Amnesty International has urged the Chinese authorities to release a Tibetan documentary filmmaker who has been jailed for six years for “subversion”.

Dhondup Wangchen was detained after making the film Leaving Fear Behind, in which Tibetans speak out about their lives. He was sentenced on 28 December 2009 following a secret trial in Xining city, western China. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience.

Dhondup Wangchen was detained in March 2008. Police tied him to a chair, beat and punched him in the head and frequently deprived him of food and sleep during interrogations. Dhondup Wangchen suffers from Hepatitis B, for which he has not received any medical treatment. 

“His treatment and the harsh sentence he was given following an unfair trial shows the Chinese authorities' complete disregard for international human rights standards,” Roseann Rife said.
 
He was later moved to Xining City No. 1 Detention Centre. He was held incommunicado until April 2009, when he met his family-appointed, Beijing-based lawyers for the first - and only - time. In July 2009, Beijing judicial authorities forced these lawyers to drop the case.

It is unclear if he subsequently had any legal representation or was allowed to defend himself in the trial.

Dhondup Wangchen's family has not received information directly from the court about the trial, sentence or verdict. They have visited the detention centre several times but have never been allowed to see him.

Leaving Fear Behind, Dhondup Wangchen's film

Dhondup Wangchen began planning the film in 2006; he explained his motives by saying: “It is very difficult [for Tibetans] to go to Beijing and speak out there. So we decided to show the real feelings of Tibetans inside Tibet through this film.”

In October 2007, he began collecting interviews from over 100 Tibetan people. In the film, they talked about their lives and their views on the Dalai Lama and the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

The footage was smuggled out of the country to Switzerland, where Dhondup Wangchen's cousin edited it down to a 25-minute documentary. It premiered in a screening to foreign journalists in a Beijing hotel on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Security forces interrupted the screening.

Filep Karma is serving 15 years in prison for raising a flag. A prominent advocate for the rights of Indonesia's Papuan population, Filep Karma was arrested for taking part in a peaceful ceremony on December 1, 2004, which included the raising of the Morning Star flag, a symbol of Papuan independence.

Amnesty International considers Filep Karma to be a prisoner of conscience who has been imprisoned solely for the peaceful and legitimate exercise of his right to freedom of expression. Amnesty is concerned at reports that Mr. Karma has been beaten by guards and has experienced serious health problems in prison. The organization calls on the Indonesian government to free Filep Karma and all other prisoners of conscience.

Individuals at Risk: Filep Karma on Amnesty International
Country Concerns: Indonesia on AI USA

Southeast Regional Action Network
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Watch this video message from Filep Karma
In this video, Filep thanks his supporters from a hospital bed. Amnesty supporters helped secure this much-needed medical attention for Filep. He was returned back to prison shortly after.

Since 1983, Sri Lanka has been wracked by a civil war between the security forces (who are mostly from the majority Sinhalese community) and the armed Tamil opposition group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were seeking an independent state for the Tamil minority in the north and east of the island. A ceasefire was negotiated in 2002 but broke down by mid-2006. The resumption of fighting was accompanied by soaring human rights abuses including hundreds of enforced disappearances, unlawful killings of aid workers, arbitrary arrests, torture and the use of child soldiers. In mid-May 2009, the Sri Lankan military announced that it had defeated the LTTE, recapturing all the territory controlled by them and killing their leaders.

In the closing stages of the war, thousands of civilians were killed or injured. Allegations of human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, committed by both sides in the last months of the war should be investigated by an impartial, international body; the Sri Lankan government has not agreed to any such investigation.

Since the end of the war, an estimated 12,000 displaced people (including children) suspected of links to the LTTE have been arbitrarily arrested and detained incommunicado by the authorities in irregular detention facilities, such as vacated school buildings. The detainees should be charged with legitimate criminal offences, tried and prosecuted in accordance with the law, or else released.
In recent years, outside the conflict zone, journalists and other media workers have been attacked. At least 14 media workers have been the victims of unlawful killings since the beginning of 2006; one has allegedly disappeared in the custody of the security forces, while others have been tortured and arbitrarily detained. Emergency regulations issued by the Sri Lankan President have been used to silence critical media and generally violate freedom of expression in Sri Lanka, including through detention without charge or trial for periods lasting up to 18 months.

Links
>>Briefing Paper: Unlock the camps
>>Read the Latest News about Sri Lanka on Amnesty's Blog
>>Twenty Years of Make Believe: Sri Lanka's Commisions of Inquiry
>>Human Rights Council must call for an independent international investigation into allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka

Eastern Chad, which borders the conflict-ridden Darfur region of Sudan, is host to more than 260,000 Sudanese refugees and 180,000 internally displaced people. Despite international peacekeeping efforts, violence still occurs in refugee camps and along the borders. Human rights violations, especially against women and young girls, continue to occur.

In September 2009, Amnesty International released a report on sexual violence committed in Eastern Chad, called "'No Place for Us Here' Violence Against Refugee Women in Eastern Chad," documenting and denouncing the shocking levels of rape and other violence that women in Darfur and Eastern Chad have been subject to.

Women and girls must leave the relative security of refugee camps to gather firewood, water, straw to feed their livestock, tend to small plots of vegetables and crops and to go into village markets. Once outside the refugee camps, they face a range of abuses from harassment and threats to physical attacks, rape and other forms of sexual violence. Despite the deployment of a specialized police force called the Détachement Intégré de Sécurité (DIS), women and girls remain at risk of gender-based violence. Since DIS was formed, AI has documented a number of human rights violations they've committed, particularly against women and girls in refugee camps in eastern Chad. We're asking that they cease all abuses and for perpetrators to be brought to justice.

In the report, Amnesty International calls on the international community to adopt a comprehensive strategy to deal with the continuing vulnerability of women and girls both inside and outside refugee camps, and to act more generally on the continuing generalized insecurity and human rights violations in Eastern Chad.

Blog: Chad

Keep up-to-date on the on-going housing crisis and gender violence issues in Chad by following Amnesty's blog at. » http://blog.amnestyusa.org/tag/chad/.


We are asking the Chad government:

• to provide greater protection to women and girls in refugee camps in eastern Chad, including refugees from Darfur and internally displaced persons from Chad, now that they have lost the protection that MINURCAT provided;
  
• to make every effort to prevent the recruiting of underage combatants in the refugee camps and other insecure areas of eastern Chad, either by the Chadian security services or by armed opposition forces, and to better facilitate the rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers;
  
• to ensure that Chadian soldiers and security personnel cease all violations of the human rights of refugees and other displaced persons in the camps; and
  
• to ensure that all who have committed such violations are brought to justice, whether they are in Chadian government forces or those of the opposition.