Asia
Human Rights Violations
Sari Torres, Eric Masterbone, Joseph Florek,
Marissa Nebbia
Countries in Asia
Bangladesh Pakistan
China Philippines
India Singapore
Indonesia South Korea
Japan
Sri Lanka
Laos
Taiwan
Malaysia
Mongolia Thailand
Myanmar Tibet
Nepal Vietnam
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Bangladesh: War on Sex Crimes
5,000- 6,000 Nepali women and children, some as
young as nine are sold across the border into India.
200,000 Bangladesh women and girls are in sexual
bondage in Pakistan.
This occurs because of poverty in the nation and no
protection of women and children within their own
countries.
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
Tibet: Treatment of Tibetans
suffer at hands of Chinese
Chinese government continue to force
Tibetan women to undergo abortions and
sterilizations to suppress Tibetan population.
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.
Abortions and sterilization of women
continue despite opposition.
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.html
Dhaka 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.html
It 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.
India: Anti-Christian Violence
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
Continued
v 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.
December 2000
v 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
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
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.
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].
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.
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.
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
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.
Website for more info:
http://dspace.dial.pipex.c
om/town/square/ev9049
5/women.htm