Human Rights | WPN World People News

Despite President Joko Widodo’s repeated commitments to address human rights violations committed in 1965 – such as extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and torture – more than five decades later millions of victims and their families are still waiting for truth, justice and reparation. On the 51st anniversary of these violations, Amnesty International, Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR), East-Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), La’o Hamutuk, TAPOL, Watch Indonesia! and Yayasan HAK call on the Indonesian authorities to go beyond just rhetoric. We call on the authorities to take concrete steps that address ongoing impunity for these crimes in accordance with international law and standards.

Iran’s revolutionary court has confirmed a 10-year prison sentence for a prominent human rights defender. Authorities have held the rights defender, Narges Mohammadi, who suffers from a severe medical ailment, in Evin prison in Tehran since June 2015.

The United Nations is marking the International Day of Older Persons by encouraging countries to draw attention to and challenge negative stereotypes and misconceptions about older persons and ageing, and to enable older persons to realize their potential to build a life of dignity and human rights.

Masih, resident of Chak 66, Dina Nath Village, Kasur District of Punjab Province, 48 km southwest of Lahore, was friends with a Muslim, Mr. Akhtat Ali. On September 18, Ali, along with his friends Bakht Khan and Saddam opened Nabeel Masih's Facebook profile; there was a picture therein, allegedly posted and liked by Nabeel, where the Kaaba was defamed and disrespected. The picture was photo-shopped to show the picture of a pig atop Khan-e Kaaba. Ali immediately filed a case of blasphemy at Police Station Bhai Pheru.

"The evacuations and arrests were just part of a larger Khmer Rouge project of mass social engineering which involved obliterating everything that smacked of capitalism, privatism, and class oppression," writes Alexander Laban Hinton, Founding Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. He is the co-editor of Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, published by Duke University Press, and author of the award-winning Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has learned about six Pacific countries raising the subject of human rights violations in Papua in the General Debate of the Assembly's 71st Session, on 26 September 2016. The video can be accessed here.

A Rwandan opposition activist has been missing for six months and is feared to have been forcibly disappeared, Human Rights Watch said on Sep 29. People close to the activist, Illuminée Iragena, have not seen her since March 26, 2016, and fear she may have died in detention.

Security forces in Bangladesh are deliberately shooting members and supporters of opposition parties in the leg, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Sep 29. Victims explained that police shot them in custody and then falsely claimed that they were shot in self-defense, in crossfire with armed criminals, or during violent protests.

Authorities at a maximum security prison in Cairo that holds many political prisoners routinely abuse inmates in ways that may have contributed to some of their deaths.

Security forces in Bangladesh are deliberately shooting members and supporters of opposition parties in the leg, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Sep 28. Victims explained that police shot them in custody and then falsely claimed that they were shot in self-defense, in crossfire with armed criminals, or during violent protests.