,” he said.
Under the leadership of women Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and our partner organization, the Women’s League of Burma, the Nobel Women’s Initiative is planning an International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Burma.
The Tribunal will take place in New York City on March 2, 2010 and will coincide with the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women meeting. Eminent Judges (including Nobel Peace Laureates) will hear personal testimony from several women of Burma who will share their personal stories of having lived through a range of human rights violations under the military regime in Burma.
Myanmar’s government must halt its repression of ethnic minority activists before forthcoming national and local elections, Amnesty International warned in a major report released on Tuesday.
The 58-page report, The Repression of ethnic minority activists in Myanmar, draws on accounts from more than 700 activists from the seven largest ethnic minorities, including the Rakhine, Shan, Kachin, and Chin, covering a two-year period from August 2007… more, including link to full report
Filed under: Myanmar files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 10:10 UTC
News source:
11 February 2010
Irrawaddy
By SAW YAN NAING
The former leader of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) , Tu Ja, who resigned to form the Kachin State Progressive Party (KSPP), on Wednesday invited dozens of women and students in Myitkyina to a briefing on how to campaign for the party.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Thursday, a participant, Marry, a Kachin student at Myitkyina University, said that Tu Ja targeted students and women because they are often in key locations such as markets, schools and other public areas, and they can spread information about the KSPP and the national election.
Burmese government troops have stepped up their attacks on Karen civilians, burning down dozens of houses and a clinic and forcing schools to close and around 2,000 Karen villagers to flee into the jungle, according to Karen relief groups…
The attacks are the latest in a series of raids targeting civilians in the region. In January, government army troops raided ten villages in Nyaunglebin District, killing four villagers and forcing about 2,000 into hiding in the jungle, according to Aung Din, executive director of the US Campaign for Burma.
“These attacks are further evidence of the urgent need for the United Nations to take effective action to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma, perpetrated by the regime with impunity,” said Aung Din in a press release on Wednesday.
Filed under: Myanmar files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 23:13 UTC
News source:
7 February 2010
Bangkok Post
By Larry Jagan
Election fever is already gripping Burma even though a date for the polls has yet to be announced. The election law which will govern the process is now expected to be published in May, with the elections at least six months away, according to Asian diplomats who closely follow events in Burma. “The elections will be held whether we like it or not,” a young Arakanese student in Rangoon, Nyi Nyi said.
“We know we will have no choice but to vote, our only hope is that there will be some candidates who are not stooges of the military regime,” he added. At the moment that seems a forlorn hope, though the main pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) has yet to make up its mind whether it will field candidates in this year’s elections.
In the last elections, held on May 27, 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won convincingly, but Burma’s military rulers never allowed them to form a civilian government. This time the generals are not planning to make the same mistake, and are tightly controlling everything to ensure they do not lose.
The controversy over the scale of Myanmar’s opium production took another turn with the release of a new report that claims cultivation has surged in territories where the military government has recently taken control. The report draws more extreme conclusions than recent research released by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), whose Bangkok-based representatives declined an invitation to attend the new report’s release.
Entitled “Poisoned Hills: Opium cultivation surges under government control in Burma”, the report was released by the Palaung Women’s Organization (PWO), a non-governmental organization based in Mae Sot, Thailand.
NEW YORK – Cambodia’s respect for basic rights dramatically deteriorated in 2009 as the government misused the judiciary to silence government critics, attacked human rights defenders, tightened restrictions on press freedom, and abandoned its international obligations to protect refugees, Human Rights Watch said today in its new World Report 2010.
The 612-page World Report 2010, the organization’s 20th annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 nations and territories worldwide…
“Cambodians who speak out to defend their homes, their jobs, and their rights face threats, jail, and physical attacks,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The only way that the Cambodian government will end its assault on civil society is if influential governments and donors demand real change and put the pressure on.”
21 January 2010 | report published 20 January 2010
Abstract on Human Security Gateway
By United States Department of State // Humanitarian Information Unit
Abstract : This is the second in the series of regional Conflicts Without Borders maps, produced by US Department of State’s Humanitarian Information Unit, that analyzes and visualizes conflict in Southeast Asia as sub-national and transnational areas of armed conflict and political violence that occurred in 2008 and 2009…. Examining conflict with a sub-national and transnational prism instead of through the lens of the nation-state highlights the following conclusions: · Conflict occurs in the least developed and the peripheral administrative areas of each country: Burma – Shan and Karen states; Thailand – Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat provinces; Philippines – southern and western Mindanao Island; and Indonesia – Aceh and Papua provinces…
All is set for the Philippine hosting in early February of an experts workshop of at least 50 participants from 37 States-parties, researchers and non-government organizations which is a preparatory to the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT RevCon) on May 3-28 in New York City, United States.
Why did a radical British professor become a cheer-leader for Pol Pot? And why was he murdered on the very day he’d met the brutal dictator?…
The name of Malcolm Caldwell is remembered now by very few people: some friends, family, colleagues, and students of utopian folly. In the 1970s, though, Caldwell was a major figure in protest politics. He was chair of CND for two years, a leading voice in the anti-Vietnam war campaign, a regular contributor to Peace News …
The name of Kaing Guek Eav is, arguably, known by even fewer people, at least outside of Cambodia. Instead it is by his revolutionary pseudonym “Duch” that Kaing is usually referred to in the press. Duch is the only man ever to stand trial in a UN-sanctioned court for the mass murder perpetrated by the Cambodian communist party, or the Khmer Rouge, in the late 1970s…
In each circumstance, the question that reverberates down the years, growing louder rather than dimmer, is: why? Why were they in thrall to a system based on mass extermination?
Defense teams for senior Khmer Rouge leaders still have the right motion for a cancellation of genocide charges brought last week, a tribunal expert said Monday.
“They have the right to file a suite to the Pre-Trial Chamber to remove the new charge,†said Hisham Mousar, chief of the Project of French Cooperation, at the Royal University of Law and Economics.
The additional genocide charge was added to those of war crimes and crimes against humanity originally brought against Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.
Filed under: Southeast Asia files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 09:14 UTC
News source:
21 December 2009
International Crisis Group
Asia Briefing N°98
The massacre on 23 November 2009 of 57 men and women by the private army of a warlord allied to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shocked the country and the world. The immediate trigger for the killings was the decision of one man, Esmail “Toto†Mangudadatu, to run for governor of Maguindanao province, which for the last decade has been the fiefdom of the Ampatuan family. Political patronage by successive governments in Manila, most notably by the Arroyo administration, allowed the Ampatuans to amass great wealth and unchecked power, including the possession of a private arsenal with mortars, rocket launchers and state-of-the-art assault rifles. They controlled the police, the judiciary, and the local election commission. In the wake of the massacre, there are opportunities for new measures in the areas of justice, security and peace…
Asit Biswas says the global water crisis is a self-inflicted wound.
Asit Biswas loves to tell the story of the Phnom Penh Water Authority. It was 1993 and a new manager, Ek Sonn Chan, had been appointed to the then bankrupt utility. Of the water that it piped from its reservoirs, 72% disappeared without ever being paid for. Chan decided to chase down errant customers, among them all of Cambodia’s government agencies and the Army. When asked to pay up, the officer in charge pulled out a gun. Chan retreated but went back the next day with a handful of journalists in tow. The general once again pulled out his gun. Chan cut off the water supply. The next day the Army paid its dues, and all the other agencies followed. Today the utility is flush with cash, and there is clean drinking water–the kind that can be had straight from the tap–available through the city, around the clock.
For three years Thailand has been divided into two political camps, the yellows and the reds. Rageh Omaar asks is the country at the brink of a bloody conflict.
Thailand has emerged from months of political turmoil and street protests with a new, conservative government and now the country’s Oxford-educated Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister of Thailand is keen to stress to the world that things in Thailand are back to normal.
