Category: Human Rights

STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s prime minister has condemned as “deeply disrespectful” the weekend burning of a Quran in Stockholm, which has raised tensions with Turkey as the Nordic country courts Ankara over its NATO bid.

Far-right politician Rasmus Paludan set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book on Saturday in front of Turkey’s embassy in the Swedish capital.

Furious that Paludan had been permitted by Swedish police to carry out the protest, Ankara canceled a visit by Sweden’s defense minister and summoned Stockholm’s ambassador.

Late on Saturday, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson tweeted: “Freedom of expression is a fundamental part of democracy. But what is legal is not necessarily appropriate. Burning books that are holy to many is a deeply disrespectful act.”

“I want to express my sympathy for all Muslims who are offended by what has happened in Stockholm today.”

Paludan’s demonstration has further damaged relations as Stockholm tries to convince NATO member Turkey to approve Sweden and Finland joining the military alliance.

Sweden’s bid has been stalled amid Ankara’s demands that Stockholm hand over Kurdish activists and prevent rallies attacking Turkey’s leadership.

Many Muslim countries said they were outraged by the burning of the Quran on Saturday.

Morocco said it was “astonished” the authorities had allowed it to take place “in front of the Swedish forces of order.”

Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also condemned it, as did the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Jakarta said, “the act of blasphemy against the holy book has hurt and tarnished religious tolerance,” adding that “freedom of expression must be exercised in a responsible manner.”

Dozens of protesters gathered late Saturday in front of the Swedish consulate in Istanbul, where they burned a Swedish flag and called on Turkey to sever diplomatic ties with Stockholm.

Paludan, a Swedish-Danish activist who has already been convicted for racist abuse, provoked rioting in Sweden last year when he went on a tour of the country and publicly burned copies of the Quran.

Source: Voice of America

Police officers in Jakarta have sterilised major Buddhist and Chinese temples in the capital city to maintain security on Chinese New Year’s day.

“For the major temples, we have conducted sterilisation works, while for the (smaller) traditional temples, we only do manual observation,” Jakarta Metropolitan Police Chief Inspector General Fadli Imran stated during his visit to Dharma Jaya Temple in Glodok here Saturday (January 21).

He did not elaborate how the police officers sterilised major temples in the city. He, however, affirmed that he had personally inspected the temples to monitor security arrangements and preparation ahead of the Chinese New Year, celebrated across the country on Sunday.

The police operations at temples in Jakarta were aimed to maintain security and order to ensure those celebrating the Chinese New Year could perform rituals at the temples safely and peacefully, he said.

“(The inspection) is also one of my ways to ensure that the religious activities ahead of theChinese New Year’s day take place properly,” the police chief said.

Meanwhile, Imran also conveyed Chinese New Year greetings to all people who celebrate the day, particularly the Chinese community.

“I hope at this water rabbit year, entrepreneurs will hopefully get success (in their businesses); those in careers will be more advanced; families will be more harmonious, and we, as part of one nation, will always be protected by God. We must preserve our brotherhood in this turbulent time,” he remarked.

Earlier, Jakarta Police Spokesperson Senior Commissioner Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko said that 4,550 security personnel had been deployed to secure the celebrations of Chinese New Year.

The 4,550 joint officers comprise 1,403 provincial police officers, 1,513 local police officers, 343 military officers, and 1,291 local authority apparatus, he expounded.

Source: Antara News

The Bali Regional Police has urged vehicle rental service providers to tighten the rules for renting out vehicles to tourists.

“We appeal to rental owners, before renting out vehicles to foreign and domestic tourists, to remind them that they must have a driving license and comply with traffic regulations,” Bali Police’s public relations head Senior Commissioner Stefanus Satake Bayu Setianto said here on Wednesday.

According to him, vehicle rental service providers must prioritize traffic security, safety, and order so that road users can feel safe from traffic risks.

This is urgent, considering that recently, there have been many traffic violations and accidents involving foreigners using rented vehicles, he said.

One of the factors behind traffic accidents is that most foreigners are not aware of the existing traffic regulations, while the National Police has implemented electronic traffic law enforcement (ETLE), he added.

The Bali Police has also implemented electronic ticketing by installing ten ETLE cameras in each local police station region.

Therefore, the Bali Police has asked all car and motorcycle rental owners to direct foreign and domestic tourists to comply with the traffic rules, such as wearing a helmet, carrying a driving license, wearing a safety belt, and not using a mobile phone while driving, among others.

“We also ask tourists to always be careful by prioritizing security, safety, order, and smoothness in traffic,” Setianto said.

The Bali Police has also advised rental service providers to prepare local tour guides who know certain routes for tourists wishing to travel long distances to avoid potential accidents and prevent them from getting lost.

“If needed, rental service providers can prepare tour guides to accompany foreigners when driving. This is important because tourists do not really know the roads they drive through when enjoying the beauty of Bali,” Setianto explained.

Source: Antara News

The National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) is investigating a case of alleged electronic-based immoral acts involving a woman, FA, and a higher-up at the Penajam North Paser House of Representatives in Central Kalimantan.

“It’s being investigated,” a commission member, Bahrul Fuad, said here on Wednesday.

He confirmed that FA had reported the case to the commission through her lawyer.

The commission said that it is of the view that FA, as a suspect in the case, has rights that must be respected and fulfilled by the state, including the right to the presumption of innocence and the right to effective and quality legal assistance.

FA also has the right to provide information without pressure and the right to be informed of the allegations and has no burden of proof.

“According to the mandate it goes by, the National Commission on Violence Against Women opposes the exploitation of women in any form,” he said.

On June 10, 2022, SMN, a higher-up at the Penajam North Paser House of Representatives, reported FA to the National Police after an alleged obscene video of the two was circulated on social media.

The police named FA as a suspect in the case and arrested her on September 22. FA was detained at the Criminal Investigation Agency’s detention center from September 23, 2022, to January 20, 2023.

FA’s lawyer, Zainul Arifin, said that the case began when SMN offered FA some money in exchange for sexual intercourse.

“With coercion and economic pressure for life necessities to support her parents and her tuition fees, FA reluctantly agreed,” he informed.

However, an obscene video that allegedly showed them was circulated on social media. This led SMN to report FA to the police in June 2022.

“In fact, it is clear that our client did not know anything about the spread of the video, and our client is a victim of allegations of making pornographic videos,” he added.

Arifin said he suspected that SMN was behind the video.

Source: Antara News

Ngawi, East Java The Ngawi Regional Police, East Java, is still in the process of investigating the finding of an alcoholic drink in a car accident that claimed six lives on Thursday (January 12).

“In addition to the finding of the jowo arak (liquor) bottle, the results of the report showed that (the bodies’ mouth) emitted a smell of alcoholic drink,” Ngawi Police’s Head of Traffic Unit, First Inspector Achmad Fahmi Adiatma told reporters here on Saturday.

In the accident, the car hit a large truck at the Ngawi Ring Road, and as a result, six of the eight car passengers were killed, with four having died at the scene while two breathed their last while receiving intensive care at the hospital.

Adiatma explained that the police found a bottle of Javanese liquor from one of the victims’ jacket.

In addition, the police obtained information from the medical team at Dr Soeroto General Hospital that several of the deceased victims emitted odor of alcoholic beverage from their mouth.

However, that information and the finding are still being investigated by police.

He stated that police had yet to obtain information from survivors, as both are still undergoing intensive care at the hospital.

While waiting for the survivors, the Ngawi Police is also awaiting the East Java Police’s Traffic Accident Analysis team’s report. The results of the three-dimensional scanner analysis will explain the chronology of events leading to the accident.

“The investigation is still ongoing to find out the exact cause of the accident that killed six people,” he remarked.

Earlier, four people were reported dead while four people were critical after their car crashed into a flatbed truck that was parked on the side of the Ngawi Ring Road in Kandangan Village, Ngawi District, on Thursday (January 12) at around 2:40 a.m. local time.

Thereafter, at the hospital, two of the four critical victims was declared dead, thereby bringing the death toll to six.

Adiatma said that the truck’s parking position was already proper and did not violate any regulation.

Source: Antara News

Jakarta The Social Affairs Ministry has changed the service and rehabilitation scheme for victims of illegal drug abuse, such as narcotics, psychotropics, and other addictive substances.

“We have a new organizational structure for savings. For instance, we deal with a large number of drug abuse victims, but (the number of rehabilitation patients) is not as many as the poor people we handle, so we merge them (in terms of the organizational structure),” Social Affairs Minister Tri Rismaharini stated here on Saturday.

Based on Ministerial Regulation No.1 of 2022, the Obligatory Report Receiving Institution (IPWL) shifted from being under the auspices of the Directorate of Social Rehabilitation for Victims of Drug Abuse, to under the Directorate of Social Rehabilitation for Victims of Disaster and Emergency.

Meanwhile, Ministerial Regulation No. 7 of 2022 stipulates that Social Rehabilitation Assistance or ATENSI services must be carried out by responding to various social problems that require immediate and urgent treatment.

In accordance with the regulation, the ministry conducted a review, from the aspects of institution, human resources, and the assistance scheme for drug abuse victims.

“There is one who deals with drug abuse victims and another that deals with female migrant workers (TKW), who encounter problems, and another deals with assault victims. With Ministerial Regulation No. 7 of 2022 concerning ATENSI services, we mandate that the (social) centers can be multi-service,” Rismaharini explained.

The ministry will also scrutinize the application for the social welfare institution (LKS) establishment as an IPWL by referring to Government Regulation No. 25 of 2011.

Social welfare institutions that have been designated as IPWL will be evaluated and supervised in terms of service quality by the Ministry, the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), and other related agencies.

In 2021, ATENSI, amounting to Rp42.8 billion, was distributed for drug abuse victims. In 2022, the distributed assistance for drug abuse victims and drug abuse victims with HIV had reached Rp36.1 billion.

Source: Antara News

A military-backed court in Myanmar has reportedly sentenced 112 Rohingya Muslim refugees to jail terms after they were caught traveling outside refugee camps, as the entire group was on its way to Malaysia.

The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported on January 10 that the Bogale township court sentenced the group of “Bengalis”— a pejorative the authorities in the country use to identify Rohingyas — to two to five years imprisonment on January 6 for traveling “without legal documents.”

The court gave jail terms of two years to five children who were under 13. Seven children older than 13 were sentenced to three years. The rest — 53 men and 47 women — were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, according to the report.

The group of 112 was arrested from around the shores of Bogale township in the southern Ayeyarwady region of Myanmar by the Ayeyarwady Region Police Force on December 20, after they had landed from motorboats, the state media reported.

Fleeing persecution

Upwards of 1 million Rohingya Muslims live in congested shanty colonies of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, after fleeing persecution and violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

In Cox’s Bazar, the Rohingyas live in prison-like conditions, with little opportunity for education or livelihood. Refugees from Bangladesh have for years sought to go to work and live in Malaysia. Using boats operated by human traffickers from Bangladesh, Rohingyas have traveled to Malaysia for many years along illegal sea routes.

Activist groups tracking the movement of Rohingyas report that in recent years many refugees from Bangladesh cross over to Myanmar during the first leg of their illegal journey to Malaysia. With the help of the traffickers, some among them traverse the entire stretch of the journey to Malaysia by land. Some others choose a mixed land-and-sea route to sneak into Malaysia.

However, it is not clear if all members of the group of 112 — who were arrested in Bogale township and jailed — came from Cox’s Bazar or if some in the group were from Rohingya villages or camps inside Myanmar.

According to Cox’s Bazar-based Rohingya activist Mohammad Hossain, at least 5,000 Rohingya from Bangladesh entered Myanmar in the past two years, aiming to finally make it to Malaysia.

“More than half of them were somehow arrested in Myanmar, and now all of them are in custody there. After being intercepted by police in Myanmar, sometimes traffickers pay bribes and manage to get the Rohingyas freed. But in situations where bribes do not come into play for several reasons, Malaysia-bound Rohingyas are ending up in jails in Myanmar,” Hossain told VOA.

“In Myanmar, the members of the community have not been regarded as citizens for decades. They have no way to get travel documents like passports or visas. So, they resort to illegal routes to enter Malaysia. By sending stateless Rohingyas to jail for not possessing official travel documents, Myanmar is giving them extremely unjustified punishments.”

‘The latest victims’

Daniel Sullivan, director for Africa, Asia, and the Middle East at Refugees International, said the Rohingya who are being sent to jail for traveling without proper documents are “just the latest victims of the genocidal policies of the military junta in Myanmar.”

“It is the conditions placed on the Rohingya by the junta in Myanmar, including the denial of their citizenship, that has forced them into this predicament. The million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, while out of the direct line of fire of the military junta, are also facing dire conditions incentivizing them to risk dangerous journeys by sea,” Sullivan told VOA.

“Concerted global pressure in the form of targeted sanctions [including on oil and gas and aviation fuel], an arms embargo, and support for accountability measures is urgently needed to get at the root of the crisis affecting the Rohingya and so many other people of Myanmar.”

The Myanmar authorities’ action to imprison Rohingya for not having identity documents is “appalling and outrageous,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, told VOA.

“It is precisely the Myanmar government systematically denying the Rohingya access to official recognition and citizenship in the first place for which they are not in possession of identity documents. Furthermore, jailing children for simply accompanying their family on a voyage is so heartless and cruel that it really defies description,” Robertson said.

“What’s clear is the Myanmar junta doesn’t view the Rohingya as being truly human, which is something incoming ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] chair Indonesia should be considering as it considers how to approach Myanmar to compel the restoration of democracy and respect for human rights,” he said.

Source: Voice of America

Minister of Law and Human Rights Yasonna Hamonangan Laoly emphasized that implementation of the new Criminal Code (KUHP) would not harm public interest, particularly those relevant to the tourism industry.

“(This is) especially for the business sector, foreign investors, and tourists,” Laoly stated through virtual means at the American-Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (AICC) meeting here.

One of the meeting agendas is to clarify controversial issues related to articles of the new Criminal Code, especially concerning extramarital sex that has been restricted by law.

The minister remarked that the Criminal Code respects personal privacy and would not change the treatment of foreigners in Indonesia.

Moreover, the extramarital sex offence is considered by the KUHP as an absolute antragsdelikt — criminal offence that requires the victim to file a complaint for the prosecution to proceed.

Criminal Code articles concerning extramarital sex are substantially not different from the old criminal code, he stated while adding that the new Criminal Code restricted parties permitted to file the complaint on behalf of the victims to their partner, parents, and children.

“No other party could file the complaint or take the matter into their own hands in the name of morality,” Laoly stated.

He affirmed that articles restricting extramarital sex do not regulate “accessory to the crime” to the extramarital sex offence, as hotels are not required to inquire from each guest about their marital status.

The minister regrets misinterpretations of the law that became a cause for concern for the tourism sector and investment in Indonesia. He said his side would collaborate with the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy to clarify about the Criminal Code to relevant parties.

Source: Antara News