The nine leaders from different Church traditions were protesting the deportation of 267 men, women and children to detention camps on the Pacific island of Nauru.

The majority of them are asylum seekers who were brought from the island to Australia because they needed treatment for serious medical conditions.

More than 30 are babies born in Australia to asylum-seeker mothers.

A one-year-old baby named Asha and the child of Nepalese asylum-seekers, was held on Nauru with her parents before being brought to the Australian mainland for medical treatment last month.

On Sunday Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said Asha and her parents would be sent to community detention from Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital.

Refugee advocates welcomed Dutton's announcement, hailing it as a victory for their campaign against the deportations to Nauru of Asha and 266 other asylum-seekers also in Australia for medical care.

"No-one should be in detention on Nauru, where there is no functioning hospital - but it would be particularly cruel to rip children out of classrooms and send away these 37 babies born on Australian soil," said Love Makes a Way spokesperson Kate Leaney.

About ten church communities are supporting refugees.

All are willing to open doors and provide hospitality to the asylum seekers.

"We offer this refuge because there is irrefutable evidence from health and legal experts that the circumstances asylum seekers, including children, would face if sent back to Nauru are tantamount to state sanctioned abuse," said Peter Catt, the Anglican Dean of Brisbane.

Source

• christiantoday.com
• christianitydaily.com
• channelnewsasia.com
• Image: d.christiantoday.com

In the provincial capital, Jayapura, 30 people were arrested at a rally against Indonesian rule.

A person who was at the rally, Rosa, says there was a heavy security presence in the city, and as soon as the rally tried to march, the police moved in to break them up.

"Once the demonstrators started to walk or march the police threatened them and said 'if you step forward we will shoot you', so then they had an argument and just in a short time they were arrested, like, they caught them and put them into the police truck."

12 people were reportedly arrested by Indonesian security forces outside a maket in Manokwari on Thursday afternoon for distributing leaflets about a demonstration planned for Friday.

There were 22 protests around the world last Wednesday calling for free and open access to Indonesia's most secretive region.

Since West Papua's annexation in 1963, Indonesia has imposed a media blackout on the contested, resource-rich territory, allowing perpetrators of human rights violations to act with total impunity.

West Papua is one of the world's most isolated conflict spots. For decades, Indonesian security forces have brutally suppressed Papuan pro-independence movements.

The spokesperson for the main journalists' union in New Zealand has criticised the Indonesian blocking of access for international journalists in the West Papua region but says he is even more concerned about the "intimidation" of local Papuan journalists.

Brent Edwards, convenor of the EPMU's Print and Media Industry Council, told Pacific Media Watch the lack of access for international journalists had been a "big concern".

"But as important, if not more important, is the treatment of journalists in West Papua," he said.

"How free are they to go about their business of reporting free from fear of intimidation or government heavy-handedness?"

Source

• Radio New Zealand
• Radio New Zealand
• Pacific Media Centre
• Pacific.Scoop
• Pacific.Scoop
• Image: Humanosphere

Kepari Leniata was accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before.

More than 50 men participated, torturing her with a hot iron rod, binding her, and dousing her in gasoline before setting her ablaze with a pile of car tires and trash.

No one was arrested in the organized killing, said Deputy Police Commissioner Simon Kauba. He criticized Mount Hagen investigators for their inability to make a single arrest.

"The incident happened in broad daylight in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses and yet we haven't picked up any suspects yet. I am very, very curious about that," Kakas said.

There have been several reports in recent years of people accused of sorcery, in most cases women, being murdered.

In July 2012, police reportedly arrested 29 members of a witch-hunting gang who were allegedly murdering and cannibalizing people they suspected of sorcery.

In 2009, after a string of such killings, the country's Law Reform Commission proposed to repeal the 1971 Sorcery Act, which criminalizes the practice.

'Sorcery' is also often used as a pretext to mask abuse of women, which was last year described as a "pervasive phenomenon" in PNG by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women.

Source

• NewsMax.com
• AmnestyInternationalusa.org
• Image: ABC.net.au

He studied Korean for two years before being sent to Wonju, Gangwon Province, where he met Bishop Ji Hak-soon, well-known for his pro-democracy activities, who was in charge of the local church.

He spent 17 years working in the eastern coast city of Samcheok and the mining city of Jeongseon, where one of the notable things he did in Jeongseon was to set up a credit union. Nonghyup, the banking unit of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, which was the only financial service provider working in the village, was drawing complaints from community leaders for what they saw as excessive interest rates charged to the town's many low-income earners.

Source

• The Korea Times
• Image: The Korea Times

• In August, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp confirmed there was a risk the NZSAS had been involved in the transfer of detainees to torture in Afghanistan and that he had launched an investigation. Nine months later, and despite mounting fresh evidence and allegations, the Government has not released the findings of its investigation, despite promising to do so, and has refused to agree to an independent investigation.

• Amnesty welcomed the Government's support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in April and the repeal of the Foreshore and Seabed Act in 2011, but concerns remain that its replacement has largely the same discriminatory impact.

• In November the Immigration Act came into effect, allowing for the extension of the detention period of refugees and asylum-seekers without warrant, lacking an explicit guarantee against the detention of children and preventing asylum applicants from access to judicial review.

• The Government has failed to formally safeguard human rights for all New Zealanders by continuing to refuse to legally entrench the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, allowing for the possible enactment of legislation that could be inconsistent with its provisions. The Act also fails to give legal recognition to economic, social and cultural rights.

Holmes also criticises Pacific nations: "Away from the international headlines, thousands of people in the Pacific are being denied social and economic opportunity, and human rights defenders have been threatened, imprisoned and tortured." He singles out Fiji, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea for particular attention.

Source

• Amnesty International report on New Zealand
• Amnesty International report on Pacific
• Image: Scoop