Human rights in decline in Asia
By Kathleen Hwang
www.upi.com

HONG KONG, Jan. 18 — Respect for human rights is deteriorating in many Asian countries; security forces are abusing suspects with impunity, and people are living in greater fear of those in authority, the Asian Human Rights Commission said in a report released Tuesday in Hong Kong.

The report documents state-sponsored violence, including kidnappings, torture and murder. It cites Cambodia, Myanmar and Nepal as countries of special concern, and includes reports on Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Basil Fernando, executive director of the AHRC, said there had been progress in the past, but 2005 had seen a tragic level of abuse which he blamed on the erosion of democratic institutions.

“In Asia we cannot separate human rights abuses from the absence of the rule of law,” he said. He said certain conditions were endemic in the region, with corrupt or politically motivated security forces the worst violators of citizens’ rights in many places.

Representatives of seven of the countries highlighted in the report, “The State of Human Rights in Ten Asian Nations-2005,” are taking part in a week long workshop in Hong Kong on the prevention of torture, hosted by the AHRC.

Mandira Sharma, director of the Advocacy Forum in Katmandu, Nepal, said the situation in her country was “worse than the worst” since King Gyanendra disbanded Parliament and took full control of the government last February.

“There has been a complete collapse of the rule of law,” she said. “The judiciary has been infiltrated by the pro-king faction, the Bar Association is warring with the courts, and the judges say the king’s order is the law.”

She accused security forces of harassing political activists and journalists, and even of instigating incidents to provoke Maoist rebels into breaking their cease fire agreement with the government.

Alfonso Cinco, legal consultant to the Franciscan Justice and Peace Office in the Philippine city of Cebu, said 2005 was the worst year for human rights since the rule of dictator Ferdinand Marcos ended in 1986.

He said the year had seen 151 political killings, most connected to the military’s counterinsurgency operations and none properly investigated by authorities. He said an anti-terror bill modeled on the U.S. Patriot Act gave soldiers and police virtual immunity from prosecution.

In India’s troubled northeastern state of Manipur, a draconian law from 1958 is still in effect, giving the military extensive powers including the right to shoot to kill a suspect without warning. Troops accused of rape, torture and murder are immune from prosecution under the law. Babloo Loitongban, director of Human Rights Alert in Manipur, said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had ordered a review of the law after visiting the region in November 2004, but the Ministry of Defense opposed any changes.

Representatives of Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka cited collusion between criminals and police, and between political and judicial officials, and the breakdown of democratic institutions as serious problems that deny justice to citizens and create a climate of fear and repression.

In Fernando’s view, the end of the Cold War marked the end of democratic development in many parts of the world, as the United States and Western Europe no longer had to compete with the Soviet Union to win the hearts and minds of peoples and governments.

To make matters worse, the United States, once viewed as the international bastion of human rights, is now widely seen as hypocritical in light of reports of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

No nation has stepped in to fill the void. One candidate in the region is India, which takes pride in being Asia’s largest democracy.

“Most of India’s neighbors are in deep trouble,” Fernando pointed out. “A more democratic stance on the part of India could make a big difference.”

But according to Babloo, India is moving in the opposite direction.

“We are seeing an erosion of value politics, for example in Myanmar,” he said, explaining that the country’s international relations were now dictated more by national security concerns than by ideological kinship.

China, the region’s rising power, has no interest in developing democratic institutions and still relies on Communist Party authority rather than the rule of law to govern its people. It has nothing to contribute to, and in fact tends to inhibit, discussion of these issues in regional forums. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations last year reluctantly took its strongest move toward censoring a member nation over human rights when it asked Myanmar to forego the chairmanship of the organization, but only under intense pressure from the United States and the European Union.

Fernando thinks more such pressure from democratic governments, accompanied by support to non-governmental groups and pro-democracy activists in struggling democracies, could turn the tables. In many countries strong movements for democracy are building, but are in danger of suppression by increasingly autocratic governments.

“The cry for democracy has never been so strong,” he said. “What is missing is a helping hand and the international will to help people.”

While the United Nations and Western activists have succeeded in educating people in Asia about human rights, they have done little to support the establishment of institutions that could guarantee such rights.

If current political trends are to be reversed, says Fernando, “We need a much deeper debate and soul-searching on ways of helping democracies develop.”

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