Human rights
Australia’s Myanmar sanctions: now for the real decisions
It took Australia two years after Myanmar’s coup to impose new sanctions. On 1 February, Foreign Minister Penny Wong announced autonomous sanctions on the 16 members of the State…
Refugees may become victims of Malaysia’s electoral politics
Campaigning is well underway for Malaysia’s general election, set to be held on 19 November. In the leadup to the high-stakes poll, Malaysia’s government has made the…
Enemies of education are back in Malala’s hometown?
The terrorist attack on a school van in the Swat district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province this week confirms the return of the extremist groups that had imposed their…
Ending capital punishment for good in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea abolished the death penalty in January 2022. As a matter of fact, this was the second abolition of the death penalty in the country.
Capital punishment was…
The Rohingya issue requires a regional solution
The Myanmar–Bangladesh border is again the scene of trouble. The Bangladesh Army is on high alert after several cross-border incursions by the Myanmar military and is considering…
Beijing three-step: China denies, deflects and dissembles on Xinjiang
Propaganda, understood as the “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired…
A tragedy in Xinjiang, a tragedy for the UN
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s four-year term ended this week with the release at the eleventh hour of a long-delayed report assessing China’s…
Lowy Institute Papers
Rise of the Extreme Right: The new global extremism and the threat to democracy
ICC pushes probe on the Philippines’ drug war
In a June resolution, the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan asked to resume an investigation into former president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, which was…
ASEAN governments need to act on Myanmar
On my first trip to Myanmar for Human Rights Watch in 2012, I met the activist and writer Kyaw Min Yu (known as Ko Jimmy), who had recently been released from prison. It was a…