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M
Ravi
The HLTF meeting in
Bali in June 2007 to discuss the ASEAN Charter.
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Vantage
A
Human Rights Commission: Possibility or pipedream?
M
Ravi
20 Jul 07
I
have just returned from a very important meeting in Manila,
Philippines. It was the 6th Workshop on the ASEAN
Regional Mechanism on Human Rights. Don’t let the long
title put you off; the content of the workshop was much less
didactic.
In fact, it was exciting in terms of the
development of human rights in Southeast Asia. Member states of
ASEAN had come together with civil society representatives to
hammer out a charter on human rights.
Yeah, so what’s
new, we’ve heard all this before. Yes, I know. Much has
been said about human rights before in ASEAN and little has been
done, I agree. But this time, things seem to be a little
different.
ASEAN had set up a High Level Task Force (HLTF)
to work on the terms of reference for the subject of human rights
in the charter.
This is where it got interesting.
Philippine Foreign Secretary, Dr Alberto Romulo, the keynote
speaker at the workshop, surprised participants when he said that
ASEAN foreign ministers were discussing a regional human rights
“commission” and not just a nebulous
“mechanism”.
Before we get carried away and
start celebrating, however, we need to ask what is going to go in
to such a commission. How will it be constituted? What powers
will it have? Will it be comprehensive?
Unfortunately, Dr
Romulo refused to divulge such information, citing only that
negotiations were on-going.
The charter with provision
for a human rights commission will be, as I understand it,
finalized when the foreign ministers meet in Manila in early
August and it will be officially signed at the ASEAN Summit
scheduled for November this year in Singapore.
I still
have a hard time imagining that the Singapore Government will
acquiesce to submit to a regional body especially one on human
rights issues.
So what’s the catch?
There
was talk at the workshop about the governments limiting the
commission to addressing issues on the rights of women, children,
and migrant workers, leaving out general human rights of civil
and political societies.
This would suit the Singapore
Government just fine, wouldn’t it? Women’s issues and
children’s rights are matters that the Government would
much prefer to deal with than fundamental human rights issues of
free speech, free association and peaceful assembly. I wouldn’t
be surprised if the Government has been lobbying for such
restrictions.
And yet, the Indonesian, Filipino, Thai,
and Malaysian national human rights commissions, in their
consultation process with the HLTF, recommended that the ASEAN
charter should:
1.
Ensure that principles and objectives of the AEAN Charter include
the principles of respect for human rights and fundamental
freedoms;
2. Include a provision in the Charter on the
importance of the role of National Human Rights Institutions;
3. Include a provision on the importance of the
establishment of National Human Rights Institutions in every
ASEAN Member State that has not done so.
Even
Cambodia is presently working to set up a human rights
commission. That leaves us with countries like Burma, Laos,
Vietnam, and Brunei that have no human rights commission. Not
very respectable company as far as democracy and justice is
concerned, is it?
While the human rights commissions in
our neighbouring countries are speaking up for us, are we going
to remain voiceless and spineless and not speak up for ourselves?
We need to make our voices heard that we, too, want and
need a national human rights commission in Singapore and that the
ASEAN human rights commission must not be restricted to just
women’s, children’s and migrant workers’
rights. It must include basic human rights such as the political
freedoms of each and every citizen of the country.
We
need to start working on this matter and there are opportunities
in the near future where we can make our voices heard.
For
a start, I will organise a public forum where all of us can come
together to discuss this matter at greater length. It is time
that we started work on making a Singapore Human Rights
Commission a reality.
All these years, Singaporeans have
been very quiet on this front. There have been National Working
Groups pushing for human rights in ASEAN but as you can see from
here http://www.aseanhrmech.org/,
Singapore is conspicuously absent.
As a result, the
regional community thinks we are not interested in human rights
and that there are no serious human rights violations in this
country.
In attendance at the workshop from Singapore was
Mr Sinapan Samydorai of the Think Centre; Ms Braema Mathi, former
NMP; Mr Michael Cheok, Vice-chairman, International Relations
Committee, Singapore Business Federation and I.
The human
rights situation in Singapore was not mentioned during the
discussions. As an observer my role was restricted. I did,
however, voice my concerns during the breaks in between that our
country’s civil society would be interested in getting more
involved in the process of setting up an ASEAN human rights
commission.
I also talked about some of the actions the
Government was taking against activists working for democratic
change here.
Surprisingly or not, Singapore was the only
country that did not send a government representative to the
workshop. Is this a glimpse of the Singapore Government’s
stand on this issue?
I also sought the support of the
existing national human rights commissions in Thailand,
Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia in our efforts to
establishing such an institution of our own.
And in case
you’re wondering what the international community thinks of
all this, the workshop while hosted by the Philippines Foreign
Affairs Department and the Commission for Human Rights of the
Philippines, was sponsored by the Canadian International
Development Agency, Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation,
and the European Commission.
See you all soon.
M
Ravi is a Singaporean lawyer and has been involved in several
civil rights issues and cases including the legality of the
mandatory death penalty in Singapore.
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