THAILAND: Aspirant That Failed to Get on UN Rights Body

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK , May 10 2006 (IPS) - Thailand finds itself out in the cold at the end of a four-cornered race in this region to win a place on a new U.N. body to monitor the world’s human rights violations.

A vote Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly to choose the 47 members for the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) revealed that the 191 members of the global body were more in favour of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to represent South-east Asia.

That verdict – following a secret ballot where competing countries had to secure an absolute majority of at least 96 votes – is the latest blow to a country that had been praised for years for being a beacon of hope on the human rights front in this region.

Yet, leading Thai human rights activists are not shocked at this news from New York. ”I am not surprised,” Vasant Panich, a member of the National Human Rights Commission, the country’s premier rights body, told IPS. ”We have a record of human rights violations that have happened in the recent past.”

Among the blights that have tarnished Thailand’s record are the growing rights violations related to an escalating insurgency in the south, the declining space for a free press, Bangkok’s steady support of the repressive Burmese military regime next door and the government’s open hostility towards the U.N. when criticised. Human rights activists blame the administration of Prime Minster Thaksin Shinawatra, in power since January 2001, for all of it.

This week’s message from the U.N. will be hard for Bangkok to swallow for another reason: Thailand had nominated Surakiart Sathirathai, the former foreign minister and deputy prime minister in the current caretaker government, as a candidate to succeed Kofi Annan as the U.N. secretary general.

Surakiart, in fact, has been openly campaigning for this post, that falls vacant later this year. He has assured the Thai public that the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are members, has endorsed his candidacy. Local newspapers have reported Surakiart affirming that he has over 100 countries supporting him, including the regional giant China.

”Clearly the international community thinks differently of Thailand. This week’s vote is a message to Surakiart that things are not as easy as he thinks,” a former Thai diplomat who served in a Western capital said in an interview on condition of anonymity. ”His behaviour and the government’s behaviour cannot be divorced from one another. He has been involved in shaping Thailand’s foreign policy.”

Thailand’s failure to win a place at the UNHRC serves as a ”wake-up call for us”, added the diplomat. ”This should make us think about who we are and where we stand in the world.”

It is a view that should resonate with the country’s foreign policy makers, since Bangkok appeared optimistic on the eve of the General Assembly vote that Thailand had ”high hopes” of being elected to the new U.N. body. ”Foreign Ministry spokesman Kitti Wasinondh said Thailand’s human rights record should not be an obstacle and its good ties with international organisations should help,” the Bangkok Post, an English-language daily, stated Wednesday.

The newly-created rights body, which will be based in Geneva will replace the U.N. Human Rights Commission, a 53-member group that was conceived after the inception of the U.N., but lost its credibility in the ensuing years with countries of dubious human rights records gaining a place.

There will be pressure on the chosen members to improve their rights record, since it will be subject to a review. These countries, furthermore, have a limited period to be on the UNHRC, between one to three-year terms, and they cannot be immediately re-elected after two consecutive terms.

The 13 countries that gained a place, out of the 18 that contested from Asia, include Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka, besides the ASEAN three. The ones that failed to win a seat include Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Thailand.

It is a winner’s list that does not impress regional human rights watchdogs, given the oppressive record of countries like China and Saudi Arabia. And while the South-east Asian winners may not be classed among such notorious rights abusers, Malaysia’s presence in that group is not viewed with much confidence.

”I am not very optimistic about human rights improving in South-east Asia,” Anselmo Lee, executive director of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based regional rights lobby, told IPS. ”Malaysia has played a negative role in the past when on the previous human rights commission. There is always the talk of Asian standards that are less than international human rights standards.”

”Being on the human right council means having to prove that you are faithful to international obligations and that you will promote and protect human rights in your country and beyond,” he added. ”Indonesia is as bad.”