Anglican Church urges withdrawal of Sri Lanka’s anti-terror bill
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- February 7, 2026
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Sri Lanka’s Anglican Church has called for the withdrawal of the proposed law granting sweeping powers to authorities that could undermine fundamental constitutional rights of citizens
Bishops from Sri Lanka’s Anglican Church have called for the withdrawal of a proposed anti-terrorism law, which is to replace the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act, warning that it threatens basic civil liberties.
In a media statement issued on Monday, the bishops said the proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill amounted to “a clear breach of commitment” by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. They reminded Dissanayake that he had, in his election manifesto, pledged to abolish all oppressive laws, including the PTA, and ensure civil rights across the country.
The draft bill was made public in December last year, seeking public feedback until Feb. 28 on the government’s plan to replace the terrorism act with it.
It further pointed out how the law enabled arbitrary arrests, prolonged detentions without due process, the use of torture, and the extraction of confessions admissible in court, while granting sweeping powers that undermine fundamental constitutional rights of citizens.
A Philippine congressional committee rejected impeachment complaints against President Ferdinand Marcos on Wednesday over allegations he swindled taxpayers out of billions of dollars.
Marcos is facing a public firestorm over sham infrastructure projects meant to control flooding in the archipelago country, where typhoon-driven rains submerged entire towns last year.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos speaks during a press conference at Malacanang Palace in Manila on Aug. 11, 2025. (Photo: AFP)
One of the two complaints, endorsed by the Makabayan bloc of left-wing parties, accused Marcos of packing the national budget with projects aimed at redirecting funds to his allies. Another focused on allegations that the arrest of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte and his transfer to the International Criminal Court constituted kidnapping. But the committee voted overwhelmingly against both complaints, saying they lacked sufficient substance to move forward.
In the Philippines, any citizen can file an impeachment complaint provided it is endorsed by one of the more than 300 members of Congress. Under the Philippine constitution, an impeachment by the House triggers a Senate trial, where a guilty verdict means expulsion from office and a lifetime ban on political service.
The top court in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India has ruled that Christians do not require government permission to hold prayer meetings on their private property, clarifying a long-disputed issue that has triggered repeated harassment of Christians in the state. The order was issued on January 27, but was made available for publication on Monday.
The court said its ruling was grounded in the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the law,” which must be accorded by state authorities to all citizens without discrimination on the basis of religion or any other consideration.
Activists and members representing the Christian community display placards as they take part in a peaceful protest rally against what they claim as an increase in hostility, hate, and violence against Christians in various states of the country, in New Delhi on Feb. 19, 2023. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP)
The order followed two similar petitions filed by Maranatha Full Gospel Ministries and Emmanuel Grace Charitable Trust, whose applications to conduct prayer services on their own properties were repeatedly ignored by state authorities.
Allegedly, more than 1,000 house churches were shut down following police harassment over the past couple of years. Supporters said the ruling could encourage Christians to revive worship gatherings in the Hindu-majority state. Christians account for less than one percent of Uttar Pradesh’s more than 200 million people, about 80 percent of whom are Hindus.
In a 529-page report, Human Rights Watch detailed intensifying repression and abuses in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and North Korea, worsening transnational repression by China and across the region, and humanitarian and human rights crises in Myanmar and Afghanistan.
It also said that India, Pakistan, and Indonesia had suffered from a weakening of democratic institutions and the rule of law, in a world where a rules-based international order is being crushed, threatening to take with it the architecture human rights defenders had come to rely on.
China’s constitution allows religious freedom, but the communist regime is considered one of the world’s worst violators of human rights and religious freedom. (Photo: Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)
The severest of criticisms were aimed at US President Donald Trump, with his administration marked by blatant disregard for human rights, egregious violations, and significant steps backward on immigration, environment, criminal justice, and freedom of speech, among others.
In Asia, the report highlighted a campaign by the Chinese government to Sinicize religion, to propagate Chinese Communist Party ideology. This had led to an intensified crackdown on “house churches” or Protestant congregations that resist joining the official church.
Cambodia has deported another 406 suspects of organized crime rings and freed a further 2,000 people who said they were coerced into running online scams as authorities double down on efforts to end the scourge amid simmering tensions along the Thai border.
Most of those deported came from China, but others were from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Korea, Thailand, and Uganda. Another 59 Vietnamese and 750 Malaysians were deported in the last week of January.
People line up in front of the Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh in this Jan 19 photo. Cambodia has deported another 406 suspects of organized crime rings and freed a further 2,000 people who said they were coerced into running online scams. (Photo: AFP)
Their deportations followed a raid by some 700 specialized officers on 22 buildings within a casino complex in Bavet on the Vietnamese border, which freed 1,792 Chinese people alongside nationals from India, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nepal, and Taiwan.
Those who endured life in the scam compounds have told horrific stories.
A recent report by Amnesty International found one escapee had his throat slit, dead bodies piled up, women were raped, another man had his finger chopped off, while being forced to work online scams known as pig butchering.
The leaders from the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, a top minority forum, warned that the country’s millions of minorities remain frightened and may be discouraged from voting in the election if the situation does not improve.
The council leaders at a press conference in the national capital, Dhaka, on January 29 criticized the government for playing down attacks on minorities as politically motivated and not communally charged.
In this file image from 2024, Hindus demand justice for attacks during a rally in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. (Photo: AFP)
The interim government of Nobel Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus, in a statement last week, said that police recorded 645 incidents of attacks on minorities, mostly Hindus, last year, and only 71 incidents were “communally charged,” including attacks on houses and religious worship places.
The council, in a written statement, rejected the government report, saying that it ignores killings, sexual violence, and land seizures that targeted minorities. About 90 percent of Bangladeshi people are Muslims, about 8 percent Hindus, and the rest belong to other faiths, including Buddhism and Christianity.
Advocacy groups have criticized police in Indonesia’s predominantly Christian province of East Nusa Tenggara for what they describe as the “criminalization of a lawyer and three tribal leaders” amid a long-running land dispute involving a Church-owned company.
Four people, including activists and members of the Nangahale Indigenous community in Sikka regency, were summoned for questioning on Wednesday after East Nusa Tenggara police named them suspects late last month.
A man and his grandson inspect a house demolished by a company owned by Maumere diocese on Jan 22, 2025. (Photo supplied)
The four were reported by Father Ephivanus Markus Nale Rimo, director of PT Krisrama, a company owned by Maumere diocese. They are accused of unlawfully entering land claimed by the company, which has been embroiled in a dispute with the Nangahale community.
In a statement, the Agrarian Reform Consortium, a civil society group, questioned the legal basis for naming the four as suspects, noting that the alleged incident occurred in 2014.
The group said the company’s land-use permit expired in 2013 and was not renewed until 2023, meaning the company had no legal standing at the time to claim ownership or accuse the four of trespassing.
As people in China prepare to mark the Lunar New Year in the second half of February, Catholics in various parts of the country have engaged in charity work to support the poor and needy as part of the celebrations, says a report.
For nearly a month now, Catholic communities in mainland China have been carrying out pastoral activities and charitable initiatives traditionally linked to the Lunar New Year. The activities seek to focus on charity and mercy to care for the most vulnerable people in the communities, the report said.
A woman walks past a decoration ahead of the Lunar New Year of the Horse in Beijing on Feb. 1. (Photo by Pedro Pardo/ AFP)
This year, the Lunar New Year is designated as the Year of the Horse, officially beginning on February 17 for ten days.
The activities included providing warm clothing for disabilities, such as blind children, former leprosy patients, and elderly people suffering from various illnesses. The Catholics also supported families with sick children facing hardship. The volunteers from a charity distributed 40 eye care kits to teenagers as part of the “Luminous Childhood” initiative, in partnership with an eye hospital, among other initiatives.
source:https://www.ucanews.com/news/anglican-church-urges-withdrawal-of-sri-lankas-anti-terror-bill/111822
