The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia

Denny Roy, Kenneth Christie

Description

Refugees fleeing East Timor. Tiananmen Square in China. The killing fields in Cambodia. Freedom of speech in Singapore. The subject of human rights in Asia is a hotly debated one. In The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia, the authors survey the human rights records and attitudes of each country.



The countries covered are: China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Kenneth Christie covers Southeast Asia and Denny Roy covers Northeast Asia. They conclude with a discussion of the Association of East Asian Nation's (ASEAN) role and suggestions for the future. Throughout, they examine the competing meaning of human rights in the Western versus the non-Western context and place the role of human rights within the framework of each country's history and political and economic development.
1. Introduction: Human Rights in East Asia

Section 1: Southeast Asia: Kenneth Christie

2. Singapore, Malaysia, and ASEAN

3. Myanmar and Vietnam

4. Indonesia

5.Thailand and the Philippines

6. Cambodia

Section 2: Northeast Asia: Denny Roy

7. China

8. Taiwan

9. Japan

10. North and South Korea

Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Human Rights
• Political Science
• Central Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849640510
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia

Kenneth Christie and Denny Roy

P Pluto Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA

First published 2001 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © Kenneth Christie and Denny Roy 2001

The right of Kenneth Christie and Denny Roy to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Christie, Kenneth. The politics of human rights in East Asia / Kenneth Christie and Denny Roy. p. cm. ISBN 0–7453–1419–8 1. Human rights—East Asia. 2. Human rights—Asia, Southeastern. I. Roy, Denny, 1960– II. Title. JC599.E18 C48 2001 323'.095—dc21 00–00942

ISBN 0 7453 1419 8 hardback ISBN 0 7453 1414 7 paperback

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08 8

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed in the European Union by Antony Rowe, Chippenham, England

Contents

Acknowledgements

1

Introduction: Human Rights in East Asia

Part 1 Southeast Asia Kenneth Christie

2 3 4 5 6

Malaysia, Singapore and ASEAN Myanmar and Vietnam Indonesia Thailand and the Philippines Cambodia

Part 2 Northeast Asia Denny Roy

7 8 9

China North and South Korea Japan

Notes Index

viii

1

29

31 80 123 159 199

217

219 234 260

277 303

Note

The views expressed in this book by Denny Roy are his and not nec- essarily those of the US government.

vi

For Marianne from Kenneth For Brittney from Denny

Acknowledgements

Kenneth Christie

Many people and institutions have helped to shape my thinking about Southeast Asia over the years. I am grateful to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore for allowing me to use their very valuable library from time to time, and to their excellent library staff for providing me with such good information. I have also benefited from a visit to the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies in Copenhagen, where I had access to a wonderful library and very conscientious library staff. I would like to thank Erik Skaaning, Jens- Christian Sørensen and Per Hansen for making my stay very comfortable above and beyond the call of duty. Special mention must be made of Inga-Lill Blomkvist and Eva Nielsen who provided me with a wealth of information on my topic and really went out of their way to ensure I was getting all the material I needed. Thank you also to Anne Schlanbusch, Birgit Klintebach and Per Ronnås for the warm welcome they gave me. I would like to thank some people for reading portions of the manuscript and commenting on it, including Gary Risser on Thailand, and Hari Singh on Malaysia. I am grateful to Thammassat University and in particular to Dr Corrine Phuangkasem for allowing me to give a seminar on human rights at a symposium they organised. I would also like to thank my students in Singapore, South Africa and Norway for the insights they have generously shared with me over the years on these kinds of issues. I would like to thank the people at Lichado, the Cambodian human rights NGO, for making me very comfortable during my stay in Cambodia in 1998 and for the support they gave me. In particular, Dr Pung Chhiv Kek Galabru and Eva Galabru were extremely helpful under very difficult circumstances and they have my utmost admiration for the tremendous work they do to further the cause and practice of human rights in Cambodia. Finally, I would like to thank Roger Van Zwanenberg, Robert Webb and Ray Addicott for seeing this project through. Thanks are also due to Therese Zeil and Marianne Bruvik for technical assistance. Needless to say, any mistakes incurred throughout the book are our own.

viii

1 Introduction

Consider the following statements made by East Asian elites at various times in the 1990s.

The Confucianist view of order between subject and ruler helps in the rapid transformation of society ... in other words, you fit yourself into society – the exact opposite of the American rights of the individual. I believe that what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. Democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly 1 conditions. Lee Kuan Yew (Senior Minister, Singapore)

The West tells us that democratic freedom and human rights are fundamental to the achievement of economic and social devel- opment. We in ASEAN never disputed that democracy for the people and opportunity for the individual to develop his or her own potential are indeed important principles ... [however] the norms and precepts for the observation of human rights vary from society to society ... Nobody can claim to have a monopoly of wisdom to determine what is right and proper for all countries and peoples. It would be condescending, to say the least, and 2 suspect for the West to preach human rights to us in the East.

Mohammed Mahathir (Prime Minister of Malaysia)

Human rights are interrelated and indivisible comprising civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. These rights are of equal importance. They should be addressed in a balanced and integrated manner and protected and promoted with due regard for specific cultural, social, economic and political circumstances 3 ... the promotion of human rights should not be politicised.

ASEAN Foreign Ministers (July 1993)

1

2

Politics of Human Rights in East Asia

These comments were fairly typical of the mood of leaders of highly successful East Asian economies in the early to mid-1990s. They do not represent everyone – Thailand and the Philippines, for instance, clearly had different ideas – but they do represent some consensus among elites in the East Asian region about the virtues of promoting authoritarianism and disregarding democracy and universal ideas of human rights. These constructs and their relationship with each other have returned to the limelight of many studies of politics, modernization and globalization in the 1990s. While authoritarian models of central planning collapsed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the liberal democratic, free market model appeared to have emerged triumphant. However, the political version of this formula was called into question by the success of East Asian countries, which sought to argue that their economic ascendancy was predicated on a different set of values and concerns from those of western democracies. The values proclaimed here are broadly illiberal and undemocratic, and question whether economic devel- opment ultimately leads to political liberalization. They are also uninterested in universal notions of human rights and what they constitute. Freedom, a central element of a human rights culture, for instance, has been a widely debated subject. As David Kelly has argued: ‘nowhere are reports about freedom – its perilous ascendancy in Taiwan or its suppression in Rangoon, its exuberance in Manila or its mediocrity in Singapore – in greater currency than 4 in this Asian region’. Liberal democracy and individual human rights, some East Asian elites argued, are inappropriate to the political and social culture in Asia, a culture that promotes ‘order’, consensus and harmony over confrontation and adversarial forms of politics. Moreover, given the remarkable economic success of Southeast Asia (until the currency meltdown of 1997), many felt they were in a position to resist such intrusions. For those with democratic instincts who hoped that democracy and human rights norms would gain a foothold in the region, the record was disappointing as authoritarian regimes bucked 5 the trend of the ‘third wave’ of democratization. The region opposed and displayed antipathy towards individual human rights. Furthermore, these regimes seemed to offer an alternative form and mode of governance. Table 1.1 illustrates their reluctance to embrace the third wave of democratization.

Introduction

Table 1.1 Southeast Asia: Freedom and economic growth

Southeast Freedom Asia 1994

Singapore Malaysia Brunei Indonesia Thailand Myanmar (formerly Burma) Vietnam Cambodia Laos Philippines

5 4.5 6.5 6.5 4

7 7 4.5 6.5 3.5

GNP Score 1996

4 4 6 6 3

7 7 6

2.5

1998

1996 per capita (US$)

5 30,550 5 4,370

6 2.5

7 7 6

2.5

1,080 2,960

290 300 400 1,160

3

Average Annual Growth (%) 1995–96

5.8

5.6

5.8 4.4

7.3 3.9 4.0 4.5

Sources: GNP per capita and annual average growth rates are from the World Bank (1998)World Development Indicators. Freedom scores are fromFreedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties(1994), (1997) and (1999): Freedom House Survey Team. The figures given for the scores are the mean of the combination of political rights and civil liberties scores. The scale proceeds from 1.0 (most free) to 7.0 (least free).

Moreover, some critics of modernization theory and its implica- tions also argue that those forms of liberal democratic values and universal human rights are highly problematic if considered universal. A liberal democratic system (which is shaped by ‘cultural 6 particularity’) is also ‘informed and justified by the ideas of equality and freedom as well as by a recognition and accommodation of “the fact of pluralism”, [and it] is a culturally distinct, historically contingent artefact, not readily transferable to East and Southeast Asian societies with different traditions, needs and conceptions of 7 human flourishing’. As Bauer and Bell assert: ‘The new human rights discourse is also a reaction to the increasing pressure on East Asian Governments to comply with international human rights norms. This pressure comes from an international community that has heightened expectations for a part of the world that has become 8 irrevocably integrated into global markets.’ In order to underpin

4

Politics of Human Rights in East Asia

and provide roots for their economic freedom and equality, democracy in Southeast Asia requires the problematic juxtaposition of different sets of alien values and needs to suit their particular context. The contention here is that the liberal democratic project (with its cultural particularity), its individualism and rights constructs appear alien in such a context. It is well known that the term ‘human rights’ was originally a western concept originating from the experience and political philosophy of Western Europe. One of the dominant themes of Western European history has been the struggle of citizens to limit the powers and intrusiveness of their rulers. Many western political thinkers have characterized government as a necessary evil, ideally given the task only of providing the protection and minimal super- vision that allow the people to achieve prosperity and self-fulfilment. When the phrase ‘human rights’ came into popular usage after the Second World War, it referred to laws protecting citizens from being abused or suppressed by their governments – what are now more specifically called civil and political human rights. The need to dis- tinguish this class of human rights, also known as ‘first generation human rights’, arose from the assertion of Third World commenta- tors that social and economic rights (‘second generation human rights’), which are guarantees that basic needs (food, shelter, employment, medical care, etc.) will be met, are desired by the majority of the world’s population at least as deeply as civil liberties. As we shall see, many of the authoritarian regimes in Asia have couched their human rights agendas in reference to national security concerns. These usually include some or all of the following: main- taining a country’s survival and prosperity; protecting against attack or molestation of one’s citizens, territory or assets; and the preser- vation of ‘core values’, which may include a particular political system or way of life. More often than not, national security and regime security mean the same thing for authoritarian states determined to maintain power.

AN OVERVIEW OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ASIA

A few observations help to establish a context for talking about human rights in Asia. First, it could be argued that in Asia there is no history of ‘human rights’ as understood in its western context.