international solidarity

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Press Statement

The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) strongly condemns the inhumane treatment by the Hong Kong Police against unarmed protestors, during the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, on 17th and 18th December 2005. The Right to peacefully protest is a basic human right, as enshrined in the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and other UN human rights standards. Hong Kong Police has not only violated this basic right and other fundamental freedoms of assembly and movement, but they have also provoked tensions and conflict between the protestors and Police by resorting to disproportionately violent…

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Japan Hanging on to Death Penalty

HRF/75/03 　Embargoed for 23 April 2003 JAPAN is one of only two industrialized democracies that use the death penalty Currently, there are 57 people on death row waiting to be executed, and approximately an additional 50 inmates whose death sentences are still under appeal. Japan’s death penalty practice has been called “inconsistent with the [ICCPR]” by the UN Human Right Committee, “a violation of the most fundamental human rights” by the Council of Europe, and tantamount to torture and cruel punishment by numerous independent observers. Japan’s death penalty practice is cloaked in secrecy, and administered under antiquated, unreformed laws leaving…

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Foreign Occupation, Right to Self Determination and Right to Development

Chairperson and dear Friends from Asia, First let me begin by thanking the Asian Civil Society Forum 2002 and the organizers for this opportunity to present the case of Tibet in today’s discussion. I am the executive director of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy which is based in northern India and was established in 1996. Article 1 of the International Human Rights Covenants (ICESCR and ICCPR) provides that “all peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”. Since 1979,…