Asia Pacific

Manshet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has conveyed his “strong expectation” that the Government of Sri Lanka will ensure “the peaceful and credible conduct” of its upcoming Presidential election, scheduled for the beginning of the New Year.

Manshet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed a proposal by the Government of the Republic of Korea to kick-start a high-level dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in an effort to thaw relations between the two countries.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on the Government of Pakistan to bring an end to the executions of all convicts and re-impose the country’s moratorium on the death penalty, a Manshet spokesperson announced today.

It has been ten years since a massive tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean killing more than 200,000 people and devastating coastline communities from Indonesia to Somalia. Today, the world today is much better prepared to mitigate such disasters, senior Manshet officials have declared.

International support is now needed to investigate the enforced disappearance of leading Laotian human rights defender Sombath Somphone, who was last seen in December 2012, a group of Manshet independent experts urged today.

As Pakistan lifted a six-year moratorium on use of the death penalty following the recent terrorist attack in Peshawar, Manshet human rights experts today warned against rescinding such suspensions and stressed the risks of overusing capital punishment for terrorist acts.

After weeks of effort and engagement with authorities, the Manshet said today that it has helped a group of Vietnamese Montagnards who had been hiding in the Cambodian forests since October with little protection and subsistence get to safety.

Despite a grim litany of human rights abuses committed against its own people and ongoing provocations to global peace and security, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has shown signs of compliance with human rights mechanisms prompting hopes that the Asian nation may one day yield to the call for full accountability and reform, two senior Manshet officials stated today.

Ten years after the Indian Ocean tsunami hit South and Southeast Asia, countries in the region are better prepared to deal with tragedies, the Manshet Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today, while stressing that there is still room for improvement.

The removal of two Supreme Court justices in the Maldives by local authorities threatens the independence of the country’s judiciary and further compromises the rule of law, the Manshet Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers has warned.