Activists Attack ASEAN On Lack Of Myanmar Pressure Tuesday, Nov 20 2007

Demonstrators stage a skit during a protest outside the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur November 20, 2007, urging the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to suspend Myanmar’s membership. The skit mocked Myanmar’s crackdown on monks and protesters. Southeast Asian nations were set to sign a charter on Tuesday that aims for free trade and human rights, but controversy over member Myanmar has marred the landmark deal. REUTERS/Zainal Abd Halim

Pro-Myanmar activists protest in front of the Stock Exchange of Thailand in Bangkok, November 20, 2007. Protesters demanded Thai companies to halt new investment in the military-ruled neighbour. REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (THAILAND)

Pro-Myanmar activists protest in front of the Stock Exchange of Thailand in Bangkok, November 20, 2007. Protesters demanded Thai companies to halt new investment in the military-ruled neighbour. REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (THAILAND)

Pro-Myanmar activists protest in front of the Stock Exchange of Thailand in Bangkok, November 20, 2007. Protesters demanded Thai companies to halt new investment in the military-ruled neighbour. REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (THAILAND)

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A Myanmar dissident slammed ASEAN’s failure to pressure the junta over its crackdown on pro-democracy protests, as the 10-member group unveiled a charter on Tuesday aimed at enshrining human rights and democracy.

“It’s a historical moment for them to sign the charter, which is supposed to be the charter for the protection and promotion of human rights, and now they let the (Myanmar) regime take over their agenda,” said Thailand-based Khin Ohmar.

“Now they’re taking sides with the regime it seems,” said Khin Ohmar, a former student leader of Myanmar’s 1988 uprising, in which up to 3,000 people died.

“I think it’s a bad step and backtracking,” she added.

The charter aims to integrate the economies of ASEAN’s 10 member-nations and to “strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

“Burma has been a major shame for ASEAN,” Khin Omar said. “The social, economic and security aspects that it’s looking to resolve and promote in the region, will not happen if they don’t resolve Burma’s situation,” she said, speaking at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club.

But Myanmar’s Foreign Minister U Nyan Win told his Japanese counterpart on Tuesday in Singapore that Western sanctions had hurt ordinary citizens the most and the way toward democratization was through economic development.

“The West has imposed economic sanctions, which directly harm the lives of ordinary citizens,” a Japanese official quoted U Nyan Win as telling Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura.

“I am not aware of a case in which sanctions resulted in the progress of democratization. Rather, economic development leads to democratization.”

Nyan Win also criticized the West for only listening to the opposition.

“Not everything that the opposition, which stands up to the government, says is correct. Only when one realizes that there are mistakes among the opposition, can we come closer to each other.”

Small demonstrations around the region were staged to protest what critics say is ASEAN’s soft approach to the junta’s iron-fisted rule.

In Singapore, four Singaporeans defied a ban on both Myanmar protests and a general law on group protests with a march towards the ASEAN summit venue, while in Bangkok about 20 activists protested in front of the stock exchange.

In Kuala Lumpur, some 200 people from Myanmar living in Malaysia staged a skit mocking Myanmar’s crackdown on the recent monk-led protests in the country.

ASEAN diplomats say the group is grappling with a dilemma. On the one hand, Myanmar’s membership is complicating its efforts to create a powerful and influential bloc in a globalize world. But shoving the junta beyond the pale would drive Myanmar further into China’s embrace and to ASEAN’s disadvantage.

ASEAN has instead opted for “engagement” with Myanmar, calling on the junta to work with the United Nations towards democracy and to release political detainees.

But Khin Omar said ASEAN was setting itself up for more pressure. “If they don’t get some kind of resolution toward Burma during this summit, I think the whole international community and governments will put more pressure on ASEAN.

“We don’t want another killing. This regime will not hesitate to do that. The Burmese people have paid their price, now it’s really up to the international community to really do their work,” she added.

(Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

No Responses »

 

South-east Asia’s Toothless Charter Tuesday, Nov 20 2007

Editorial Comment, Financial Times, 19 Nov 2007

Recent demonstrations in Burma, led by Buddhist monks and crushed by the military junta, have provided an uncomfortable but useful dose of reality for south-east Asian leaders ahead of the signing of their flawed constitution in Singapore on Tuesday.

Forty years after the organisation was founded, the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations see their new charter as a sign that Asean has come of age. Sadly, the wording of the charter, including the vague promise of a regional human rights body, merely exposes Asean’s weaknesses and the ethical vacuum at its heart.

The problem with Asean is not simply the economic gap between the richest members, led by Singapore and Malaysia, and the poorest, such as Burma and Laos, although that does make it hard to create the common market promised for 2015.

A bigger difficulty is that Asean is not, like Europe, a collection of nations with common values, but a collection of regimes with common interests. Those interests, whether they concern foreign policy or the perpetuation of authoritarian rule at home, partly reflect Asean’s cold war origins as an anti-communist security group and are rarely shared by the “peoples of the member states” of Asean in whose name the charter is written.

Asian leaders have portrayed disagreement over Burma as a dispute between east and west. An Asian desire for “consensus” is supposed to explain the lack of enforcement mechanisms or punishments for offending member states in the charter. Yet there is little doubt that south-east Asian citizens would (if consulted) be as vocal as Europeans or Americans in supporting the enforcement of human rights for Burmese and other Asians.

Given their own divisions, Europeans cannot be smug about the writing of regional constitutions. Europe, however, already has executive, judicial and legislative bodies to ensure application of common laws and policies. Asean does not.

Even when it does espouse justice, democracy and human rights, the Asean charter – according to drafts that have been leaked, for the text has not been divulged to the public in advance – immediately backs down and says these noble ideals must be applied with “due regard to the rights and responsibilities of the member states”. That, like the injunction against anarchy, is a cop-out with which every Burmese general can feel comfortable.

If Asean wants to be internationally respected and to make its mark in a world obsessed by the economic giants of China and India, its leaders will have to come up with something better than this.

No Responses »

 

War On Terrorism Leads To Rights Abuses Tuesday, Nov 20 2007

By Tim Cocks

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Torture, beatings, executions, racist stereotyping and intrusive surveillance are among the abuses countries are committing in the name of fighting terrorism, a rights watchdog said on Monday.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission said since the 9/11 attacks, many nations had been using the military for police work in the so-called “war on terror”, leading to brutal policing techniques, including extra-judicial killings.

The Commission made the allegations in a report which reviews human rights in the 53-nation body before the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

“Until recently, torture was condemned as a gross violation of human rights … fear of terrorism and the desire to respond to it is steadily undermining this absolute prohibition,” the report said.

Among the offenders it named was Pakistan, which risks suspension from the Commonwealth because of President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of martial law. Also mentioned was Uganda, where military police this year raided the High Court to seize bailed opposition supporters accused of treason.

“The extra-judicial killing of ‘terrorists’ provides an easy way of eliminating suspects … often, these ‘terrorists’ turn out to be children, dissidents, unarmed and peaceful protesters,” the report said.

It said the right not to be jailed without charge was slowly being eroded. In Tanzania and Bangladesh, suspects can be held indefinitely without trial.

In Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei they can be detained for longer than 700 days, while Britain is considering an extension of the 28-day period suspects can be held without charge.

“The consequences of taking people into custody without cause, for long periods of detention, are made even direr by laws that restrict access to counsel,” the report said.

“Positive profiling” of terror suspects has spawned racist stereotypes, it said. In Britain, people of south Asian descent are 30 percent more likely than others to be stopped by police.

“Anti-terrorism has resulted in the deepest compromises of our member states on human rights,” Yash Ghai, an expert on rights and law at Hong Kong University, told delegates at a Commonwealth People’s Forum.

Uganda will host CHOGM on Friday, after a state visit from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, the head of the Commonwealth.

The report notes that despite 13 international counter-terrorism conventions and resolutions, countries have failed to agree on a definition of terrorism.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

No Responses »