Asia

2. Asia Human Rights Violations Sari Torres, Eric Masterbone, Joseph Florek, Marissa Nebbia

3. Bangladesh China India Indonesia Japan Laos Malaysia Mongolia Myanmar Nepal Pakistan Philippines Singapore South Korea Sri Lanka Taiwan Thailand Tibet Vietnam Countries in Asia

4. Women in Pakistan face high rates of rape and Sexual Assault • The man usually goes un-prosecuted • Woman is often charged with illicit sex if fail to prove the rape • Difficult to prove the rape because of haphazard medico legal examinations • The justice system sees “rape” as a private matter not belonging in the courts. • Conclusion • The Pakistan government seems to be uninterested in limiting impunity for these acts. • There is no such thing as statutory rape in Pakistan leaving young girls in similar situations. • The government is doing nothing and seems to continue to do nothing.

5. Slave Labor in Taiwan • Mental-rehab center is forcing slave labor upon its patients • One-third of the patients are chained up for 24 hours a day to keep them from running away • The facility is run by monks who treat the patients very poorly • The patients are beaten • Questions are raised whether the forced labor helps the patients • The facility also has no doctor or psychiatrist • Conclusion • The monks are suppose to be kind and merciful but treated the patients as slaves. • In Taiwan society has trouble dealing with those who don’t conform, • Taiwan society tries to hide the sickness of the mentally ill

6. Women’s Rights in Taiwan • 35% of married women are reported to suffer spousal abuse. Although well over 17,000 incidents exist per year, yet few are formally reported due to culture norms in society, such as the value of ‘family honor’. • An estimated 7000 rapes are committed, but less than 10 percent of victims actually press charges. However, new laws have been put into effect that allows prosecution without the victim taking legal action. This law has proven to be somewhat efficient, convicting many assailants. • Forced prostitution is an ongoing problem. The trafficking of persons, although illegal for sexual motives, leads to prostitution. Some parents even sell their children into prostitution. This practice has dropped in popularity over the last few years, but still exist. • Conclusion: • The rights of women are heavily infringed upon in Taiwan. Measures have been taken to combat this, but more time will be needed to help confirm women’s rights are being enforced. Improvement is showing, and elimination of Asian organized crime would minimize prostitution.

7. Japan • Prisoners in Japan • The use of the death penalty is abused, to the point where secret executions are conducted. Since 1993, over 30 executions were unannounced. Complete solitary confinement is common for more serious criminals, and legal or medical contact is prohibited for an extended time before the execution. • Prisoners are abused and/or tortured until a confession (often fabricated to end suffering) is achieved. Suspects are held in detention centers for years, in which they are exposed to heavy abuse and years of solitary confinement. As with death row inmates, legal and medical access is prohibited. The result is often that innocents are punished, but the overall crime rate is low, due to the fears of imprisonment.

8. Japan • Children as Soldiers • The Self-Defence Forces of Japan recruit children between 15 and 16 as youth cadets. They do not engage in actual combat or work in deadly conditions, and learn technical skills. Outside organizations protest against this practice, yet this is a cultural norm, as Japanese animation often portrays young soldiers, sometimes even in combat. This might indicate that Japanese society considers the ages of 15-16 similar to the way the US views 18-21 year olds.

9. Japan • Women’s Rights In Japan • Women are forced into labor when offered a job opportunity, and deceived into a heavy burden of debt. They are reduced to nearly slaves, controlled by their debtors. They are often forced to become prostitutes, and have no defense against abuse, unsafe sex, medical problems, or abuse from their debtors. The laws preventing this are practically useless, and help very little in eliminating this atrocity.

10. Japan • Conclusion: • Japan has a serious problem with its prison system, and needs complete reform and regulation. Without some sort of change, more innocents will suffer, and change may then come from the people in the form of riots or violent protests. Although the system heavily punishes criminals, innocent people lose all their rights, freedoms, and dignity.

11. Sri Lanka: Torture Continues • Sri Lankan government forces and its opposition group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been using torture, arbitrary killings, and disappearances for ten years despite its legality. • Each year thousands of people are arrested and tortured as a response to the escalating violence. • An existing problem: its hard to prove torture because detainees must be examined, but only under the convicted parties discretion. Permission is not always granted. • Examples of Torture: • Near death suffocation by pulling a shopping bag containing chillies and petrol over the head or forcing victims heads under water • Beatings • Burnings • Electric shock treatment

12. Bangladesh: War on Sex Crimes • ü      5,000- 6,000 Nepali women and children, some as young as nine are sold across the border into India. • ü      200,000 Bangladesh women and girls are in sexual bondage in Pakistan. • ü      This occurs because of poverty in the nation and no protection of women and children within their own countries. • ü      Dhaka conference in 1999 attempted to establish protection of these peoples from a growing problem of selling women and children into prostitution across country lines. • This conference was attended by 300 delegates and 50 womens organizations

13. Tibet: Treatment of Tibetans suffer at hands of Chinese • ü      Chinese government continue to force Tibetan women to undergo abortions and sterilizations to suppress Tibetan population. • ü      The one child rule does not apply to minorities, yet the Chinese government continues to enforce the rule onto the Tibetan people in order to force them further into the minority. • ü      Abortions and sterilization of women continue despite opposition.

14. Websites: Tibet, Bangladesh, &Sri Lanka http://www.tibetanwomen.org/ Tibet Women fight to united to protect themselves from "arbitrary detentions, forced abortions, and torture" from China.   http://www.ki.se/phs/wcc-csp/news/000425c.htmlDhaka Conference in Bangladesh that strived to increase awareness and protection of women and children from being sold across the border into India for sexual bondage purposes.   http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/asia/srilanka.htmlIt is against the law in Sri Lanka to torture any individual regardless.  However, over the past ten years prisoners have been subject to various, but serious, levels of torture while in custody.  

15. v      September 1996: two priests were killed in Gumula • v      A year later the Rev. S. Christudas, the vice principle of St. Joseph’s School in Dumaka, endured public humiliation when he was arrested, brutalized and paraded naked through the streets • v      In October 1997, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference if India formally and publicly protested to the President of India against what they called the “continuing violence against priests and Christian leaders in the state in recent times.” • v      An extremist group called Ranvir Sena massacred 61 villagers in the Bihar community of Jehanabad shortly after the date of the conference India: Anti-Christian Violence Continued

16.     The formation in March 1998 of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party Government was followed by violence against Christians in more than half of India’s 25 states, concentrated largely in the north and west where Christians are few and Hindu nationalism is particularly strong. At about 2 a.m., on Sept. 23, four nuns who operate a medical clinic in the state were dragged from their convent and gang-raped by a dozen or more men. The world Hindu Federation virtually justified the attacks, claiming they resulted from the “anger of patriotic Hindu youth against the anti-national forces.

17. December 1, 2000: a gang of about fifteen armed anti-Christian assailants broke into the residential complex of St. Anna Girls High School, raped one inmate of the convent and assaulted eight other women. They beat up the nuns and threatened them for over an hour armed with revolvers and rods. They also looted cash and valuables. They raped a young cook for almost an hour and left her lying on the floor where she continued bleeding profusely for another fifteen minutes. • v      December 13, 2000: The Hindu nationalist government that came to power in Goa, announced that it would not allow foreign funds to go directly to educational, cultural and religious sectors. They did this to cripple the Church activities in that area. • v      December 17, 2000: The decomposed body of a 35-yr old man involved in a Christian ministry work was recovered from Ulva forest area if Kandhamal. • Attacks on Christian Minority during December 2000 website~ • http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/01022001/Art14.htm December 2000

18. Women’s Rights Women and men [will] enjoy in practice, equal rights, equal access to and control over productive resources, education, health, land, other forms of property, shelter, credit, information, knowledge, skills, technology and markets by adoption of affirmative action wherever necessary, and by removing identified impediments~ Excerpt from India’s country paper

19. Ø      India has an elaborate system of laws to protect the rights of women, including the Equal Remuneration Act, the Prevention of Immoral Traffic, the Sati (widow burning) Act, and the Dowry prevention Act. However, the Government is often unable to enforce these laws, especially in rural areas where traditions are deeply rooted. • Ø      Female bondage and forced prostitution are widespread in some parts of Indian society. According to a government study, violence against women, including rape, molestation, kidnapping, and dowry-deaths, has increased over the last decade[1994].

20. Ø      According to a recent report by the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF), up to 50 million girls and women are missing from India’s population as a result of systematic gender discrimination. In most countries in the world, there are approximately 105 female births for every 100 males. In India, there are less than 93 women for every 100 men in the population. • Ø      Practice of female infanticide, prompted by the existence of a dowry system, which requires the family to pay out a great deal of money when a female child is married. For a poor family, the birth of a girl can signal the beginning of financial ruin and extreme hardship.

21. Ø      Women belong to the lowest castes, and tribal women are especially at risk for rape. There is a lack of seriousness with which this crime is often treated, and the degrading treatment to which alleged rape victims are often subjected by law courts and by their own communities. In a notorious case from Rajasthan, alleged gang-rapers were acquitted on account of their high-caste and middle-agedness • Ø      Victims of rape are stigmatized, their testimonies often treated with little concern, Social attitudes make prosecution difficult, and women are understandably reluctant to press charges.

22. Website for more info: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ev90495/women.htm