Indonesian authorities charged well-known radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir with aiding al-Qaeda-linked terrorist cell Jemaah Islamiyah. Bashir denies any connection to the group.
Amnesty International is urging East Timor to close a legal loophole that is allowing crimes against humanity committed during the 1975-1999 Indonesian occupation to go unpunished.
The government of Thailand imposed a curfew on Bangkok and other areas of the country as Red Shirt militants refused to honor a suspension of protests called by their leaders.
Nine sugar-cane workers were killed as a group of some 40 gunmen fired on their encampment on lands they were occupying in Negros Occidental province of the central Philippines. Among the fatalities were three women and two minors. The slain were members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers who were occupying part of the sprawling Hacienda Nene near Barangay Bulanon village, outside Sagay City. The occupation was legally permitted under an agrarian reform program established in the 1980s that allows landless rural workers to cultivate fallow lands on large plantations while title transfer is pending. The massacre was reported by survivors who managed to scatter and hide. Some of the bodies were burned by the attackers. "They were strafed by unknown perpetrators while already resting in their respective tents," said Cristina Palabay, head of the rights group Karapatan. Calling the attack "brutal and brazen," she said: "We call on the Commission on Human Rights to conduct an independent and thorough investigation on the massacre. We are one with the kin of the victims in the Sagay massacre in their call for justice." (Photo: PhilStar)
In a move denounced by Amnesty International as “tantamount to torture,” Malaysian authorities have caned three Muslim women under Islamic law for acts of adultery.
A new ambush on a convoy of the Freeport mining interest in restive West Papua follows the appointment of a new regional military commander implicated in grave rights abuses.
Four Christian churches in Malaysia were attacked with petrol bombs amid tensions over a court ruling allowing the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims in the country.
A UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official protested Thailand’s move to forcibly repatriate some 4,000 ethnic Hmong back to Laos. Some 400 have been removed so far.
Local leaders in West Papua dispute the official version of the police slaying of Free Papua Movement leader Kelly Kwalik, and deny charges that he was behind recent armed attacks.
Former Khmer Rouge head of state and “Brother Number Five” Khieu Samphan has been charged with genocide of Cambodia’s Vietnamese and the Cham Muslim minorities.
The first declaration of martial law in the Philippines since the fall of the Marcos dictatorship was just lifted in a province of Mindanao—but armed attacks continue to escalate.
Thich Nhat Hanh has protested the eviction of his followers from a monastery in southern Vietnam’s Lam Dong province. Vietnamese intellectuals have issued a petition to support them.
