In a March video, 32-year-old Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum announced she was fleeing the emirate because of mistreatment and restrictions imposed by her family.

She said she was the daughter of Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashed Al-Maktoum and an Algerian mother, Horriya Ahmed, and that she had tried to escape in previous years.

But the following month a source close to the Dubai government said the runaway princess had been returned to the emirate.

“What I can confirm is they took her and she was brought back,” the anonymous source told AFP by phone on April 17.

In a statement on Saturday HRW said Dubai authorities must “reveal” her whereabouts and “clarify her legal status”.

“Failure to disclose the whereabouts and status of the princess could qualify as an enforced disappearance, given the evidence suggesting that she was last seen as UAE authorities were detaining her,” the US-based rights group said.

It cited a witness saying authorities in the United Arab Emirates had “intercepted Sheikha Latifa on March 4, 2018, as she tried to flee by sea to a third country, and returned her to the UAE”.

“Sheikha Latifa, who told friends that she wished to flee restrictions imposed by her family, has not been seen or heard from for two months,” it said.

That raised “serious concerns about her safety and well-being, two friends said,” HRW added.

“UAE authorities should immediately reveal the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa, confirm her status, and allow her contact with the outside world,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director on Saturday.

“If she is detained she needs to be given the rights all detainees should have, including being taken before an independent judge.”

Latifa’s cause has been taken up by a UK-based group called Detained in Dubai.

The group said Latifa tried to flee Dubai by ship, but the vessel was intercepted on March 4 less than 80 kilometres (50 miles) off the coast of India.

It said a Finnish woman and friend of the princess was among foreigners on board.

The source close to the Dubai government said last month that the Finnish woman and two French men, one with dual US citizenship, participated in the escape attempt and were wanted in Dubai on previous charges.

“It is a domestic issue that transformed into a soap opera that transformed into a rampaging scheme to tarnish the reputation of Dubai and Sheikh Mohammed,” the source said.

Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to Bangladesh after the military launched a brutal crackdown on insurgents in August that the US and the UN have called ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to repatriate refugees to conflict-hit Rakhine state last year but Rohingya are loathe to come back to a country without guarantees of safety and basic rights such as freedom of movement.

The country’s powerful army chief Min Aung Hlaing compounded those fears when speaking to a visiting delegation from the UN Security Council in the capital Naypyidaw on April 30.

“There is no need to be worried about their security if they stay in the areas designated for them,” he told the delegation, according to a readout of the meeting posted on Min Aung Hlaing’s official Facebook page on Saturday.

He referred to members of the stateless minority as “Bengalis”, reflecting a widespread belief in Myanmar that the Rohingya are immigrants from Bangladesh despite a longstanding presence in Rakhine.

The army chief also cast doubt on the allegations raised by refugees in Bangladesh, many of whom shared stories of extrajudicial killings, arson and rape.

“Bengalis will never say that they arrive there happily. They will get sympathy and rights only if they say that they face a lot of hardships and persecution,” he reportedly said, adding that the issue was “exaggerated”.

The UN has said conditions on the ground are not ripe for the refugees to return, despite Myanmar’s insistence that it is ready even as no large-scale repatriation has occurred.

The government has built transit camps that can accommodate tens of thousands of people and a much smaller number of new houses to replace fire-blackened villages where Rohingya used to live.

The minority community has been persecuted in Myanmar for decades and Rohingya have lived in what rights groups have called apartheid-like conditions, with severe restrictions on movement and access to health services.

More than 120,000 Rohingya still reside in camps for internally displaced people in the Rakhine state capital Sittwe as a result of intercommunal violence in 2012 that killed hundreds.

Dil Mohamed, a Rohingya leader sheltering on the border, told reporters late last month that refugees do not want to stay in any transit camps due to similar concerns that they will be more than temporary.

“We are waiting here only until we are allowed to go back to our home,” he said.

Hui had grabbed the phone from the woman in the Legislative Council and dashed into the men’s toilet. The 36-year-old has since apologised and said he did it because he suspected the government was collecting personal information on lawmakers in breach of the Privacy Ordinance.

Despite his apology, Hui has been denounced by government leaders and lawmakers and even sacked by his own party.

Hui is the latest pro-democracy lawmaker to come under fire after six others were disqualified from the legislature.

Pro-democracy lawmakers denounced his arrest as an overreaction.

“The whole case has been blown (out) of proportion and you can’t help thinking that the upcoming prosecution is actually persecution with the aim of ousting of one more democratic member of the local legislature, and this is not acceptable,” said legislator Claudia Mo.

She said that if Hui was convicted and sentenced to more than three months’ jail he would automatically lose his seat.

Six lawmakers including former protest leaders and independence activists were ousted from the legislature in 2016 for inserting protests into their oaths of office after an intervention by Beijing.

After the disqualifications, the democrats lost their veto power and failed to regain it at by-elections in March.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to restore peace and reconciliation and cease all hostile acts when they met at the border truce village of Panmunjom on April 27.

“Hostile acts” include broadcasting through loudspeakers installed along their tense border and distributing propaganda leaflets to each other’s side.

Accordingly, the two Koreas removed their propaganda loudspeakers this week.

Some 300 police were deployed at a public park in Paju City near the border where a group of some 20 activists including defectors from North Korea gathered to launch leaflets by gas-filled balloons.

Police kept the activists apart from a rival group of some 40 people who accused them of seeking to ignite confrontation with the North.

“Stop provoking a war,” they chanted.

Police surrounded a small truck carrying some 5,000 leaflets, plastic balloons and gas canisters, preventing the activists from unloading them.

Park Sang-hak, a leading activist and former North Korean defector, said South Koreans were “intoxicated by Kim Jong Un’s peace offensive” even though the North has not changed at all.

He vowed to continue efforts to send leaflets over the border to “let North Koreans know the truth” and “bring an end to the North’s Kim Jong Un regime”.

David Goodall, who caused a stir two years ago when his university tried unsuccessfully to have him declared unfit to be on campus, does not have a terminal illness but says his quality of life has deteriorated and that he wants to die.

“But because he is not terminally ill… he has to travel to Switzerland,” said Ruedi Habegger, a co-founder of Eternal Spirit, one of a range of foundations in Switzerland that assist people who want to end their lives.

“This is the atrocity of it all. This old man… should be able to die at home in his bed, like we can do here in Switzerland,” he told AFP in an interview.

Goodall is due to end his life at Eternal Spirit’s clinic near Basel on May 10.

Assisted suicide is illegal in most countries around the world and was banned in Australia until the state of Victoria became the first to legalise the practice last year.

But that legislation, which takes effect from June 2019, only applies to terminally ill patients of sound mind and a life expectancy of less than six months.

Assisted voluntary death

According to Swiss law meanwhile, anyone who is of sound mind and who has over a period of time voiced a consistent wish to end their life can request so-called assisted voluntary death, or AVD.

“If a completely healthy person comes and says, I am of sound mind and I have decided to die, the reason is none of your business, theoretically,” Habegger said.

He pointed out though that it was very uncommon for healthy people to ask to die, and said most doctors would balk at taking part in the process if they did.

The vast majority of the some 80 people who turn to Eternal Spirit each year to die are elderly, sick and in pain, he said.

The average age of people who receive AVD from the foundation is 76, with the youngest being 32 and the oldest — until now — 99.

‘Very resentful’

“I don’t want to go to Switzerland,” Goodall told broadcaster ABC before he set off on his final voyage last Wednesday, adding that he had to “to get the opportunity of suicide which the Australian system does not permit”.

“I feel very resentful,” said the honorary research associate at Perth’s Edith Cowan University.

He flew first to France, to visit his son, and will travel on to Switzerland next week.

“If all the doctors’ appointments and everything goes the way we expect it to go, then he will be able to have his AVD… on Thursday,” Habegger said.

Eternal Spirit is advocating for all countries to introduce systems like the Swiss one, allowing people to choose to die “in dignity”.

Unlike the largest assisted suicide association in Switzerland, Exit, which only caters for Swiss residents, the foundation — which runs on annual membership fees from its more than 1,100 members — counts 75 percent foreigners among its AVD patients.

It covers all AVD-linked expenses for Swiss members, but foreigners are expected to pay for any necessary medical examinations and procedures prior to the act, which can be pricey in Switzerland.

Exit International, which helped Goodall make the trip, launched a GoFundMe campaign to help upgrade the scientist and his helper to business class on their flight to Switzerland, and quickly raised more than Aus$20,000 (US$15,000).

Swiss AVD patients usually choose to end their lives at home, but for foreigners Eternal Spirit has a clinic with homely furnishings and enough rooms for relatives and friends who want to be there in the final moments.

Habegger said Goodall was travelling with a friend, who would be with him until the end.

‘Short and peaceful’

In assisted dying, the person must be physically capable of carrying out the final deed themself.

Most Swiss foundations ask patients to drink sodium pentobarbital, an effective sedative that in strong enough doses causes the heart muscle to stop beating.

Since the substance is alkaline and burns a bit when swallowed, Eternal Spirit has instead opted for intravenous infusions.

A professional prepares the needle, but it is up to the patient to open the valve that allows the short-acting barbiturate to drip into the saline solution.

A video is shot of the patient stating their name, date of birth and that they understand what they are about to do.

The camera keeps rolling as they open the valve and the footage is used as evidence that they willingly took their own life.

“Then we shut off the camera, because the rest is intimate, private,” Habegger said.

It usually takes 20 to 30 seconds for the person to fall asleep. “Then they go deeper and deeper, until the heart muscle relaxes,” he said.

“It is not a heart attack. It is not a painful process. The heart just stops beating.” Within a minute and a half, it is usually over, Habegger said.

“It is short and peaceful.”

“This third summit between the two leaders affirms the enduring strength of the United States-Republic of Korea alliance and the deep friendship between our two countries,” the White House said in a statement.

Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month, and both sides promised to pursue the complete denuclearization of the peninsula and a permanent peace.

North Korea has offered to close its nuclear test site this month — and invited US experts to verify the move.

“President Trump and President Moon will continue their close coordination on developments regarding the Korean Peninsula following the April 27 inter-Korean Summit,” the White House added.

“The two leaders also will discuss President Trump’s upcoming meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”

The US president suggested earlier this week that the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas — scene of the historic Kim-Moon talks — could also be an appropriate venue for his own meeting with Kim.