Activists criticize ASEAN’s industrial, nuclear ambitions

Dina Indrasafitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 05/04/2011

ASEAN’s economic and business ambitions, including building nuclear power plants in the region, may pose a threat to human rights and the environment, critics said on Tuesday.

Sammy Gamboa, a program officer from the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), said the rapid development of ASEAN countries often violated housing rights in the member states, especially Burma, Cambodia, East Timor, the Philippines and Indonesia.

He spoke at the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN people’s forum 2011 in Jakarta on Tuesday.

“Housing rights violations in Southeast Asia often occur as a result of a combination of governments’ economic and development policies, widespread poverty, marginalization and the exclusion of the majority of the impoverished regions and their lack of access to effective remedies,” COHRE said in a statement.

COHRE’s Women’s Housing Rights Officer Jessica Umanos Soto said that in Burma alone there were around 1 million internal refugees.

Premrudee Daroung, from the Foundation for Ecological Recovery, said that ASEAN needed to add the environment as a strategic pillar in addition to its existing three — economy, political security and socio-cultural.

She said that so far environmental matters had been put under socio-cultural, which was why they were treated as less important than they deserved.

Also at the event, a Malaysian politician demanded a nuclear-free ASEAN.

“I think we should have a nuclear-free environment. We should focus on renewable energy ... every construction of a nuclear reactor ... has an impact throughout the region.

[The countries] are closely tied to each other geographically, and therefore if there is one that collapses, it will impact the entire region.” Charles Santiago, a member of the Malaysian Parliament said in one of the meeting’s plenary sessions.

He said that ASEAN countries, including Malaysia, were currently looking into establishing nuclear plants despite the risks inherent in such power generators.

Charles said that most ASEAN countries were located in the ring of fire, and that nuclear plants were never green nor completely safe.

“Thus, the idea of building them in one of those countries is asking for trouble.”