Authoritarian Legacies and Human Rights Struggles in the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, and China

Across Southeast and East Asia, recent developments highlight ongoing struggles to uphold human rights, democratic accountability, and social justice amid political, economic, and cultural pressures. In the Philippines, the International Criminal Court’s conviction of former president Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity underscores a reckoning with state violence and impunity, while new labor rights issues have emerged following a devastating earthquake. Indonesia faces mounting challenges in balancing economic growth with environmental and social responsibility as illegal mining devastates ecosystems and communities. In Laos, the government’s partial acceptance of UN human rights recommendations reflects incremental progress but continued repression of civil liberties. Meanwhile, in China, the systematic suppression of Uyghur and minority cultural expression has drawn renewed condemnation from UN experts. Collectively, these cases reveal the region’s broader struggle to reconcile state power, human rights, and sustainable governance in the face of international scrutiny. 

Philippines 

At the end of September 2025, the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Rodrigo Duterte, former president of the Philippines, guilty of crimes against humanity. During his presidency, Duterte enacted the “Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020,” which gave the government “excessive and unchecked powers.” Under this Act, which Duterte used to crack down on alleged drug criminals in the Philippines, more than 6,000 people were killed extrajudicially. Human Rights organizations say the number is more like 27,000. This week, the Philippine Senate “approved a resolution urging [the ICC] to put” Duterte “under house arrest.” However, as of October 3rd, Duterte is still being detained in the Scheveningen Prison in The Hague.

The ongoing human rights challenges extend beyond past political abuses. In the aftermath of the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Cebu on September 30, 2025, significant human rights concerns emerged, particularly regarding labour and safety standards. Reports indicate that at least 10 BPO firms violated occupational safety, forcing employees to work under unsafe conditions during the disaster.

Indonesia

Illegal exploitation of natural resources has become a major concern in Indonesia, prompting President Prabowo Subianto to urge authorities and the armed forces to thwart illegal mining and tin smuggling and defend the nation’s natural assets from exploitation. This issue is particularly acute in the Bangka Belitung Islands, one of the world’s largest tin-producing regions, where unregulated extraction has led to severe environmental degradation, including deforestation, mangrove destruction, and water pollution—while depriving the state of an estimated Rp 300 trillion (USD 18 billion) in revenue. Although illegal mining often supports local livelihoods, it operates outside state control, fostering corruption and weakening legitimate industries. In response, Prabowo has directed law enforcement to crack down on illegal operations, seizing smelters, machinery, and tin stockpiles, and transferring them to the state-owned company PT Timah to restore public oversight. The crackdown reflects Indonesia’s broader struggle to assert resource sovereignty, safeguard the environment, and balance economic survival, sustainable development, and social justice amid increasing global demand for critical minerals.

Laos 

In September 2025, Laos adopted 189 of the 257 recommendations from its Fourth Cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report at the UN Human Rights Council. Among these was a recommendation to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). However, Laos had previously vowed to adopt the convention but has failed to do so, and no clear timeframe has been provided for its ratification. Human Rights Watch (HRW) welcomed Laos’ support of many UPR recommendations, following earlier criticism in May over the country’s failure to improve human rights issues. However, HRW raised concerns over the government’s rejection of recommendations calling for inquiries into enforced disappearance cases. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Lao Movement for Human Rights also criticized the government’s portrayal of the country’s human rights situation, noting that Laos “remains an extremely dangerous place for independent civil society.” They stressed that civil and political rights continue to be significantly restricted and criminalized, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association. As part of this report, Daovy Vongxay, the new Permanent Representative to the UN Office for Laos, stated that capital punishment cannot be abolished but that the number of crimes with the punishment of execution was reduced from 18 to 12 in 2018. However, organisations such as the Human Rights Council, have criticized the Lao government for failing to accept 22 of the 24 recommendations outlined by the UPR for the death penalty.

On health-related fronts, Laos has also seen an increase in dengue fever cases, with the Lao government urging nationwide staff ad health officials to improve the overall management of the disease to prevent a major outbreak.

China 

This week, United Nations (UN) experts issued a press release expressing serious concern over the repression of Uyghur and other minority cultural expression in China, particularly noting two incidents. Yaxia’er Xiaohelaiti, a Uyghur songwriter was sentenced to three years in prison, with the convictions stemming from his artistic work in the Uyghur language and in owning books central to the community’s cultural history. Rahile Dawut, a female ethnographer and cultural scholar, was forcibly disappeared with reports suggesting that she was secretly tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for alleged separatism, though her whereabouts remain unknown. Cases such as these are not rare, as UN experts remain concerned that a great number of individuals from Uyghur and other minority groups have been reportedly detained and convicted for charges such as “extremism,” “separatism,” or “terrorism” in relation to activities connecting to their cultural, linguistic, or religious expression. Counter-extremism laws in China enable such convictions and have been used to curtail minority cultural and religious expression.

Additionally, China’s legislature proposed Law that would establish a comprehensive legal framework for ethnic affairs, positioning it as an implementation of Xi Jinping’s ideological approach to national unity. The legislation seeks to consolidate the ethnic group under Communist Party leadership by mandating a unified ideological framework across media, cultural institution, religion, and education to promote party ideology and discourage practices and concepts deemed harmful to ethnic cohesion. Moreover, the law significantly diminishes previously guaranteed minority language rights by prioritizing Mandarin Chinese in official document and educational setting, which requires preschool children to learn Mandarin and achieve basic mastery by fifteen ages, contrasting with the 1984 law that permitted flexible language policies in minority regions. Authorities in, Xinjian, Tibet and Inner Mongolia have already reduced mother-tongue education despite community resistance, often characterizing advocacy for language rights or cultural preservation as threats to national security. Similarly, a concurrent draft revision to language standardization law introduced additional measures to regulate measures to regulate Chinese languages use across public services, digital platform, reinforcing the government’s systematic approach to cultural assimilation that critics threaten the preservation of distinct ethnic identities, traditions throughout minority regions.