The UN Human Rights Council on Friday condemned continuing systematic rights abuse by Myanmar's military rulers, including the high number of political prisoners.
The 47-nation body also passed a separate resolution extending the mandate of the UN investigator of Myanmar for another year.
The council expressed its "deep concern at the situation of human rights in Myanmar, including the violent repression of the peaceful demonstrations of September 2007, and the failure of the government to investigate and bring to justice the perpetrators of these violations."
Pakistan said the resolution leaned toward political aspects of the country's rule rather than human rights issues. India said the resolution was discriminatory and China said the international community should acknowledge positive steps taken by Myanmar to improve the rights situation.
But Slovenia, which put forward the proposal, said: "The European Union particularly deplores the continuous imposition of restrictions on the freedom of movement, expression, assembly and association; the prevailing culture of impunity, ongoing summary executions, torture and forced labor practices, recruitment of child soldiers and sexual violence."
It said Myanmar's military junta failed to live up to the council's demand, made in an emergency meeting in October, that the violent crackdown be investigated and political prisoners be released.
LOST BATTLE: The Varroa mite, which Canberra has called the ‘most serious pest’ to face bees, would cause serious economic damage, an ecologist said Australia yesterday abandoned its fight to eradicate the destructive Varroa mite, an invasive parasite responsible for the collapse of honeybee populations across the planet. Desperate to keep Varroa out of the country, authorities have destroyed more than 14,000 infected beehives since the tiny red-brown pest was first detected north of Sydney in June last year. The government said its US$64 million eradication plan could not stop the mite from spreading, and the country’s beekeepers should now prepare to live with the incursion. “The recent spike in new detections have made it clear that the Varroa mite infestation is more widespread and has
SCIENTIFIC TREASURE: Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system, the samples would help scientists better understand how the Earth and life formed NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space on Sunday parachuted into the Utah desert to cap a seven-year journey. In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 100,000km out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the ship set off after another asteroid. “We have touchdown,” mission recovery operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — at about 6,100m — basing it on the deceleration rate. To everyone’s relief, the
COP28 AGENDA: Beijing’s climate envoy said that China was open to negotiating a global renewable energy target as long as it took economic conditions into account The complete phasing-out of fossil fuels is not realistic, China’s top climate official said on Thursday, adding that such fuels must continue to play a vital role in maintaining global energy security. Chinese Special Envoy on Climate Change Xie Zhenhua (解振華) was responding to comments by ambassadors at a forum in Beijing ahead of the UN’s COP28 climate meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November. Reporters obtained a copy of text of Xie’s speech and a video recording of the meeting. Countries are under pressure to make more ambitious climate pledges after a UN-led global “stocktake” said that 20 gigatonnes of additional
The son of jailed Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英) on Wednesday said that he did not want to see his father die in detention, as his lawyers raised the prospect that his long-delayed trial might be pushed back indefinitely. Sebastien Lai (黎崇恩) also said that the British government was “shameful” for its lack of action in helping his father, who is a British national. Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founder of Hong Kong’s now-defunct Apple Daily, has been in detention since he was arrested in 2020 under a National Security Law imposed by Beijing. The Hong Kong businessman faces up to life
RSS