ASEAN sends mixed rights
message By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - At first glance, it appeared
that Southeast Asian governments were determined
to strengthen and codify human-rights protection
across the region. A meeting of foreign ministers
in Manila declared that a new regional rights body
would be part and parcel of a new charter for the
10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN).
On closer scrutiny, however,
rights groups and members of opposition parties
say ASEAN still needs to spell out clearly the
powers of such an entity if
the initiative, scheduled for the grouping's
approval at a summit in November, is to be taken
seriously by member governments and the
international community.
Such details have
yet to be finalized, officials at the ongoing
ASEAN ministerial meeting in the Philippine
capital told the press. At the same time, recent
reports of serious state-sanctioned rights abuses
in ASEAN member states, including Myanmar,
Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, raise hard
questions about the ambitious initiative's
viability.
"They need to give this
human-rights body investigating powers to look at
violations committed in any ASEAN country and to
have powers to seek corrective measures," said
Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian
Human Rights Commission (AHRC), a non-governmental
watchdog. "There must also be a proper mechanism
in place for victims to submit complaints for the
commission to investigate."
Since the
ASEAN human-rights body will be judged by the
standards set by similar regional commissions,
such provisions will be hard to sidestep, Fernando
said during a telephone interview from Hong Kong,
where the AHRC is based. "There are regional
human-rights bodies in Africa and South America
that have powers to investigate and more."
Debbie Stothard, head of the Alternative
ASEAN Network on Burma, a regional rights lobby,
said: "Civil-society groups who have long
campaigned for such a body will follow the events
over the next few months as ASEAN gives shape to
this regional human-rights commission. It is too
early to cheer, because the creation of the
commission for now seems to be more like an
agreement of a policy to do so."
The
governments should know that "even a paper tiger
will not be able to cover up the glaring
human-rights violations in the region", she said,
referring to language common in Southeast Asia to
describe laws that sound strong on paper but are
weak in application. "Human rights even in the
more progressive ASEAN countries leave a lot to be
desired," Stothard said.
Typical among
them is Singapore, ASEAN's most affluent member,
which will host the bloc's annual summit in
November where the new rights body is to be
confirmed as part of the regional grouping's first
regional charter. Opposition political figures for
whom a human-rights commission is important in the
wake of regular harassment notably have not been
included in discussions to create the new
mechanism.
"The opposition and
civil-society groups in Singapore are concerned
because their views were not sought in regards to
the commission," Chee Siok Chin, a ranking member
of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, said
in a telephone interview. "We have only heard the
views from the establishment."
Singapore,
Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia
were the original members of ASEAN, set up 40
years ago to strengthen regional economic ties and
act as a bulwark against the spread of communism
in the region. Of them, Indonesia currently tops
the list of nations advancing on the human-rights
and democracy fronts. Malaysia and Singapore, by
contrast, have governments known for their
authoritarian features, where freedom of
expression is regularly under threat.
ASEAN's other members, Brunei, Myanmar,
Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, joined the grouping
later and all have blotches on their rights
records. With the exception of modern Cambodia,
these countries all offer little space for
political and civil liberties. Brunei is an
absolute monarchy, while Laos and Vietnam have
been under the grip of repressive communist
parties since the mid-1970s.
But it is
military-ruled Myanmar (formerly Burma, a name
still preferred by many rights groups and
governments), admitted to ASEAN a decade ago, that
looms as the crucial test case of the new regional
rights body's legitimacy. "The human-rights
violations in Burma should be among the first
cases the new commission should investigate," said
the AHRC's Fernando. "It is a good test case,
because Burma ranks as one of the human-rights
violators on the global scale."
Former
Myanmar political prisoners drew ASEAN's attention
on a related front when they said that on Monday,
the same day agreement to create the new
human-rights body was reached, the ruling military
junta symbolically cracked down on rights
activists inside the country.
A private
teacher was sentenced to three years' imprisonment
and fined because "he let members of Human Rights
Defenders and Promoters have a human-rights
training at his place", according to the
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a
Thailand-based exile group that monitors prison
conditions inside Myanmar.
Myanmar now
detains an estimated 1,100 political prisoners,
including the continued house arrest of
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In recent
years, the military government has crushed all
expressions of political dissent. According to
rights groups, the junta is notorious for
systematically using rape as a weapon of war
against ethnic minority groups, commandeering
thousands into forced-labor camps and preventing
international humanitarian groups from providing
aid to vulnerable and suffering populations.
Those alleged abuses are well known to
other ASEAN governments, who in certain instances
have opted to defend Myanmar from international
criticism after it joined the bloc in 1997. Since
2003, however, the spirit of cordiality has begun
to fray, particularly after ASEAN was taken to
task by the European Union, by the United States
and at international summits for standing by idly
and economically engaging the junta.
Led
by Malaysia, originally a major supporter of
Myanmar's membership into the bloc, ASEAN
governments have at least symbolically pressured
their recalcitrant neighbor through the decision
to create a new regional rights body.
"ASEAN had shielded the Burmese military
from international criticism in the past, but the
regime has become a source of shame and
embarrassment," Aung Naing Oo, a political analyst
from Myanmar living in exile. "They cannot do it
anymore. Burma has to accept the changes."
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