ASIA: ‘National Security’ a Cloak for Violating Rights – Report

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 24 2001 (IPS) - Under the guise of “national security”, Asian governments are undermining their people’s political and civil liberties, says a report released here Friday.

In the report ‘Human Rights in Asia’ for 2000, the Bangkok- based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) says governments often use national security laws — which place substantial power in the hands of the government or security forces — to curtail some, or all, of an individual’s human rights.

The report by the regional human rights group singles out countries whose national security acts are “great obstacles to the full enjoyment of democracy”, including South Asian nations like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and East Asian ones such as Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and China.

“One of the most well-known, and frequently abused, national security laws is Malaysia’s Internal Security Act (ISA), a far-reaching act that allows for preventive detention as well as extended detention of figures who threaten ill-defined aspects of public order,” according to the 130-page annual human rights report.

Malaysia’s ISA was used to deal with a communist insurgency in the sixties, but these days the law that allows indefinite detention without trial is often used to detain or silence dissidents.

But an official in the prime minister’s office, Noh Omar, defended the law Friday, saying “there would be no guarantee of security” in Malaysia without it because of the need for racial and religious harmony in the multi-ethnic country. This month, police used the ISA to arrest 10 people on suspicion of involvement in a militant group allegedly aiming to wage a ‘holy war’.

In South Asia, the report adds, draconian laws, which have been initially justified by actual threats, often devolve into “opportunities for states to wrongly limit citizens’ rights to freedom of expression, assembly, opinion and movement”.

Among the high-profile examples the report cites are the Malaysian government’s rough-arm tactics in the case of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and the Chinese government’s crackdown on members of the Falun Gong religious group.

Anwar, who was first arrested in 1998 under the ISA, is in jail for sodomy and corruption. Anwar, says the charges against him were politically motivated, but the Malaysian government denies this.

The Chinese government has banned the Falun Gong spiritual movement, calling it an ‘evil cult’ that would bring “harm to the society”. Rights activists say thousands have been detained without trial for alleged involvement with the group.

“Despite the rhetoric used to support these laws, which usually describes serious threats to national stability and peace, national security laws are most often used as blunt instruments to silence opposition, protect illegitimate regimes, and oppress innocent members of the population,” the report argues.

This attitude has been a major factor in retarding the growth of a democratic movement in East Asia, Somchai Homlaor, secretary general of FORUM-ASIA during the report’s launch Friday. “It has enabled governments to ‘force’ people into toeing the line.”

Human rights activists need to be more vigilant given the rhetoric emerging from the governments in South-east Asia, he adds. “In Thailand, the new government has been attracted to the Malaysian model. It wants to promote the economic well-being of the people at the expense of democracy and human rights.”

The report also identifies nine other trends used by governments to deny people their human rights, ranging from armed conflicts, political instability and corruption to militarisation.

It says the picture is not pleasant for women and for victims of caste-based discrimination in Nepal and India, where ‘dalit’ or outcasts are shunned and left with work like scavenging, and inter-caste marriages are taboo. Low-caste people may also be refused permission to participate in functions and religious ceremonies equally with other people.

Likewise, the report says, corruption contributes to “a lack of accountability, which in turn allows for violations of human rights, often with impunity for the perpetrators and no recourse for the victims”. In South Asia, this trend is pervasive, resulting, among other things, in the “breakdown of the rule of law.”

Militarisation, according to the report, has been “accelerating throughout Asia.” In Burma, the number of soldiers has “skyrocketed from 175,000 in 1989 to 400,000 in 2000,” while China’s defence budget has increased as it “strengthens its role as a regional military power,” the report explains.

It also spoke of women continuing to be “sold into prostitution and trafficked throughout Asia, whether is from Nepal to India or Thailand to Japan.

Domestic violence is equally pervasive. In Bangladesh, the report says that almost half the female population are victims of “assaults by their male partners,” while anywhere between 25 to 55 have been murdered in “honour killings” annually by family members for “perceived immoral behaviour”.

These rights violations are an indictment of the laws that exist in Asia to protect its people, says Dr Vithaya Sucharithanarugse, former director of the Institute of Asian Studies at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. “Despite having laws, the abuse has continued. We require mechanisms to implement the laws,” he points out.

Equally revealing about the report’s findings, he says, is what it says about Asia’s own deep roots in human rights principles, despite the concept of cultural differences and “Asian values” cited by leaders of Singapore and Malaysia in the past.

“The so-called ‘Asian values’ have been used to support human rights violations rather than extend them,” Vithaya observes. “Our political culture needs to be people-based than government-based.”

Indeed, the report says: “Although true Asian values do not oppose respect for human rights, some proponents of ‘Asian values’ have drawn a considerable audience for their arguments.”

“Culture is the right of all people, and all people have the right to protect their culture and traditions. Yet we must be selective and careful in choosing which aspects of our cultures to embrace, and which to discard,” it adds.

“Cultural practices congenial to human rights principles are found in all societies in Asia. They must be promoted as the rights of people, and those practices that violate human rights, such as amputation, caste systems or ‘honour killing’, must be discredited and discarded,” it concludes.

The report places faith in Asia’s civil society culture to agitate for change. “Asia has a strong civil society presence, although it remains young and has a long way to go before fulfilling its full potential,” it adds, even as it cites examples of good trends.

Thailand’s achievements over the last three years — the 1997 constitution that recognises human dignity as fundamental for governments to respect and the setting up of an independent human rights commission — are welcome developments, says Nophanidhi Suriya, professor of law at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

“These have ensured democratic license to the people,” he adds. “We have never had such concepts in Thailand’s political culture before.”

However, some of the impressive changes in Asia last year still trail behind the level of abuse. Says the FORUM-ASIA report: “Although there have been impressive changes in domestic laws in many countries, practices often remain unchanged.”