Asia sees growing repression, resistance
Credit to Author: Associated Press| Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 16:15:33 +0000
BANGKOK: Authoritarian governments in Asia are undermining human rights and demonizing their critics, but they face a rising tide of protest from young people who defy grave risks to protest such repression, Amnesty International said in its annual report on the region.
The human rights group’s annual survey of the Asia-Pacific region, released Wednesday, said India and China, the two most populous nations, are trying to impose their “own bleak, domineering vision on the continent, perceiving minorities as a threat to ‘national security.’”
The “main takeaway” from the report is that in Asia, “we saw an escalation of the repression in many countries.
“But we also saw an increase in the resistance and protest, often led by young people from Hong Kong to India, from Myanmar to Thailand,” Nicholas Bequelin, regional director for Amnesty International, told The Associated Press.
“We saw increased mobilization by young people to defend their rights. Demand accountability, justice, action on climate and rights for all,” Bequelin said.
The effort to silence criticism and prevent the public from holding public officials and corporations accountable is a worrying trend, it said. But anti-government protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere showed an abiding will to resist repression, the report said. Some highlights from the report.
Rising repression: Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s push to vanquish dissent and impose the absolute control of the ruling Communist Party has intensified persecution of human rights defenders and others, the report said.
In China and across South and Southeast Asia, governments are increasingly forthright in silencing their opponents and the media, reducing the space for even peaceful protests and introducing laws that punish online dissent, it said.
It noted that many such governments also attack their critics with sophisticated social media tactics, smearing them as treasonous.
Companies are shielded from accountability to the public by leaders who defend them for the sake of economic growth, it said. They also are quick to resort to using lawsuits to penalize whistleblowers and others who speak out.
Violence: Chinese authorities subjected Uighurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the far western Xinjiang region to intense surveillance, arbitrary detentions and forced indoctrination.
In Sri Lanka, anti-Muslim violence broke out after Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 250 people, mainly Christians, in three churches and three hotels.
AP