Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

31.12.2008 The Iranian government is urged to end its escalating persecution of Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel peace laureate and a leading human rights defender.

31.12.2008 Human rights groups in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are calling for international sanctions against Israel following bombing raids that have killed more than 375 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
+ Gaza today: ‘This is only the beginning’
+ OneWorld Guide to Palestine
+ Grave threat of spread of child malnourishment
+ Hospitals overburdened by influx of wounded

30.12.2008 The verdict expected on 31 December in the trial of a senior intelligence official charged with the murder of the Indonesian human rights lawyer Munir is an important test of the independence of the country's judicial system, two rights' groups said today.

30.12.2008 The people of the Gaza Strip are facing a humanitarian crisis unless the bombing stops and the Israelis allow immediate access for aid shipments, Oxfam warns.
+ Stop the Killing in Gaza

29.12.2008 Khaleda Zia attacks Sheikh Hasina, her main rival in today's Bangladesh election, but asks her to work together for development, while Hasina calls for an end to vengeance.
+ Cutting vote fraud in Bangladesh
+ Guide to Bangladesh

26.12.2008 Measures to deal with the global financial crisis are aggravating the hardship of the world’s poor and bailing out the oppressive and exploitative system of monopoly capitalism, says a network of more than 50 Asian NGOs.

26.12.2008 Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered Channel 4's alternative Christmas address yesterday, sending a message of "happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity" which immediately ignited a furious row.

23.12.2008 Between 230,000 and 300,000 displaced people are trapped in Sri Lanka's Vanni conflict zone, facing severe shortages of food and other essenials because of government restrictions on humanitarian assistance, says a leading international rights group.

23.12.2008 Closure of the Tehran-based Human Rights Defenders Centre by some 20 plain-clothes Iranian police has been condemned by a media freedom group.

22.12.2008 Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world, according to an international medical humanitarian organisation.

20.12.2008 A film season - with some classics - complements Indian Highway, an exhibition and events programme at the Serpentine Gallery that provides a snapshot of artists working in India today.

19.12.2008 The arrests of three Egyptian bloggers in the past seven weeks because of their online posts has been condemned by an international media freedom group.

18.12.2008 Zeng Jinyan, the wife of jailed human rights activist Hu Jia, thanked European parliamentarians for their support in a video message played yesterday to the European parliament during the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought award ceremony.
+ Chinese FM: European Parliament human rights award to Hu Jia wrong

15.12.2008 Over 1,000 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia in the last decade, according to a new report.

12.12.2008 Thirty companies have been added to the 'Dirty List' of companies accused of directly or indirectly helping finance Burma’s military dictatorship by operating in Myanmar.

11.12.2008 Asian elephants are being smuggled from Myanmar into neighbouring Thailand for elephant trekking' tourism, says a new report.

08.12.2008 The carnage of the terrorist attack at Mumbai's railway station was given relatively poor coverage in the media. Those of us with a fear of railway terror will have India's ordinary travellers in our thoughts.

05.12.2008 A Cuban journalist, a North Korean radio station and two Burmese bloggers win media prizes.

02.12.2008 A group of Filipino farmers are on a 157-kilometre run - the number of kilometres equalling the hectares of land owned by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's husband that have not, despite promises, been redistributed.