Category: 40th Session – March 2019

INDONESIA: New Penal Code Bill must protect freedom of religion and belief

40th Session - March 2019, ALRC AT THE UN, Indonesia, Written Submissions February 21, 2019February 21, 2019 Admin 0 Comments

A Written Submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) wishes to inform the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) about Indonesia’s existing blasphemy law and the recurrent criminalization of persons belonging to minority religions under its article 156a, as well as article 326 of the New Penal Code Bill. Article 156a of the Indonesian Penal Code (KUHP) constitutes a serious problem to freedom of religion and belief in Indonesia. The article posits that, “By a maximum imprisonment of five years shall be punished any person who deliberately in public gives expression to feelings or commits an act. (a) which […]

BANGLADESH: Criminalisation of torture goes hand in hand with institutionalisation

40th Session - March 2019, ALRC AT THE UN, Bangladesh, Written Submissions February 20, 2019February 20, 2019 Admin 0 Comments

A Written Submission to the 40th Regular Session of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre The United Nations Human Rights Council’s faulty electoral system has adopted Bangladesh as a member of the highest global rights body from 2019 to 2021 despite the State’s deliberate failure to fully cooperate with the Council. Bangladesh’s re-election to the Council has taken place at a time when the country’s government is hiding its catastrophic domestic human rights records behind the showcase of accommodating the Rohingya refugees, who fled to escape a systemic genocide in Myanmar. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) has been consistently submitting analytical documentations to […]

INDIA: Country must bring its missing children back

40th Session - March 2019, India, Written Submissions February 20, 2019February 20, 2019 Admin 0 Comments

A Written Submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource CentreI Recently, Aawaj, a partner organisation of the Asian Legal Resource Centre, in India along with Madhya Pradesh Police busted a multi state child-sale racket and helped rescuing many children sold to different families. The bust, sadly, exposes only the tip of India’s human trafficking problem with children being its worst victim. They are trafficked for various reasons including forcing them into child labour, commercial sex work and for forced marriage, domestic work, and forced begging. Though there are various reasons why so many children go missing in India, destitution is one of the most important […]