ASIA WATCH OVERVIEW

Human Rights Developments

While China, Burma and Kashmir exemplified the continuing human rights problems in Asia, the major development in the region was not so much the nature of the abuses but the debate over how to address them. Two factors had a major impact on this debate: the increased visibility of Asian nongovernmental organizations or NGOs and the growing economic power of East Asia.

Asian NGOs were able to articulate a vision of human rights that differed radically from that of their own governments and thus called into question the ability of the latter to define what is "Asian." They were more successful than their governments in blurring the traditional sub-regional distinctions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. And they helped redefine priorities for the human rights movement in a way that rendered obsolete the old division of labor among human rights, development, women's rights and environmental organizations.

These efforts culminated in the issuing of the "Bangkok NGO Declaration on Human Rights" of March 27. Over one hundred NGOs from across Asia and the Pacific gathered in Bangkok on March 23 to coordinate their position for the World Conference on Human Rights, just as Asian governments convened a few days later, also in Bangkok, for the regional preparatory meeting of the World Conference on Human Rights. It was clear from a series of statements they made during 1992 that China, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, at the very least, were determined to promote an "Asian concept of human rights" which downplayed political and civil rights, highlighted the importance of economic development, stressed the need to take cultural, historical and religious factors into account when assessing human rights, and rejected aid conditionality and other forms of "interference in domestic affairs."

It was this concept that the Asian NGOs set out to rebut in Bangkok. The declaration they produced stated that because human rights were universal, "The advocacy of human rights cannot be considered to be an encroachment on national sovereignty." While noting the importance in the region of cultural pluralism, the NGOs declared, "Those cultural practices which derogate from universally accepted human rights, including women's rights, must not be tolerated." In reaffirming the indivisibility of political and economic rights, they stated, "Violations of civil, political and economic rights frequently result from the emphasis on economic development at the expense of human rights. Violations of social and cultural rights are often the result of political systems which treat human rights as being of secondary importance."

The Asian governments, at the official meeting from March 29 to April 2, produced a document which reflected much of the Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean position (although since the U.N.'s definition of Asia includes Southwest Asia, it included the viewpoints of governments such as Syria and Iran as well). Some of the Asian democracies, including Japan, managed to moderate the tone of some provisions, such as that on aid conditionality,changing the word "reject" to "discourage." They also managed to include important clauses such as that emphasizing the need to encourage all states of the region to ratify the international covenants on human rights.

Ironically, however, it was the Asian governments' castigation of the West for failing to heed the importance of social and economic rights led the American delegation to the Vienna Conference to reverse the stance of earlier administrations and announce its intent to ratify the relevant conventions.

The NGOs succeeded in blunting the efforts of some governments to accentuate North-South and East-West fissures. But it was clear, not only from their stance in Bangkok but from NGO work more generally, that the Asian NGO agenda differed in some respects from that of counterpart organizations in the West, particularly in putting more stress on the need to address the linkage between human rights and development than on civil and political rights per se.

The focus on human rights and development did not mean that NGOs ignored abuses of basic political and civil rights. For many Asian NGOs, detained Burmese opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was a potent symbol of the Asian struggle for human rights and democracy. The communal riots that erupted in India following the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque led to abuses that horrified Indians of all religious and political backgrounds. Indian activists continued to fight against laws such as the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), which severely restricted the rights of detainees. Treatment in detention centers was a major issue for Burmese refugees in Thailand. NGOs in Hong Kong were increasingly concerned about preservation of basic civil liberties, particularly freedom of the press, as 1997 approached. Korean NGOs focused attention on the continued use of the National Security Law, and their concerns were reinforced when Cho Guk, an activist from the Korean organization KONUCH, who attended the U.N. human rights meetings in Bangkok and Vienna, was arrested shortly after his return from the latter and charged under that law with pro-North Korean and "anti-state" activities. Indonesian NGOs continued to defend political detainees, from suspected insurgents to students accused of criticizing the electoral process, and to call for greater freedom of association for workers.

Moreover, violations of political and civil rights, for the most part, were most severe in the countries where domestic NGOs were not allowed to operate: China, Vietnam, Burma, Bhutan, Brunei and North Korea. Elsewhere, there were areas which were also effectively closed to domestic and international human rights investigators, including East Timor and parts of Irian Jaya, Tibet, Khmer Rouge-held zones of Cambodia, and the Jaffna Peninsula. The Asia-wide coalition of NGOs thus spoke primarily to concerns in countries which already had a modicum of political openness; in countries without such domestic voices, there was no real alternative to international pressure as a way of drawing attention to human rights abuses and trying to curb them.

As noted above, however, Asian NGOs succeeded better than their respective governments in working together across sub-regional boundaries. The Bangkok conference highlighted regional solidarityand common interests, but there were many examples during the year of transnational cooperation. Sri Lankan and Thai human rights NGOs were particularly helpful to their newly-formed counterparts in Cambodia. In Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere, NGOs worked to document the use of "comfort women" during the Japanese military occupation of their respective countries during the Second World War; they then joined forces with NGOs in Japan to call for Japanese government to acknowledge the abuses and compensate the victims. (By the end of the year, they had the acknowledgement but not the compensation.)

The breakdown of geographical barriers was somewhat offset by the need of NGOs to respond to developments within regional governmental associations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The ASEAN countries-Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and the Philippines-seemed well on their way by year's end to developing a regional mechanism to address human rights concerns. NGOs in the region were watching warily, doubtful that any mechanism that included among its founders President Suharto and Prime Minister Mahathir could advance the protection of human rights.

If the growing strength of NGOs in the region affected the human rights debate, so did the growing economic clout of East Asia, home of the "four dragons" (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) and the future dragons (China, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia). For one thing, it meant that for much of the international community, "Asia" was East Asia; South Asia, comprising the countries of the Indian subcontinent, was largely ignored.

The "Asian concept of human rights" was the creation of East Asian governments, and authoritarian East Asian governments at that, which felt they deserved praise, not censure, for their efforts to alleviate poverty, even if some civil rights were curtailed in the process. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew went to an extreme when he argued that Asians did not care about democratic government; they preferred efficient government. Other governments argued that it was simply a matter of time: Taiwan and South Korea were now well along in the democratization process, but their period of greatest growth came under authoritarian regimes. One problem with this argument, as the NGOs clearly saw, was that it left it up to non-democratic governments themselves to determine when the requisite level of development had been reached that would permit more political openness. More fundamentally, it has been shown that repression can impede development; inability to speak out vs. bad policies can stymie economic progress. Prior to the Vienna conference, fifty-six Indonesian NGOs said that time had now come in their country: "Now that development has been carried out for two decades," they said in a joint statement, "it is time for priority to be given to the realization of political and civil rights and democracy."

The experience of Taiwan and South Korea, however, also led many in the West who were uncomfortable with human rights advocacy to posit a direct relationship between economic liberalization and positive political change. Let the Chinese, Vietnamese and Indonesianeconomies continue to expand, the argument went, and an improvement in human rights will inevitably result, if only to satisfy the demands of a growing middle class. That argument, however, was of small comfort to the thousands detained in the region on political grounds. It belied the experience of China, where continued commitment to economic reform was accompanied by increased political repression, as China's leaders expressed a determination not to let the reforms affect Party control, and any signs of dissent were quickly crushed.

Economic growth in East Asia, however, also confronted the industrialized governments with some new problems for their human rights policies. Many Asian countries had the economic strength to resist economic sanctions or aid conditionalities imposed by donor countries. In 1992, the U.S. Congress cut off aid for advanced training for Indonesian military officers under the International Military and Educational Training Program; in 1993, the Indonesian government was planning to send officers to the U.S. for what was essentially the same program, but this time at its own expense. As trade and investment in the East Asian region became increasingly vital to the strength of industrialized economies, how far were the Western countries and Japan willing to press on human rights? One year into a new administration in the U.S. and six months into a new government in Japan, this question remained unanswered.

The Right to Monitor

As noted above, several Asian governments banned human rights organizations from operating in their countries altogether. No human rights monitoring was possible in China, Vietnam, Burma, Bhutan, Brunei or North Korea. In China, dissidents in Shanghai who tried to write letters on behalf of detained colleagues were briefly detained in June and one, Fu Shenqi, was sentenced to three years of re-education. The letter-writing campaign was one of the charges against him. In North Korea and Brunei, no one even attempted to form a human rights organization within the country.

In many other areas, human rights monitors faced harassment, intimidation and even murder by government agents or armed opposition groups. India and the Philippines, both functioning democracies, were the only countries during the year where monitors were killed, apparently for their human rights activities. Kashmir was a particularly hazardous place for human rights activists to work. In Indonesia, human rights activists working to defend peasants in a West Java land dispute case were detained for interrogation by police in October.

But thanks in part to the Bangkok and Vienna conferences on human rights in March and June, Asian human rights organizations had a higher profile than ever before. Their importance was perhaps demonstrated by the fact that the Chinese government felt it necessary to create a "nongovernmental" human rights organization, the China Society for Human Rights Studies, just so it would have access to discussions by NGOs in both meetings.

Several new regional human rights organizations came into being, such as Forum Asia and the Asian Regional Resource Center for Human Rights Education; other, long-standing organizations, such as the Asia and Pacific Women in Law and Development (APWLD) and the AsianCultural Forum on Development based in Bangkok, took on a new prominence in organizing NGO activities in the region.

The issue for many human rights organizations in the region was no longer sheer survival but how to get a stronger voice within the U.N. and within international institutions such as the World Bank. Still, protection of human rights monitors remained a central concern. The Bangkok NGO Declaration of March 27 identified the "increasing restrictions" imposed on human rights defenders as one of the critical challenges facing the region. It stated, "As these groups voice the interests of the people and work for their advancement, it is imperative that they be permitted to work freely."

U.S. Policy

Fears in the region that Asia would be ignored by the Clinton administration, with its focus on domestic policy, were assuaged by over a dozen visits of senior administration officials during the year, including President Clinton's trip to Tokyo for the summit of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized countries in July where he extolled the virtues of what he called the New Pacific Community. The question, as it turned out, was not whether Asia would be neglected; it was whether the attention would be welcome.

The Asia-Pacific region was seen both as a critical area for American jobs and exports, and as a test case in the new administration's determination to promote democracy, open markets and human rights. As Winston Lord, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific said in a briefing on August 31, "We believe you can't have open economics and closed politics."

The Clinton administration made significant efforts to press individual countries in the region on particular human rights issues, such as access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to China, and labor rights in Indonesia. But these initiatives on behalf of human rights were overshadowed by the administration's tending to portray human rights and democracy as core American values, not as values underpinned by an international system of treaties which have been ratified by countries around the world. In a region where non-democratic governments had already made such political capital out of perceived North-South and East-West divisions, the failure to anchor the promotion of human rights securely in United Nations mechanisms was unwise.

Portraying human rights and democracy as quintessentially American, rather than universal, values might also have created problems for the administration's stated desire to see other countries join forces in their protection and promotion. On the other hand, it was not clear that the administration had aggressively sought allies on this issue, particularly in the region. Japan had the potential to be much more active on human rights, given its stated position that allocation of overseas aid should be determined, in part, by a recipient country's democratization and respect for human rights. The new cabinet, formed after the July elections, also included at least two men, including the new foreign minister, known to be interested in human rights. Yet when Secretary Christopher met Foreign Minister Hata in mid-September, the issue of a multilateral stance on human rights toward the major violators of the regionapparently did not come up. The new Korean government also indicated its desire to play a greater regional role in fostering human rights and democracy; it was not clear whether the administration in Washington took the cue.

It was unclear how the administration would resolve the dilemma of promoting human rights and promoting jobs and exports in East Asia. But as the debates on trade benefits for China (MFN) and Indonesia (Generalized System of Preferences or GSP) made clear, a major player in addressing that dilemma would be the American business community. As the year opened, the business community was well aware of the increased readiness of the new administration to impose sanctions and of the ability of East Asian countries to withstand them. It feared that countries like China and Indonesia would retaliate against American companies if human rights pressure from Washington became too intense by giving future contracts to Japanese and European competitors. Some companies thus expressed an interest in working with Asia Watch and other human rights groups to head off a crisis before it arose or to work out a solution that might advance human rights at the same time that it eased the threat of sanctions.

By and large, however, the Clinton administration demonstrated a stronger rhetorical commitment to human rights than its predecessor, backed up, in a few cases such as China and Indonesia, by the threatened use of selective sanctions. It continued the policy of harsh words toward Burma and strongly criticized rights abuses by Indian security forces in Kashmir. But by the end of the year, the administration seemed to be having second thoughts about a tough human rights approach, particularly with respect to China, as anxiety rose about the political and economic implications.

The Work of Asia Watch

Asia Watch expanded its work during the year in terms of countries covered, issues addressed and advocacy techniques employed. It sought stronger coordination with local human rights organizations in setting priorities and increasingly looked beyond the United States to Europe and Japan for sources of pressure on human rights offenders in the region. It increased efforts to get donor nations to raise human rights concerns with recipients, and it increasingly saw the business community as a potential ally for the protection and promotion of human rights.

While Asia Watch continued to focus on a few key countries-China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia and Burma-it also sent a mission for the first time to Vietnam and intensified work on Pakistan, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Routine monitoring of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia continued.

Each of the five key countries had a particular claim on Asia Watch resources. China, the largest country in the world, had an appalling record of arbitrary detentions and torture. Some of the worst carnage in Asia during the year took place in Kashmir, where Indian security forces tried to crush internal strife and armed insurgency, with methods that ranged from summary executions and disappearances to destruction of whole neighborhoods. Indonesia, the fourth-largest country in the world, was notable both for the scope of its abuses, ranging from arbitrary arrest in East Timor toworker rights violations in Java and Sumatra, and for its role in trying to define an "Asian" view of human rights. Cambodia was a test case of how the United Nations would balance peacekeeping and human rights monitoring, and Burma, a human rights disaster area, prompted a split between western proponents of sanctions and Asian proponents of "constructive engagement."

The range of human rights issues addressed became increasingly complex. Communal violence was a major issue in South Asia and in Cambodia, between ethnic Khmer and Vietnamese. Abuses related to the trafficking of women was the focus of Asia Watch work on the Thai-Burmese border. Trafficking of women was also an issue through much of the rest of the region, including India, Pakistan, China and Japan, and with it came a new set of human rights concerns linked to AIDS. Commercial logging throughout Southeast Asia led to violence against individuals who protested the logging itself or who resisted being evicted from their land; but the borderline between state and private sector involvement was sometimes hard to distinguish.

On the advocacy side, Asia Watch continued to build contacts in Japan and to engage Japanese officials in a discussion of the use of foreign aid (Official Development Assistance or ODA) as a tool for the protection of human rights. We tried to coordinate advocacy efforts with the work of NGOs and governments in Europe, particularly with respect to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Burma. And in taking advantage of the debate on "good governance" within the World Bank, Asia Watch expanded contacts there. It also tried to ensure that human rights issues were raised at the annual donor meetings on Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.