Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 20 November 2014

The United States government is deporting migrant parents trying to cross the border to be with their US citizen children.Others are deported at the border without having the chance to make an adequate claim for asylum and despite their fears of returning to their home country. Tonight’s speech by US President Barack Obama on his planned immigration reform should take all these people into consideration. Wel‘District Thai?’ Government officials in Thailand have arrested five student protesters for giving the anti-authoritarian ‘three finger salute’ used in the Hunger Games movies to Thailand’s military junta leader, in defiance of the military’s coup earlier this year. In the Philippines, a witness to a 2009 massacre is dead. Unidentified gunmen killed Dennix Sakal on Tuesday, when he was traveling to meet with prosecutors. Sakal was slated to testify against the alleged perpetrators of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, which left 58 people dead. Most suspects are still at large, and the massacre remains a shameful example of impunity in the Philippines. Australia and Cambodia have signed an agreement whereby refugees held in Nauru, an island near Australia, will be resettled in Cambodia. But refugees living in Cambodia have described numerous hardships there, such as extortion, denial of education, sub-standard access to health services and unemployment. The Chinese government should drop all charges against a veteran journalist who leaked a Chinese Communist Party document calling for greater censorship of liberal and reformist ideas. Gao Yu, 70, could face up to life in prison.