Asia Times: Asian governments seen exploiting September 11


	December 14, 2001	atimes.com

China

Asian governments seen exploiting September 11
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - When the Chinese government lined up to march in step with the US-led war against terrorism, human-rights activists knew that the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority in China, were in for harsh times.

By mid-October, China had lived up to such concerns. Evidence began trickling out of the western Xinjiang province, where some 8 million Uighurs live, that Beijing had begun cracking down on this ethnic minority as part of its own new "anti-terrorism campaign".

For groups such as the New York-based Human Rights Watch, the assault on political and civil liberties in Xinjiang was the latest round in the strong-arm tactics that Beijing has been pursuing against suspected Uighur separatists. "Chinese authorities have not discriminated between peaceful and violent dissent," the rights watchdog states in a recent background note. "Their fight against 'separatism' and 'religious extremism' has been used to justify widespread and systematic human-rights violations against Uighurs, including many involved in non-violent political, religious and cultural activities."

Yet China, as has become increasingly clear over the past two months, is only one of a number of Asian governments using the martial tone set in Washington to pursue tough anti-terrorism measures domestically. This shift troubles the region's activists, who fear the increased use of "terrorism" in the coming year by governments that wish to quell internal unrest, separatist movements or even local opposition - and find the heightened security fears since September 11 a friendly environment for cracking down on these.

Likewise, rights campaigners worry about the specter of national security returning to dominate Asia's political landscape as it did during the Cold War years, which could result in a raft of political and civil liberties being reduced by governments.

"It is a major concern," said Hina Jilani, a United Nations human-rights expert. "It is already being observed that a new national-security doctrine is emerging that is undermining standards of international humanitarian and human-rights law. There is a disturbing tendency of resorting to military means and methods, including adoption of laws and measures that create states of exception," added Jilani, a Pakistani lawyer who is now the UN secretary general's special representative on human-rights defenders. "Under the garb of emergency and security laws fundamental rights and freedoms are suspended," he claimed.

Advocates of this doctrine are giving it legitimacy by pointing to the anti-terrorism efforts being shaped in the United States, says Basil Fernando, executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission. "'See how the US does and imitate' is the slogan now," he said.

Since the Bush administration launched the war against terrorism after the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, it has been pushing for extraordinary legal measures at home to go after suspects linked to the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people. These measures include the holding of suspects in custody for prolonged periods of time without access to the law, and a proposal to try foreign suspects in secret military courts.

"A general attitude with the cynical phrase 'these are extraordinary times' is bound to become a common expression ... that in these times the law can be ignored is the implication," Fernando asserted. "Such an attitude, once accepted, threatens security in every way, though it is promoted with the promise of restoring security."

Particularly troubling to Asia's rights activists are the policies emerging in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, India, and Uzbekistan, in addition to China. Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which already have national-security doctrines, show no signs of doing away with them in the current political climate.

In Malaysia, authorities have used the war against terrorism to justify arrests under the country's draconian Internal Security Act, a colonial-era law that allows detention without trial and is used against political dissenters.

In neighboring Indonesia, the government has seized the moment to mount harsh crackdowns on separatist movements in Aceh and Irian Jaya provinces. As well, and for the first time, Jakarta has stated that the Al-Qaeda network is connected to sectarian bloodshed in the world's most populous Muslim nation. Lieutenant-General Abdullah Hendropriyono, Indonesia's intelligence chief, said on Wednesday that Al-Qaeda has training camps on Sulawesi island and that "outsiders" working with local militant groups were responsible for much of the fighting on Sulawesi. The island has been racked by fighting between Christians and Muslims. Roughly 1,000 people have died there, while in the nearby province of Maluku, about 9,000 people have died in three years of sectarian warfare.

"It is the result of cooperation between international terrorists and domestic radical groups," Hendropriyono said, later adding that Al-Qaeda set up training camps on Sulawesi roughly two years ago, although its activities there had recently declined. "We are monitoring Al-Qaeda. When they come again for training we will ambush them," he said.

A US State Department document released this week by the US Embassy in Jakarta listed 45 countries where Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups have cells. Surprisingly now in the light of Hendropriyono's words on Wednesday, the list, which included Malaysia and the Philippines, did not name Indonesia.

In the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, where Muslims are waging a separatist struggle, local human-rights monitors have noted two troubling developments: The army has been given new powers in civilian control hitherto handled by the national police, and arrests without warrants have been legalized.

In India, the government is determined to get parliament to approve an anti-terrorism bill that critics assail for its blatant violations of human rights and the rule of law. This week, a leader of one Indian political party went on record to say that the bill was being introduced to terrorize supporters of his party at a time when the state he is in faces elections next year.

Meanwhile, tough rhetoric coming from Asian capitals is keeping step with harsher measures eyed by several governments in the region. "At the level of rhetoric the talk of more security is high," said James Gomez, who heads an Asian Internet advocacy group promoting democracy. "This plays into the population, and pro-democracy sentiments are internally muted."

For Gomez, the rhetoric of terrorism being used by governments to prepare the people psychologically for strong anti-terrorism measures reveals more in what is not said. "By far, the important message is that these regimes want to control the growth of civil society," he said.

Jilani anticipates that limits would be placed on such rights as the freedom of expression in countries where the national-security doctrine prevails. "I foresee the use of such legislation to suppress freedom of opinion and expression, right to peaceful protest, in a more blatant manner than it is already being done," she said.

However, not all share that pessimistic forecast. Some argue that Asia will be spared the type of national-security states that dominated its political landscape during the Cold War, as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines were at the time.

"I doubt that the national-security measures being put in place will create oppressive regimes like we had during the years of communism," asserted Chayachoke Chulasiriwongs, professor of international relations at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. He added that Asia has undergone major changes since the end of the Cold War, including a surfeit of liberal ideas, greater public awareness about democracy and human rights, and the notion of "transparency" in the region. "People have realized what is going on," Chayachoke said. "'Transparency' and 'human rights' are words that many know. Governments cannot ignore this."

(Inter Press Service)