Asean Human Rights Body with Teeth—or Paper Tiger?

At first glance, it appeared that Southeast Asian governments were determined to strengthen the language of human rights across the region.

A meeting of foreign ministers in Manila has declared that a regional rights body will be part of a new charter for the 10-member bloc to be approved at a summit in November.

But o­n closer scrutiny, many human rights groups and members of opposition parties have voiced concerns, saying Asean must give real power to such an entity for the body to be taken seriously.

But such details have yet to be worked out, officials at the o­ngoing Asean ministerial meeting in the Philippines capital told the press this week.

"They need to give this human rights body investigating powers to look at violations committed in any Asean country and to have powers to seek corrective measures," says Basil Fernando, the executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission, or AHRC, a non-governmental watchdog.

"There must also be a proper mechanism in place for victims to submit complaints for the commission to investigate," he said.

Such features will be hard to sidestep, he said, since the Asean human rights body will be judged by the standards set by similar regional commissions created elsewhere. he said during a telephone interview from Hong Kong, where the AHRC is based.

"There are regional human rights bodies in Africa and South America that have powers to investigate and more," he said during a telephone interview from Hong Kong, where the AHRC is based.

"Civil society groups who have long campaigned for such a body will follow the events over the next few months as Asean gives shape to this regional human rights commission," Debbie Stothard, the head of the Alternative Asean Network o­n Burma, or ALTSEAN, a regional rights lobby, told IPS. "It is too early to cheer because the creation of the commission for now seems to be more like an agreement of a policy to do so."

The governments should know that "even a paper tiger will not be able to cover up the glaring human rights violations in the region," she added, referring to language common in Southeast Asia to describe laws that sound strong o­n paper but are weak in application. "Human rights even in the more progressive Asean countries leave a lot to be desired," Stothard said.

Typical among them is Singapore, the most affluent Asean member, which will host the bloc's annual summit in November. The new rights body is due to be confirmed as part of Asean's first regional charter. Opposition political figures—for whom a human rights commission is particularly important—have not been included in discussions to create this new mechanism.

"The opposition and civil society groups in Singapore are concerned because their views were not sought in regards to the commission," Chee Siok Chin, a ranking member of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, said in a telephone interview from the city-state. "We have o­nly heard the views from the establishment."

Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia were the original members of Asean, set up 40 years ago to strengthen regional economic ties and act as a bulwark against the spread of communism in the region. Of them, Indonesia currently tops the list of nations advancing o­n the human rights and democracy fronts. Malaysia and Singapore, by contrast, have governments known for authoritarian features, where freedom of expression is regularly under threat or non-existent.

The members who joined since 1967 are Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. With the exception of Cambodia, these countries do not offer space for political and civil liberties. Brunei has an absolute monarchy, while Laos and Vietnam have been under the grip of Communist parties since the mid-1970s.

It is military-ruled Burma, admitted to Asean a decade ago, that looms as the test case to measure the effectiveness of the new regional rights body.

"The human rights violations in Burma should be among the first cases the new commission should investigate," says AHRC's Fernando. "It is a good test case, because Burma ranks as o­ne of the human rights violators o­n the global scale."

Former Burmese political prisoners drew Asean's attention o­n a related front Monday, when they said that the very day the agreement for the new human rights body was approved, July 30, the Burmese junta cracked down o­n human rights activists in the country.

A private teacher was sentenced to three years imprisonment and fined because "he let members of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters have a human rights training at his place," according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma).

Burma has jailed more than 1,100 political prisoners, and held under house arrest the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for more than 11 years.