Today the Philippine Daily Inquirer published an Agence France Presse (AFP) news report entitled “ASEAN makes mockery of rights body” (www.inquirer.nbet) which criticized the hypocrisy and cowardice of the leaders of the region when in comes to substantive and procedural human rights issues involving its member states, especially Burma (Myanmar).
The other day the ASEAN leaders, in a summit meeting, bragged before the world mass media that ASEAN would someday be like the European Union (EU) in content, structure, vision, and aspirations.
That dream is a big joke and is more like a press-release beautification effort to sanitize the poor human rights image of the region and its top leaders.
I still have to wait and see how the ASEAN Human Rights Commission would turn out to be in terms of structure, composition, operations, transparency, accountability, moral courage, and commitment to the enforcement of the universal precepts of human rights in the region.
I will need at least five years to do that. The commission must be strictly monitored by the world, especially the human rights advocates and the lawyers in the region.
At any rate, the AFP report stated ASEAN leaders barely mentioned Burma’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi at a weekend summit, making a mockery of the region’s grand claims for its new rights body, according the to AFP report.
Leaders of the 10 states comprising ASEAN, including Burma, devoted just three lines to the military-ruled nation’s political situation in the nine pages of their final declaration.
While the statement called for elections promised by the junta in 2010 to be “fair, free, inclusive and transparent,” it made no mention of the opposition leader, who has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years.
The summit at the Thai resort of Hua Hin opened with the inauguration of ASEAN’s first human rights body, hailed by members as “historic” but derided by activists, given the lack of action on Burma.
The problem with ASEAN is that it is prevented from applying any real pressure on the military regime in Burma because of the association’s long-standing policy of noninterference in members’ internal affairs, which Burma’s ruling generals led by Gen. Than Shwe have abused for a long time now. The United States seems to have caved in, too, because it now wants to reengage the isolated regime after decades of hostility, thus, reducing the pressure on ASEAN to push for reform in Myanmar.
We the people of ASEAN must be frank with each other and stop fooling each other.
ASEAN states, especially the Philippines, have been reluctant to admonish Burma because they themselves face their own human rights issues, e.g., extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, tortures during custodial investigations, prolonged preventive detentions without judicial interventions, localized genocides, hamlettings, and failure to prosecute abusive and corrupt military and police officers and the political, drug, and gambling lords who fund them.
That is the long and short of the story.
