Asia Times: Southeast Asia


	June 26, 2002	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Human rights agenda under the gun
By Alan Boyd

SYDNEY - Asia's spotty human-rights record has again been given a fail mark by Amnesty International (AI), with the global watchdog castigating some governments for using terrorism as an excuse for tightening security legislation. In its annual survey of perceived abuses and violations of individual liberty, the group singled out Singapore, Pakistan, India and Malaysia for particular attention, while also firing a broadside at the US-led coalition that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sounding an unusually defensive tone, AI admonished those who might regard human rights as a redundant issue after the events of September 11, which had led to a sharp polarization of social values between the forces of good and evil. "The universality of human rights is facing the strongest challenge yet. Double standards and selectivity are becoming the norm," stated Irene Khan, the AI secretary general, in a cover note to the report. "Security cannot and must not take precedence over human rights. The biggest danger to human rights is when political and economic interests are allowed to drive the human-rights agenda," she said.

Legislation approved under the terrorism umbrella has included indefinite detention without trial, special courts based on secret evidence, or cultural and religious restrictions, while AI contended that there was greater reluctance to criticize the domestic policies of other countries.

Residents of 15 Asian countries were arbitrarily arrested and detained without charge or trial last year, though armed opposition groups committed serious human-rights violations in only nine states. These offenses included the deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians, torture and hostage-taking. Security forces, police or state authorities also condoned torture or other ill-treatment in 19 countries, while political prisoners were being held in 15. Suspects were reported missing in six countries. In addition, 12 states carried out executions, and 15 handed down death sentences.

In all, AI assessed the human-rights records of 29 Asian and Pacific states, and found that all had a case to answer - though New Zealand escaped almost without a blemish, while some others were guilty only of maintaining the death penalty, which AI opposes.

Myanmar, Indonesia, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka predictably came out worst because of their ethnic strife or suppression of political freedoms, with North Korea, China, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Laos and Vietnam close behind.

But while much of the post-terrorism focus was on Afghanistan, AI reserved some of its strongest criticism for neighboring India and Pakistan, which were accused of using the security crackdown for domestic political ends.

Pakistan's military leadership declared a state of emergency in September that enforced an existing ban on public rallies, imposed severe curbs on information flows and suspended normal judicial processes. Police held several hundred people, including numerous Islamic clerics, for up to three months without trial during 2001, and at least 40 died in police custody or in prison as a result of torture. Fifty people were sentenced to death and 13 executed, including a 13-year-old boy.

Likewise, India used the September attacks on the US as a context for tighter security legislation, including a new Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) that was introduced in October, according to AI. Wider powers of arrest allowed police to hold political suspects for as long as six months without being charged or put on trial. Torture remained widespread, with the National Human Rights Commission reporting that 127 people had died in police custody between April 2000 and March 2001.

Southeast Asian states that were caught up in the terrorism backlash also earned a mixed report card. AI said Malaysia and Singapore both sought to make political capital by holding alleged extremists indefinitely without trial.

Malaysia extended its much-berated Internal Security Act (ISA) to detain opposition activists who were alleged to have links with Middle East-based terrorists, disperse public protests and curb the political activities of students and academics. However, some judicial decisions and actions by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia were viewed as having bolstered respect for human-rights principles, while the judiciary was striving to improve its sagging public image.

Singapore detained 15 men without trial under internal-security laws in the aftermath of the US attacks and the offensive in Afghanistan for their alleged links to the al-Qaeda network and for plotting to bomb several foreign missions. The same laws were also used to "inhibit political life" by undermining rights to free expression and assembly. Opposition figures were neutralized through the threat of potentially ruinous civil defamation suits from the government.

As in other regions, the climate for pursuing abuses in Asia became more difficult after September, with AI acknowledging that government and public opinion alike viewed human-rights campaigns as an obstacle to security - "romantic idealists at best, defenders of terrorists at worst". Some other pressure groups agree, but most nonetheless take a more positive view of the outlook in Asia than AI.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in its most recent study that while at least nine Asian activists had been killed since November 2000 fighting for the rights of others, they had achieved a higher global profile for the region that was influencing public policies.

In Singapore, long a prime target for its autocratic rule, the civil-liberties Think Center was allowed to register as a pressure group, though its activities have since been curbed by threats of legal action against individual members.

South Korea's National Assembly passed a law in mid-2001 that established a long-awaited national human rights commission, with a mandate to investigate cases of unlawful arrest, torture, intimidation, punishment or detention, and to pursue all forms of discrimination.

About 300 activists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka formed a group called South Asians for Human Rights, in one of the first non-partisan human-rights initiatives to succeed in South Asia.

Media organizations banded together in the South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA), spearheading campaigns against Malaysia's suppression of the electronic malaysiakini.com news service and rebel attacks against a newspaper in Banda Aceh.

A range of individual issues was also pursued, including greater protection for migrants, improvements in labor conditions and a campaign for Asian ratification of a treaty establishing an International Criminal Court.

HRW concluded that more might be achieved if Asia had institutions with a capacity for dispute resolution, peacekeeping, human-rights monitoring, or administration of justice. It noted that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had been weakened by Indonesia's ongoing internal troubles, while the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) could not function effectively because of the hostility between India and Pakistan. Trade groupings such as Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) were "useful largely as a setting for informal high-level bilateral meetings and symbolic shows of solidarity", said HRW.

There is little evidence that terrorism has had any marked impact at a diplomatic level, possibly because of domestic resentment - especially in predominantly Muslim states - against any perceived collusion with the US-led alliance.

Of the 29 states reviewed by AI, only New Zealand has ratified all 12 human-rights covenants and treaties established by the United Nations, though the Philippines is missing only one signature and Australia, Bangladesh and South Korea two each. Brunei (one ratification), Malaysia and Myanmar (two), and Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Singapore (three) bring up the rear.

Missing from their treaty portfolios is a covenant that has attracted much attention post-September 11: the wordy Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

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