Pakistan’s Military Leader Must Step Down as President or Army Chief
(Washington, DC, May 1, 2007) ? Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf’s insistence on holding onto the office of army chief as well as
the presidency prevents Pakistan from returning to the rule of law under its
constitution, Human Rights Watch said today.
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by Jianwei Wang
In the last few years, China has significantly adjusted its strategy toward neighboring countries and greatly improved relations with most of them. But until very recently, Japan was the only holdout in Beijing?s otherwise successful ?peripheral diplomacy.? The political ties between the two nations were almost frozen during Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro?s tenure. The relationship, however, has experienced a dramatic turn in the last six months. With Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao?s short but highly successful visit to Japan, China?s ?new diplomacy? finally reached Tokyo.
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A Davao City resident, from the city’s first district, recently emailed a set of pictures, one of them shown here, showing a movie ticket allegedly given away by the camp of House Majority Leader and Davao City congressman Prospero Nograles, as well as an insurance card worth 100,000 pesos supposedly issued by the Lakas party and signed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and House Speaker Jose de Venecia. This is the same insurance card that is now the subject of a nationwide controversy, allegedly because distributing them is tantamount to vote-buying, which the Lakas camp denies.
Despite significant reforms to the death penalty system and new rules for foreign journalists in China, there is little evidence of improvement in other areas of human rights related to the Olympics — and there has been increasing repression of human rights activism and domestic journalism, said Amnesty International today.
Poster Child. Gregorio Galacio, the father of Grecil Buya, the nine-year-old New Bataan girl accused by the military of being a child combatant, talks to the press in Manila, where he and his wife Virginia Buya, right, earlier filed complaints against the soldiers who killed Grecil during a firefight with guerrillas on March 31. International human rights groups, including one from Japan, have denounced her death, calling it an atrocity that is connected to the Arroyo regime’s war on terror that have allegedly victimized civilians. (Photos courtesy of arkibongbayan.org)