Indian Christians refute Hindu leader’s drug-trade claim
Christians have condemned a claim by the leader of a Hindu organization that Christian churches are at the center of the drug trade in north-eastern India which shares borders with the world’s largest opium producer – Myanmar. The United Christian Forum of Dima Hasao said on Monday that the Christian community is shocked and dismayed over the allegation.
Earlier, Surendra Kumar Jain, international joint general secretary of the World Hindu Council claimed, “drug business is done on a large scale by the churches,” at an event in Assam, the biggest state in north-eastern India.
The comments drew an angry response from Christians, who alleged that Jain was attempting to create divisions among religious communities in the region. Both the World Hindu Council and India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party owe their allegiance to the ultranationalist outfit Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is against the missionary activities of Christians in the South Asian nation.
Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya in the northeast are Christian-majority states. Along with Nagaland and Mizoram, sectarian strife-torn Manipur shares a border with civil war-hit Myanmar. The Bharatiya Janata Party rules Manipur and has blamed the narcotics trade for the simmering communal tensions in the state.
Koet Saray, an activist and former monk in Cambodia has been sentenced to four years in prison after he was convicted on charges of “incitement,” the result of an attempt to negotiate in a land dispute between villagers and big business.
Rights group Licadho said he was convicted by the Phnom Penh Capital Court on Wednesday. Koet Saray was forcibly defrocked in 2021 and has faced similar charges before.
As president of the Khmer Student Intelligent League Association, he had attempted to negotiate in a land dispute, which turned violent, in Preah Vihear province.
Koet Saray was detained for comments he made online that criticized the talks during negotiations. His jailing also followed the latest World Justice Project report, which again ranked Cambodia second last out of 142 counties on its annual rule of law index, one spot above Venezuela and one place above war-torn Myanmar.
Faith leaders have expressed concerns over an exponential rise in blasphemy cases and consequent jailing in religiously conservative Pakistan. The National Commission for Human Rights said that the number of people arrested and jailed in the first half of this year increased threefold compared to last year. As of July 25, 767 people remained in prison across the country accused of committing blasphemy in comparison to only 213 people in 2023.
The commission found that most blasphemy cases were registered with the Federal Investigation Agency’s Cybercrime Unit, in collaboration with “a private entity.” The report called for “a comprehensive review” of the roles and accountability of both government and private entities and highlighted the “deplorable” prison conditions.
Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad on Monday expressed concerns and said, “young and innocent people are being trapped online.” Blasphemy remains a sensitive charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where mere allegations ignite public outrage and sometimes result in mob violence.
In the past years, 89 people were lynched, four of them this year alone, after being accused of blasphemy, according to the commission’s report.
Tibetans have accused the pro-Beijing authorities in the region of housing hundreds of young Tibetan Buddhist monks in prison-like conditions at government-run boarding schools. The students forcibly transferred from the Kirti Monastery schools in Sichuan province’s Ngaba county are not even permitted to leave the school grounds or meet their parents.
The students between the ages of 6-17 are taught exclusively in Mandarin, and those who attempted an escape are now being treated “like criminals” and forbidden from leaving the school grounds.
Over 1,000 young Tibetan monks were transferred from the Kirti Monastery to state-administered “colonial-style” boarding schools in July. The students undergo “patriotic education” in the schools which the authorities say is based on the government’s education policy.
China’s patriotic education policy mandates that the love of China and the ruling Chinese Communist Party be incorporated into work and study for all citizens.
A Sri Lankan advocacy group urged the nation’s new government and political parties to repeal the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act which they say is widely misused as a weapon against citizens with impunity. The remarks from the Lawyer’s Collective came on Sunday after government officials and spokespersons indicated that the act would be retained but not misused.
Enacted in 1979, the law is widely seen as harsh and granting extensive emergency-like executive powers, even during normal circumstances. The law permits authorities to arrest individuals without warrants for vague unlawful activities and to detain suspects for up to 18 months without trial.
Many suspects arrested years ago are awaiting trial, with reports suggesting torture while in detention and convictions based on confessions obtained under duress. The Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission said over 600 people were arrested under this law in three years until 2022.
Over the decades, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the European Union have repeatedly called for its repeal.
The International Federation for Human Rights and the Lao Movement for Human Rights on Monday welcomed a UN expert body recommendation urging Laos to improve the situation of women’s rights and gender equality. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed “concern over the increase in the trafficking of women and children” for sexual exploitation in Laos.
The committee also noted the absence of a definition of rape based on the absence of consent, law criminalizing marital rape, sexual harassment, and obstetric violence in Laos.
According to the 2022 Human Rights Report by the US State Department, Laos criminalizes rape of “a person” and provides for penalties of four to six years’ imprisonment, however, there is no law against spousal rape.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Laos has a high prevalence of child marriage. Some 30.5 percent (2.26 million) women of Laos’ 7.4 million people marry before the age of 18 despite legal prohibition, OCHCR said.
Archbishop Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo, who was named a cardinal last month, urged Japan’s government to draw inspiration from the nuclear bombing survivors’ group’s Nobel Peace Prize win to sign a UN treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons.
Established in 1958, the Nihon Hidankyo or The Japan Confederation of A-and-H-Bomb Sufferers’ Organizations advocates the abolition of nuclear weapons and the protection of survivors of atomic bombings.
Regardless of which party or politician is in power now or in the future, Japan “should approve the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” Kikuchi said. The treaty is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal being their total elimination.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, there are currently 94 signatories and 73 state parties worldwide. Among Asian nations, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor-Leste, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan have signed and ratified the treaty.
A government-appointed inquiry commission set up by Bangladesh’s caretaker government said that some 200 Bangladeshis abducted by security forces during toppled premier Sheikh Hasina’s rule are still missing.
Hasina’s government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.
The commission said on Tuesday that five people had been released from secret detention centers after Hasina’s ouster and has identified at least eight secret detention centers in Dhaka and its outskirts. Some cells were as small as three by four feet and the walls had engravings that appeared to show how their occupants kept a tally of the number of days they had been detained.
The elite Rapid Action Battalion police unit has been blamed for most cases of disappearances. The battalion was sanctioned by Washington in 2021 alongside seven of its senior officers in response to reports of its culpability in some of the worst rights abuses committed during Hasina’s rule.
Malaysia’s Kota Kinabalu archdiocese has trained a group of 28 lay volunteers to run Landings International’s lay ministry in their parishes to encourage lapsed Catholics to return to the Church. The ministry which began in the US in 1989 is designed to help inactive Catholics rejoin the Church.
The training was conducted at the Sacred Heart Cathedral to prepare the volunteers to run the 10-week Landings program, Radio Veritas Asia reported on Tuesday. The program aims to invite all Catholic parishes and communities to reach out to Catholics who have been away from the Church or are struggling in their relationship with God and the Church.
The Landings initiative aims to provide spiritual and emotional support in a non-judgmental setting. Archbishop John Wong of Kota Kinabalu acknowledged the dedication of both trainers and volunteers and expressed his joy at “witnessing the effort to reach out to the wider Catholic community.”
The trainers came from the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur and included some experts who started the Landings ministry in Singapore in 2008.
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