Tag Archives: Human Rights

U.N. rights forum to hold special session on Myanmar Rohingya – U.N. sources

U.N. rights forum to hold special session on Myanmar Rohingya - U.N. sources

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. Human Rights Council is expected to hold a special session on killings, rapes and other crimes committed against Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar that have driven more than 600,000 into Bangladesh since August, U.N. sources said on Monday.

“There will be a special session on December 5,” a senior United Nations source told Reuters.

Council spokesman Rolando Gomez could not confirm the date but said: “There are moves to convene a special session to address the human rights situation in the country.”

At least 16 of the 47 member states must request holding a special session of the Council, which are rare. Bangladesh and Muslim-majority countries were expected to back the call.

In March, the Council already set up a fact-finding team. The investigators reported after their first mission to Bangladesh last month that Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar had testified that a “consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson is taking place”.

The latest Rohingya exodus from Rakhine state to Bangladesh’s southern tip began at the end of August, when Rohingya militants attacked security posts and the Myanmar army launched a counter-offensive.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has described the army’s crackdown in Rakhine state as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. The military has denied the accusations of murder, rape, torture and forced displacement.

Amnesty International and other activist groups, in an open letter sent last week to member states, said that a special session was “imperative to launch decisive action and ensure international scrutiny and monitoring of the situation”.

Pope Francis arrived in Myanmar on Monday on a diplomatically delicate visit for the leader of the Roman Catholic church to the majority-Buddhist country.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Gareth Jones)

Putin opens monument to Stalin’s victims, dissidents cry foul

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and former Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin attend a ceremony unveiling the country's first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called "The Wall of Grief" in downtown Moscow, Russia October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a monument to the victims of Stalinist purges on Monday, but Soviet-era dissidents accused him of cynicism at a time when they say authorities are riding roughshod over civil freedoms.

“The Wall of Grief” occupies a space on the edge of Moscow’s busy 10-lane ring road and depicts a mass of faceless victims, many of whom were sent to prison camps or executed on Josef Stalin’s watch after falsely being accused of being “enemies of the people.”

Nearly 700,000 people were executed during the Great Terror of 1937-38, according to conservative official estimates.

“An unequivocal and clear assessment of the repression will help to prevent it being repeated,” Putin said at the opening ceremony.

“This terrible past must not be erased from our national memory and cannot be justified by anything.”

His words and the ceremony amounted to one of his strongest condemnations of the Soviet Union’s dark side in the 18 years he has dominated Russia’s political landscape.

Putin has in the past called Stalin “a complex figure” and said attempts to demonise him were a ploy to attack Russia. But at Monday’s ceremony, he said there were lessons for Russia.

“It doesn’t mean demanding accounts be settled,” said Putin, who stressed a need for stability. “We must never again push society to the dangerous precipice of division.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony unveiling the country's first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called "The Wall of Grief" in Moscow, Russia October 30, 2017.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony unveiling the country’s first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called “The Wall of Grief” in Moscow, Russia October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander Nemenov/Pool

‘TRAGIC PAGES’

Putin’s carefully balanced words reflect Kremlin unease over this year’s centenary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which paved the way for Stalin’s rise. Uncomfortable about promoting discussion of the idea of governments being overthrown by force, the Kremlin is not organizing any commemorative events.

Putin, who is expected to run for and win the presidency again in March, told human rights activists earlier on Monday that he hoped the centenary would allow society to draw a line under the tumultuous events of 1917 and to accept Russia’s history – “with great victories and tragic pages”.

Yet some historians fret that what they say is Putin’s ambiguity about Stalin along with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea have emboldened Stalin’s admirers.

Monuments and memorial plaques honoring Stalin have sprung up in different Russian regions. State-approved textbooks have softened his image, and an opinion poll in June crowned him the country’s most outstanding historical figure.

By contrast, those who have helped document Stalin’s crimes, from the Memorial human rights group to individual historians and journalists, have sometimes felt themselves under pressure from the authorities.

A group of Soviet-era dissidents published a letter on Monday, accusing Putin of cynicism.

“We … consider the opening in Moscow of a monument to victims of political repression untimely and cynical,” they said in the letter, published on the Kasparov.ru news portal.

“It’s impossible to take part in memorial events organized by the authorities who say they are sorry about victims of the Soviet regime, but in practice continue political repression and crush civil freedoms.”

 

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

 

U.S sanctions North Koreans for ‘flagrant’ rights abuse

U.S sanctions North Koreans for 'flagrant' rights abuse

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on seven North Korean individuals and three entities for “flagrant” human rights abuses, including killings, torture, forced labor and the hunting down of asylum seekers abroad.

“Today’s sanctions target the North Korean military and regime officials,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “We also are targeting North Korean financial facilitators who attempt to keep the regime afloat with foreign currency earned through forced labor operations.”

Among those sanctioned were the director and the deputy director of the Military Security Command, the first vice minister of the Ministry of People’s Security and the labor minister. North Korea’s consul general in Shenyang, China, and a diplomat at its embassy in Vietnam were also sanctioned.

“We are especially concerned with the North Korean military, which operates as secret police, punishing all forms of dissent,” the statement said.

“Further, the military operates outside of North Korea to hunt down asylum seekers, and brutally detains and forcibly returns North Korean citizens.”

The Treasury statement charged that Ku Sung Sop, the consul general in Shenyang, and Kim Min Chol, the diplomat in Vietnam, had participated in the forced repatriation of North Korean asylum seekers.

Scott Busby, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, told a news briefing that Ku’s case had been raised with China.

He said it was up to China how to react, but the range of possibilities included expelling him from the country.

Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China does not approve of countries using their own domestic law to enact unilateral sanctions outside of the United Nations framework.

“We will maintain normal exchanges and cooperation with North Korea on the basis of complying with U.N. resolutions,” he told a daily news briefing, without elaborating.

Busby said North Korean government violations included extrajudicial killings, torture, rape and forced abortions and the aim of the sanctions was to send a message, especially to prison camp managers and mid-level officials, that individuals would be held accountable.

The U.S. administration has sought to restrict the income North Korea receives from its export of labor as part of efforts to choke off funds helping to finance the country’s nuclear and missile programs, which Pyongyang says are aimed at developing weapons capable of hitting the United States.

North Korea routinely denies widespread allegations of rights abuses.

The Treasury statement said the Ch’olhyo’n Overseas Construction Company, which was sanctioned along with the Military Security Command and the External Construction Bureau, had operated in Algeria and was reported to earn foreign currency for North Korea.

“Employees of Ch’olhyo’n are kept in slave-like conditions, including having salaries and passports withheld by (North Korean) security officials assigned as site supervisors, meager food rations, poor living conditions, and severe restrictions on their freedom of movement,” the Treasury statement said.

It said the External Construction Bureau had operated in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Tom Brown)

End ‘containment’ of asylum-seekers on islands, aid groups tell Greek PM

: Refugees and migrants line up for food distribution at the Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece October 6, 2016.

ATHENS (Reuters) – Over a dozen human rights groups and aid organizations wrote to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday urging him to end the “containment” of asylum seekers in island camps.

More than 13,000 people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis fleeing years of war, are living in five camps on Greek islands close to Turkey, government figures show. Four of those camps are holding two to three times as many people as they were designed for.

Those who arrive on Greek islands following a European deal with Turkey last year to stem the flow are forbidden from traveling to mainland until their asylum applications are processed, and those who do not qualify are deported.

Applications have piled up and rulings can take weeks. A recent sharp rise in arrivals has piled additional misery on overcrowded facilities.

The 19 signatories, which include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Rescue Committee and Oxfam, said the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Kos, Chios and Leros had been “transformed into places of indefinite confinement.”

“We urge you to put an end to the ongoing ‘containment policy’ of trapping asylum seekers on the islands … and to immediately transfer asylum seekers to the mainland and meet their protection needs,” they wrote.

They described conditions as “abysmal” and said many asylum-seekers lacked access to adequate and timely procedures and protection. Some have been on the islands for 19 months.

“Reception conditions are deteriorating, and gaps in basic services, especially medical, are increasing,” they wrote.

Thousands of people, including young children, are crammed into tents with only a cloth separating one family from another, the groups said, and conditions were particularly harsh for pregnant women.

Nearly 23,000 people have arrived in Greece this year, a fraction compared to the nearly 1 million who arrived in 2015, but state-run camps are struggling to cope with the numbers.

As an emergency measure, the government has said it plans to move about 2,000 people from Samos and Lesbos to the mainland.

In recent weeks, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) its research showed a mental health emergency was unfolding in migrant camps on the islands, fueled by poor living conditions, neglect and violence.

The United Nations refugee agency called on Greece to speed up preparations at those camps, saying they were ill-prepared for winter.

 

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Toby Chopra)

 

Rights group accuses Myanmar of crimes against humanity

Rohingya refugees queue for aid at Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

By Shoon Naing

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar is committing crimes against humanity in its campaign against Muslim insurgents in Rakhine state, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, calling for the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions and an arms embargo.

The U.N. refugee agency called for a redoubling of international aid for the 480,000 refugees – 60 percent of them children – who have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 to escape the violence.

A Myanmar government spokesman rejected the accusation of crimes against humanity, saying there was no evidence.

Myanmar has also rejected U.N. accusations that its forces are engaged in ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in response to coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents on the security forces on Aug. 25.

Refugees arriving in Bangladesh have accused the army and Buddhist vigilantes of trying to drive Rohingya out of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

“The Burmese military is brutally expelling the Rohingya from northern Rakhine state,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The massacres of villagers and mass arson driving people from their homes are all crimes against humanity.”

Myanmar, also known as Burma, says its forces are fighting terrorists responsible for attacking the police and the army, killing civilians and torching villages.

The International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as acts including murder, torture, rape and deportation “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.

Human Rights Watch said its research, supported by satellite imagery, had found crimes of deportation, forced population transfers, murder and rape.

The U.N. Security Council and concerned countries should impose targeted sanctions and an arms embargo, it said.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said no Myanmar government had ever been as committed to the promotion of rights as the current one.

“Accusations without any strong evidence are dangerous,” he told Reuters. “It makes it difficult for the government to handle things.”

A coordinating group of aid organizations said the total number of refugees who have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 had been revised up to 480,000 after 35,000 people in two camps were found to have been missed out of the previous tally.

“The massive influx of people seeking safety has been outpacing capacities to respond, and the situation for these refugees has still not stabilized,” Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Geneva.

“UNHCR is calling for a redoubling of the international humanitarian response in Bangladesh.”

LITTLE SYMPATHY

The violence and the refugee exodus is the biggest crisis the government of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has faced since it came to power last year in a transition from nearly 50 years of military rule.

Myanmar regards the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and bouts of suppression and violence have flared for decades. Most Rohingya are stateless.

Suu Kyi has faced scathing criticism and calls for her Nobel prize to be withdrawn.

She denounced rights violations in an address to the nation last week and vowed that abusers would be prosecuted. She also said the government was trying to determine why so many people fled.

Seven U.N. experts, including Yanghee Lee, special rapporteur on rights in Myanmar, called on Suu Kyi to meet Rohingya to hear for herself the reasons for their exodus.

“No one chooses, especially not in the hundreds of thousands, to leave their homes and ancestral land, no matter how poor the conditions, to flee to a strange land to live under plastic sheets and in dire circumstances, except in life-threatening situations,” they said.

They called on Myanmar to provide humanitarian access to Rakhine state, where the military has been restricting entry.

Suu Kyi has little, if any, control over the security forces under a military-drafted constitution that also bars her from the presidency and gives the military veto power over political reform.

Myanmar has seen a surge of Buddhist nationalism in recent years, and the public is supportive of the campaign against the insurgents.

Since Sunday, the army has unearthed the bodies of 45 members of Myanmar’s small Hindu community who authorities say were killed by the insurgents soon after the violence erupted.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which has claimed attacks on the security forces since October, denied killing the villagers.

Some Hindus have fled to Bangladesh. Others have taken refuge in Myanmar towns, accusing the insurgents of attacking them on suspicion of being government spies.

(This refiled version of the story fixes garble in figure in paragraph two).

(Additonal reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in GENEVA; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Michael Perry and Paul Tait)

Philippine president’s Senate foes, allies vow to block budget cut for rights body

FILE PHOTO: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gestures as he delivers his speech, during the oath taking of Philippine National Police (PNP) star rank officers, at the Malacanang Presidential Palace in Manila, Philippines August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

By Enrico Dela Cruz

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s critics and allies in the Senate vowed on Wednesday to block a lower house move to slash the annual budget of a public-funded human rights agency opposed to his bloody war on drugs to just $20.

The house, dominated by Duterte’s supporters, voted on Tuesday to allocate a 2018 budget of just 1,000 pesos ($20) to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), which has investigated hundreds of killings during the president’s ferocious anti-narcotics crackdown.

Vice President Leni Robredo, who was not Duterte’s running mate and has locked horns with him numerous times, said the lawmakers’ move effectively abolishes the CHR, a constitutional body.

Duterte’s signature campaign has left thousands of mostly urban poor Filipinos dead. Critics say the lawmakers are trying to retaliate against the CHR for pursuing allegations of executions by police during sting operations, which police deny.

The CHR is among the domestic and foreign rights groups that Duterte frequently admonishes, accusing them of lecturing him and disregarding Filipinos who are victims of crimes stemming from drug addiction.

The upper house minority bloc, composed of six staunch critics of the president, will seek to restore the 678 million peso budget the government and a Senate sub-committee had proposed for the CHR.

Senator Risa Hontiveros described the plan to cut the budget to almost nil as “a shameless rejection of the country’s international and national commitments to champion human rights”.

Several allies of Duterte in the 24-seat chamber said they would scrutinize the house move and try to ensure the commission had a budget that would allow it to work properly.

Senator Richard Gordon said the CHR had a job to do and should not be restricted.

“That is their role – to expose possible abuses,” he said.

Another legislator, JV Ejercito said senators would not make the CHR impotent.

“The CHR is in the thick of things and very relevant nowadays and probably even next year and the years to follow because of what’s happening,” he said in a statement.

Duterte once threatened to abolish the CHR after its chief, Chito Gascon, sought to investigate alleged abuses by police anti-drugs units.

Duterte on Tuesday appeared to distance himself from the lawmakers proposing the meager budget. He said CHR was constitutionally created and should probe whatever it wants, adding he was “not here to destroy institutions”.

“He had it coming. He opens his mouth in a most inappropriate way. He knows nothing,” Duterte said, referring to Gascon.

“The congressmen are really angry. I have nothing against him. Give them a budget for all I care, whatever he likes to investigate.”

 

(Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty)

 

U.N. brands Myanmar violence a ‘textbook’ example of ethnic cleansing

A Rohingya refugee man pulls a child as they walk to the shore after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border by boat through the Bay of Bengal in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh, September 10, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By Stephanie Nebehay and Simon Lewis

GENEVA/SHAMLAPUR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – The United Nations’ top human rights official on Monday slammed Myanmar for conducting a “cruel military operation” against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state, branding it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein’s comments to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva came as the official tally of Rohingya who have fled Myanmar and crossed into southern Bangladesh in just over two weeks soared through 300,000.

The surge of refugees – many sick or wounded – has strained the resources of aid agencies already helping hundreds of thousands from previous spasms of bloodletting in Myanmar.

“We have received multiple reports and satellite imagery of security forces and local militia burning Rohingya villages, and consistent accounts of extrajudicial killings, including shooting fleeing civilians,” Zeid said.

“I call on the government to end its current cruel military operation, with accountability for all violations that have occurred, and to reverse the pattern of severe and widespread discrimination against the Rohingya population,” he added.

“The situation seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Attacks by Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) militants on police posts and an army base in the northwestern state of Rakhine on Aug. 25 provoked a military counter-offensive.

Myanmar says its security forces are carrying out clearance operations to defend against ARSA, which the government has declared a terrorist organization.

Myanmar on Sunday rebuffed a ceasefire declared by ARSA to enable the delivery of aid to thousands of displaced and hungry people in the north of Rakhine state, declaring simply that it did not negotiate with terrorists.

 

“COMPLETE DENIAL OF REALITY”

Human rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya accuse the army and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes of mounting a campaign of arson aimed at driving out the Rohingya.

The government of Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country where the roughly one million Muslim Rohingya are marginalized, has repeatedly rejected charges of “ethnic cleansing”.

Officials have blamed insurgents and Rohingya themselves for burning villages to draw global attention to their cause.

Zeid said Myanmar should “stop pretending” that Rohingya were torching their own houses and its “complete denial of reality” was damaging the government’s international standing.

Western critics have accused Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi of failing to speak out for the Rohingya, who are despised by many in the country as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Some have called for the Nobel Peace Prize Suu Kyi won in 1991 as a champion of democracy to be revoked.

 

URGENT AID NEEDED

Monday’s estimate of new arrivals in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh since Aug. 25 was 313,000, an increase of 19,000 in just 24 hours.

“Large numbers of people are still arriving every day in densely packed sites, looking for space, and there are clear signs that more will cross before the situation stabilises,” the International Organization for Migration said in a statement.

“New arrivals in all locations are in urgent need of life-saving assistance, including food, water and sanitation, health and protection.”

Thousands of Rohingya refugees are still stranded on the Myanmar side of the River Naf, which separates the two countries, with the biggest gathering south of the town of Maungdaw, monitors and sources in the area told Reuters.

About 500 houses south of the town were set on fire on Monday, a villager in the Maungdaw region, Aung Lin, told Reuters by telephone.

“We were all running way because the army was firing on our village,” he said. “A lot of people carrying bags are now in the rice fields.”

Reuters journalists in Cox’s Bazar could see huge blazes and plumes of smokes on the other side.

Those still waiting to cross into Bangladesh – many hungry and exhausted after a days-long march through the mountains and bushes in monsoon rain – have been stopped because of a crackdown on Bangladeshi boatmen charging 10,000 taka ($122) or more per person, sources said.

Arshad Zamman, 60, said his family had only 80,000 Burmese kyat ($60) and so he had taken a boat to Cox’s Bazar on his own and would return to pick up his wife and two sons when he had enough for their journey.

“I will try to find money here. I will beg and hopefully some people will help me,” he said.

 

COMMUNAL TENSION

Elsewhere in Myanmar, communal tension appeared to be rising after more than two weeks of violence in Rakhine state.

A mob of about 70 people armed with sticks and swords threatened to attack a mosque in the central town of Taung Dwin Gyi on Sunday evening, shouting, “This is our country, this is our land”, according to the mosque’s imam, Mufti Sunlaiman.

“We shut down the lights in the mosque and sneaked out,” the mufti, who was in the mosque at the time, told Reuters by phone.

The government said in a statement the mob dispersed after police with riot shields fired rubber bullets.

Rumors have spread on social media that Muslims, who make up represent about 4.3 percent of a population of 51.4 million, would stage attacks on Sept. 11 to avenge violence against the Rohingya.

Tensions between Buddhists and Muslims have simmered since scores were killed and tens of thousands displaced in communal clashes accompanying the onset of Myanmar’s democratic transition in 2012 and 2013.

 

(Additional reporting by Shoon Naing, Wa Lone and Antoni Slodkowski in YANGON, and by Krishna N. Das in COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

 

Philippine leader says drugs war ‘trivialized’ by human rights concerns

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks to protesters after he delivered his State of the Nation address at the Congress in Quezon city, Metro Manila Philippines July 24, 2017.

By Karen Lema and Martin Petty

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday promised an unrelenting war on drugs, defying critics who were “trivializing” his campaign with human rights concerns and unjustly blaming the authorities for the bloodshed.

Duterte wasted little time in his annual state of the nation address to defend a crackdown that has killed thousands of Filipinos. He said that though he valued human life, he needed to tackle “beasts and vultures” that were preying on helpless people and stopping foreign investment from pouring in.

“The fight will be unremitting as it will be unrelenting despite international and local pressure, the fight will not stop,” he said.

“I do not intend to loosen the leash in the campaign or lose the fight against illegal drugs, neither do I intend to preside over the destruction of the Filipino youth by being timid and tentative in my decisions in office.”

The crackdown on drugs is the signature campaign that has defined Duterte’s presidency and caused an international outcry, with rights groups condemning his administration for a campaign that has overwhelmingly targeted drug users from poor communities, and left narcotics kingpins untouched.

Critics say Duterte has turned a blind eye to thousands of deaths during police operations that bear all the hallmarks of executions. Police say they have shot dead suspects only in self defense and deny involvement in a spree of killings of drug users by mysterious vigilantes.

Duterte said critics were wrongly blaming police for most of the deaths and “trivializing” his campaign by talking about the need for due process and to protect human rights.

He said his detractors at home and abroad should help him instead.

“Your efforts will be better spent if you use the influence, moral authority, moral ascendancy of your organizations over your respective sectors to educate the people on the evil of illegal drugs, instead of condemning the authorities, unjustly blaming for every killing that bloodies this country,” he said.

Duterte’s annual address lasted nearly two hours, during which he frequently deviated from a prepared speech that was eventually reduced to brief talking points.

Some 7,000 protesters from numerous groups gathered outside the venue to demonstrate against Duterte. After his speech, he listened to their complaints for several minutes.

 

DEATH BY TAXES

He lashed out strongly at mining companies he said were destroying the environment and threatened to tax them heavily, or close the sector completely.

He said he would consider stopping exports of raw materials until they could be processed domestically, adding it was a “non-negotiable” policy that mining firms would repair damage they had caused, or “I will tax you to death”.

Duterte called on the Senate to pass a tax reform bill to help finance a multi-billion infrastructure program key to his economic agenda.

The lower house passed a leaner version of the proposed measure, the first of five tax reform packages Duterte is pushing to boost state coffers and make the tax system fairer and more simple.

Expected revenues from the original draft, which seeks to cut the personal income tax rate, raise excise taxes on fuel and automobiles, amounted to 162 billion pesos ($3.2 billion).

Duterte also said he would press the legislature to pass a law to grant autonomy to a predominantly Muslim region in Mindanao, a move experts say could help arrest the spread of extremist ideology.

He also said he was prepared to “wait it out” before retaking Mindanao’s Marawi City from Islamic State-inspired rebels, because he was concerned hostages might be killed. He acknowledged there had been intelligence failures and mistakes in assessing the initial threat.

Duterte told reporters he would add 35,000-40,000 new troops over the next two years and buy planes and high-altitude drones to “build an armed forces that can fight all fronts, everywhere”.

Senator Risa Hontiveros, a critic of Duterte, described the president’s much-anticipated address as “a bad open mic performance”.

 

(Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales, Enrico dela Cruz and Manuel Mogato; Editing by Nick Macfie)

 

Malaysian state introduces public caning for sharia crimes

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – A Malaysian state amended its Islamic laws on Wednesday to allow public canings, sparking criticism that the change was unconstitutional and could infringe on the rights of religious minorities.

Ethnic Malay Muslims make up more than 60 percent of Malaysia’s 32 million people and attempts to implement stricter forms of sharia law in recent years have raised concerns among members of the ethnic Chinese, Indian and other minorities.

The new law was approved in the state assembly of Kelantan, which is governed by a conservative Islamist party, PAS, and where nightclubs and cinemas are banned.

The northeastern state has been pushing for the adoption of a strict Islamic penal code, called ‘hudud’, that would provide for punishments such as stoning for adultery and amputations for theft.

The amendment allowing public caning was passed as part of an effort to streamline sentencing under Islamic criminal law, Kelantan deputy chief minister Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah was quoted as saying by the Bernama state news agency.

“Caning can now be carried out inside or outside of prison, depending on the court’s decision,” Mohd Amar said, according to Bernama.

“This is in line with the religion, which requires that sentencing must be done in public.”

He did not say exactly what crimes would be punished by caning but the list would likely include adultery.

Islamic law is implemented in all Malaysian states but is restricted to family issues such as divorce and inheritance, as well as sharia crimes involving Muslims, such as consuming alcohol and adultery.

Criminal cases are handled by federal law.

Ti Lian Ker, a member of the Malaysian Chinese Association, part of the ruling coalition, said public canings were unconstitutional under federal criminal law.

“This is a rewriting of our legal system and spells a bleak future for the nation,” he said in a statement.

Last year, the PAS introduced a bill that would expand the powers of sharia courts and incorporate parts of hudud into the existing legal system.

The bill is expected to be debated in parliament when it reconvenes later this month.

Critics of the bill say the implementation of hudud could infringe on the rights of religious minorities and disrupt the fabric of Malaysia’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious society.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Praveen Menon and Robert Birsel)

Venezuela prosecutors to question ex-National Guard chief on human rights

FILE PHOTO: A member of the national guard looks on atop a vehicle during clashes with opposition supporters while rallying against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s state prosecutors’ office said on Thursday that it is calling in the former head of the National Guard for questioning about “serious and systematic” human rights violations during the recent wave of anti-government protests.

For three months, critics of President Nicolas Maduro have taken to the streets almost every day to protest against what they call the creation of a dictatorship. The protests, which have left nearly 80 dead, frequently culminate in violent clashes with security forces.

Maduro says they are an attempt to overthrow him with the support of Washington.

General Antonio Benavides, who was taken off the job last week after troops under his command were filmed firing handguns at protesters, is to appear before prosecutors on July 6.

“There has been evidence of excessive use of force in the repression of demonstrations, the use of unauthorized firearms … cruel treatment and torture of persons apprehended, as well as raids without warrant and damages to property,” the office said in a statement.

The Government of the Capital District, where Benavides now works, did not answer phone calls seeking comment.

Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega, who broke with Maduro this year, has condemned the excessive use of force by the National Guard as well as the increasing use of military tribunals to try those arrested in protests.

Government officials and leaders of the ruling Socialist Party have described her as a “traitor,” and the Supreme Court has received a request to have her removed from her post for “serious offenses.”

(Reporting by Diego Oré; editing by Silene Ramírez and Jonathan Oatis)