Members of the Free Burma Coalition-Philippines stage a lie-in protest in front of Myanmar embassy in Makati's financial district of Manila in May this year to denounce the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. — Reuters picCHA-AM, Oct 24 — Asean yesterday launched a regional human rights commission, signalling a strong intent towards promoting and protecting human rights in the region, as its leaders gathered in Cha-am for the grouping’s 15th summit.
The leaders, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, gave political weight to the Asean Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) by issuing a joint declaration.
It outlined the leaders’ support for the new body and also emphasized their commitment to work more closely in promoting and protecting human rights in the region.
The Asean leaders met the AICHR’s first slate of representatives, who included Singapore’s former senior district judge Richard Magnus, 64.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the current Asean chair, described the commission as “another important milestone in Asean’s dynamic regionalism” and said it has placed human rights at the centre of Asean’s agenda.
But critics have derided the AICHR over its lack of sanction powers against rights abusers and its adherence to Asean’s traditional principle of non-interference, making it toothless to act against member-states with poor human rights records, like junta-led Myanmar.
Noting the criticisms, Abhisit said the new body was a first step in an evolutionary process towards “strengthening the human rights architecture in the region”.
Calling on governments and civil society organisations, he said: “The responsibility now rests on all of us to work together to move AICHR forward — to make it credible and effective in the promotion and protection of human rights.”
The first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region, the commission is provided for by the Asean Charter, which came into effect last December.
Its launch, however, was marred by a protest by a group of activists from civil society organisations (CSO). They were upset that five out of 10 activists elected through the Asean Peoples’ Forum (APF) earlier this week were barred from attending a dialogue with Asean leaders yesterday.
Those barred were from Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines.
They said in a statement they were “further shocked to learn that Singapore and Myanmar had selected substitutes from government-sponsored agencies”.
In a statement rebutting the activists’ comments, Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said that Asean foreign ministers meeting in Phuket in July had agreed that each Asean member would choose its own CSO representative for the dialogue.
It said the Asean Socio-Cultural Community Council in Bangkok in August agreed with the foreign ministers’ decision and added that the CSO representatives should be chosen from humanitarian and development sectors.
Said the MFA statement: “Thailand, as chair of Asean, had conveyed these decisions in advance to the organisers of the Asean Peoples’ Forum.”
It added that Singapore’s representative, T. K. Udairam, the chairman of independent non-governmental organisation Mercy Relief, was not a ‘substitute’ but chosen in accordance with the decisions.
Mercy Relief was not a ‘government-sponsored’ agency, the statement pointed out.
“We are surprised that the organisers of the APF now profess to be ‘shocked’ as they cannot have been unaware of the basis on which he was chosen,” said MFA.
A similar dialogue at the 14th Asean summit in Hua Hin in February wasn nearly scuttled when the premiers of Myanmar and Cambodia threatened to boycott the event if activists from their countries took part. They joined in only after the activists agreed to skip the dialogue.
Asean leaders will meet over the weekend with counterparts from dialogue partners including China, India and Japan.
Yesterday afternoon, PM Lee met Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on the summit sidelines. MFA said the leaders had a good exchange of views on regional and international developments, and also bilateral ties. They discussed Asean matters, including Vietnam’s chairmanship of Asean from 2010.
“PM Dung and PM Lee welcomed the strengthening of our bilateral defence relations with the signing of the Defence Cooperation Agreement last month,” MFA said.
“Both sides also reaffirmed our two countries’ close economic cooperation under the Singapore-Vietnam Connectivity Framework Agreement.”
The agreement was signed in December 2005 to seek closer bilateral cooperation in six sectors, among them investment, finance, and transportation.
Lee also said he looked forward to welcoming Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet’s state visit to Singapore, scheduled for Nov 16-17, said MFA. — Straits Times
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