Torture victims Babul Akhtar and Junayed Hossain Leon shared their painful experiences of sustaining torture by law-enforcement agencies while in detention. Wife and daughter of Mr. Mahmudur Rahman Manna, a civil society activist, who remains arbitrarily detained, and has been tortured in custody, shared their dreadful experiences regarding the excruciating law-enforcement system in Bangladesh.
The fight against extremism and crime are the excuses the governments in India and Pakistan often cite for resorting to extrajudicial executions. Harsh legislations, like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, which is implemented in several regions of India, provide statutory impunity for extrajudicial executions, better known as “encounter killings” in South Asia.
The Nepal Government, on its part, has been found to be wanting on various counts, including a near complete absence of presence outside Kathmandu valley. Nepal has not seen local body elections for decades and this has resulted in a serious administrative crisis on the ground. As only the bureaucrats govern most of these areas, with no checks and balances from elected representatives, allegations of corruption and incompetence abound. The earthquake has brought all these issues to the fore.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ALRC-CWS-29-16-2015 June 12, 2015 A Written Submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre INDONESIA: Weak judicial system and insufficient legal aid allows for unfair trial A basic requirement in ensuring justice, fair trial is largely dependent on the state of the criminal justice system in the country, particularly the effectiveness of judges and lawyers. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) wishes to draw the attention of the UN Human Rights Council to the fact that judicial independence in Indonesia suffers. Indonesia’s Judicial Commission received as many as 1,781 complaints from the public about unfair trial between January and December 2014. In […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ALRC-CWS-29-16-2015 June 11, 2015 A Written submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre PAKISTAN: Business and Human Rights – government must strictly follow the regulations of ILO in its true spirit The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) and the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) would like to draw the attention of the UN Human Rights Council to an incident in a Pakistani garment factory where workers were burned alive. Ali Enterprises is a garment factory located in Plot 67, Hub Road, Baldia Town, Karachi. It has exported garments to Europe and the United States, employing between 1,200 and […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ALRC-CWS-29-10-2015 June 09, 2015 A Written Submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre PAKISTAN: The State should be asked to declare all kinds of private courts to be illegal, and enforce the same The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) would like to draw the attention of the UN Human Rights Council to the plight of Pakistani women. Despite making advances in many fields previously thought to be male dominated, women in Pakistan are actively discriminated against by a variety of state and non state actors, and subjected to violence without possibility of redress. In Article 25, the Constitution of Pakistan states, […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ALRC-CWS-29-09-2015 June 09, 2015 A Written Submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre NEPAL: Need for local elections, exposed by the earthquake The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) joins the world in grieving the loss of human lives, property, and cultural history in Nepal during and after the massive earthquake that struck at 11:50 a.m. on 25 April 2015. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter 80 km east of Pokhara has devastated the country, resulting in at least 8,604 human casualties, injuries to at least 17,838, displacement of millions, and widespread damage across the Himalayan nation. The response in the […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ALRC-CWS-29-07-2015 June 08, 2015 Written submission to the UN HRC by the Asian Legal Resource Centre NEPAL: Custodial torture is rooted in the police stations of Nepal The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), along with the Terai Human Rights Defenders (THRD) Alliance, would like to bring the entrenched practice of custodial torture in Nepal to the attention of the UN Human Rights Council. In relation to the decade-long conflict period from 1996 to 2006, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, following a visit to Nepal in September 2005, concluded, inter alia, that “Torture is systematically practiced by the police, […]
Date: June 16, 2014 Document id: ALRC-COS-26-19-2014 HRC section: Item 3, Interactive Dialogue with Special Rapporteur on Independence of judges and lawyers Speaker: Mr. MOON JeongHo An Oral Statement to the 26th Session of the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), a non-governmental organisation with general consultative status SOUTH ASIA: No rule of law without independence of judges and lawyers Thank you Mr. Vice-President, The Asian Legal Resource Centre(ALRC) and its partners welcome the report (A/HRC/26/32) presented by Madam Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers. We appreciate the efforts made by the Rapporteur to ensure the rule of law is upheld through […]
ALRC-CWS-26-10-2014 June 4, 2014 HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Twenty sixth session, Agenda Item 3, General Debates A written submission to the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre SOUTH ASIA: Governments must act to eradicate poverty 1. The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) draws the attention of the Human Rights Council to the persistence of extreme poverty in Asian countries. This condition is further deteriorated by widespread hunger and lack of livelihood opportunities, which have made poverty a chronic condition. Most Asian countries have ratified various covenants that make it mandatory for the state to provide basic rights and living conditions of its citizens. While there have been […]
