A wire service story this week criticized the hypocrisy and cowardice of the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations when it comes to substantive and procedural human rights issues involving member states, especially Burma (aka Myanmar). Recently, ASEAN leaders, at a summit meeting, bragged before the world mass media that ASEAN would someday be like the European Union 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 will turn out 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 human rights advocates and lawyers in the region.
The wire report also stated that ASEAN leaders barely mentioned Burma's prodemocracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi at a summit, thus making a mockery of the region's grand claims about its new rights body.
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. The United States, too, seems to have caved in, because it now wants to re-engage 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 stop fooling each other. ASEAN states, especially the Philippines, have been reluctant to admonish Burma because they themselves face human rights issues, such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, instances of torture during custodial investigations, prolonged preventive detentions without judicial interventions, localized genocide, and failure to prosecute abusive and corrupt military and police officers and the political, drug and gambling lords who fund them.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.