We write in advance of the fourth Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Copenhagen, which will bring together the heads of state of Brunei, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and members of the European Union. The summit meeting presents an important opportunity for European Union members to promote human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in Asia. Many of the important international challenges on your agenda have a critical human rights dimension, such as safeguarding human rights in counter-terrorist measures; respecting the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, trafficked persons and migrants; and strengthening the protection of trafficked persons and children in armed conflict and other hazardous situations. We hope EU leaders will also encourage their Asian counterparts to join with them in support of the new International Criminal Court.
EU-China Summit
In preparation for the EU-China summit on September 24 in Copenhagen, we have enclosed summaries of two recent Human Rights Watch reports on China dealing with labour unrest, and the political abuse of psychiatry in China. While cooperating with the International Labour Organisation on other issues, Beijing has refused the ILO's request to send a direct contact mission to China on freedom of association. The EU should urge China to accept such a mission, and also raise the cases of four NE China labour activists charged with organizing last year's massive labour protests; they have yet to be put on trial.
On the issue of psychiatric abuse, the World Psychiatric Association passed a resolution at its membership meeting in Yokohama last month to send an independent team to assess cases of alleged political abuse. However China is now apparently backing off from agreeing to such a visit. The EU should call on China to cooperate fully with the WPA, and to take immediate steps to end the detention of Falun Gong members, labour activists, whistle-blowers and others in psychiatric hospitals.
We are also enclosing a background memorandum on human rights abuses in Xinjiang, where China has attempted to justify its broad crackdown on Uighurs and Moslems on anti-terrorism grounds. It would be extremely useful if China would give unrestricted access to Xinjiang by private human rights monitors, U.N. human rights experts and international trial observers. We urge you to raise these concerns during the Summit discussions with Chinese officials, and to make the E.U.'s concerns public.
Human rights and counter-terrorism
As one of the themes of the ASEM summit will be international cooperation against terrorism, Human Rights Watch would like to stress the importance of ensuring that the fight against terrorism is conducted with full observance of international human rights standards. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the international community has rightly directed efforts to bringing those responsible for the attacks to justice. However, we are concerned about the opportunistic attacks on civil liberties and repression of political opponents that some governments are conducting in the name of the anti-terror campaign as well as new restrictive or punitive policies against refugees, asylum-seekers and other foreigners.
At their meeting in Madrid in June 2002, ASEM Foreign Ministers endorsed new forms of cooperation among ASEM members against terrorist threats, particularly through increased intelligence exchange. They called for a "comprehensive strategy against terrorism, which includes political, economic, and cultural measures, while respecting the rule of law." An ASEM expert seminar on anti-terrorism will be hosted by China shortly after your summit.
Human Rights Watch agrees that terrorism will not be defeated by solely military or technical means. Success against terrorism over the long term will require a comprehensive approach, as called for by ASEM foreign ministers, which addresses the human rights violations that give rise to violence and extremism by precluding the resolution of grievances through peaceful, democratic processes. It will also mean ensuring that action against terrorism does not compromise fundamental rights and freedoms and fully complies with the international human rights and humanitarian law standards that help define the moral boundaries that terrorism transgresses.
Human Rights Watch is concerned that many governments, including ASEM members, have used the anti-terror campaign as an opportunity to repress political opponents, curb civil liberties unnecessarily, and tighten arbitrarily restrictive and punitive policies against refugees, asylum-seekers, migrants and other foreigners. China, for instance, has used the international anti-terrorist agenda to justify its broad repression of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, including peaceful activists and Moslem religious groups. Malaysia has adopted the same pretext to justify its use of the draconian Internal Security Act against supporters of gaoled former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and other opposition supporters. In Europe, the U.K. has introduced measures that permit the prolonged arbitrary detention without adequate judicial review of foreigners suspected of terrorist activity. The past year has seen a continued failure by European states, at the national and European Union levels, to protect the fundamental rights of migrants, including adequate conditions of detention, protection from discrimination and from arbitrary decisionmaking regarding detention and deportation, meaningful access to asylum procedures, and protection from refoulement.
Human Rights Watch urges ASEM leaders to affirm, clearly and strongly, that counter-terrorist measures must comply fully with international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law. This clear statement of principle should guide the work of the upcoming ASEM seminar on anti-terrorism and official working groups developing cooperation on these issues within the ASEM framework. In this respect, ASEM should ensure that any definition of terrorism is restricted to recognizable crimes, and not be so wide as to constrain legitimate political activity; that measures to facilitate the extradition and prosecution of terrorist suspects guarantee full safeguards for fair trial and protection against torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and application of the death penalty; and that any measures undertaken in the areas of immigration and asylum recognize the fundamental human rights of all migrants and refugees, regardless of their status and, in particular, provide adequate protection for victims of trafficking, access to full and fair asylum procedures, and the prohibition of refoulement.
Afghanistan
One related issue in which ASEM members have a critical interest is the future stability and security of Afghanistan. ASEM members have played a leadership role in promoting Afghanistan's reconstruction and development, notably Germany in hosting the Bonn peace conference and Japan the major donors' meeting in Tokyo. It is critical that this significant investment in the future of Afghanistan be safeguarded against continuing threats and insecurity and that assistance pledged at Tokyo is actually delivered as quickly as possible. Human Rights Watch believes that an expanded international security presence is essential if effective political and economic reconstruction is to take place in Afghanistan. Despite the technical assistance now being provided by some ASEM members, Afghanistan's police force and national army are still a long way from being able to ensure security throughout the country. Authorities across Afghanistan - Chairman Hamid Karzai, provincial governors, civil society leaders, and even some warlords - recognize this pressing problem and have called for a deployment of international forces to provide greater security in key cities and on roads around the nation. Italy is taking the lead in international efforts to assist with building the legal system, but these efforts cannot be fully realized until better security is assured.
Human Rights Watch welcomed the recent shift in U.S. opposition to ISAF expansion. We urge E.U. governments and members of the Permanent Five to consult and quickly agree on a U.N. Security Council resolution to gradually expand ISAF to areas outside Kabul, and to pledge support in the form of troops, funding and logistical backup.
Migration, trafficking and asylum
Another common international challenge on your agenda is the management of migration flows in ways that fully respect the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and both regular and irregular migrants, as well as ensure the proper protection of trafficked persons. We note the conclusions of the recent ASEM ministerial conference on cooperation for the management of migration flows between Europe and Asia, held in Lanzarote in April 2002. We are concerned, however, that this important initiative fails to accord appropriate consideration to the fundamental rights of migrants, regardless of their status.
Specifically, the ministerial declaration commits ASEM members to cooperate on return and readmission of "illegal" immigrants, but downplays the rights of such migrants. With respect to "legal" immigrants, the declaration acknowledges that member states must "protect their rights and ensure them fair treatment." But as for "illegal" immigrants, ASEM states committed only to affect repatriation "in a humane and dignified manner," ignoring migrants' - even "illegal" migrants' - fundamental rights, including the right to life, the right to protection against arbitrary or discriminatory treatment, and rights relating to the length and conditions of detention. These are more than semantic differences, when considered against he backdrop of E.U. member states' increasingly restrictive immigration policies and the regular violation of all of these fundamental migrants' rights. In undertaking joint action in the field of migration, ASEM states should undertake to abide by their binding legal obligations to migrants, regardless of their legal status.
Protection of children
Human Rights Watch welcomes the child welfare initiative ASEM leaders took at their 1999 meeting in London, aimed at promoting international cooperation on child rights, with a special focus on sexual exploitation of children. We congratulate the government of Japan on its successful hosting in Yokohama of the Second World Congress on the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Human Rights Watch was also encouraged by the leadership role played by many ASEM governments at this year's U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Children, in particular by ratifying the new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict. We urge those governments that have not yet done so to sign and ratify this important instrument to help lay the foundation for a global ban on the use of children as soldiers.
Human Rights Watch was disappointed that, in the face of U.S. pressure, the outcome document from the Special Session was extremely weak in affirming the Convention on the Rights of the Child as the global standard for children's rights. We urge your governments, which have strongly championed children's rights in the Commission on Human Rights and other international fora, to issue a public statement reaffirming your commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and to incorporate implementation of the Convention into future ASEM activities and the national action plans mandated at the Special Session.
As part of its child welfare initiative, we urge ASEM to give special attention to the protection of children from violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, which was recognized as one of four priority areas at the recent Special Session on Children. Specifically, we request a commitment from all ASEM countries to provide support for the new in-depth study on violence against children that was requested by the General Assembly in December 2001, and will soon commence under the leadership of an independent expert selected by the Secretary-General.
Workers' Rights
Throughout Asia, workers suffer myriad violations of internationally recognized labor rights, including freedom of association, the abolition of the worst forms of child labor, and the elimination of employment discrimination. In its forthcoming Communication on Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility, the European Commission should encourage E.U. companies to demand respect for labor rights on both their directly-owned and independent supplier facilities and sub-contractors, and to report publicly on compliance with labor rights throughout their supply chains. The European Union should also encourage Asian governments to enforce existing labor laws that protect workers' human rights and to ratify key U.N. and I.L.O conventions dealing with the rights migrants, free association and collective bargaining. The E.U. can offer technical assistance to help bring domestic laws into compliance with international standards, and set up a working group within ASEM to coordinate such assistance.
International Criminal Court
One of the singular achievements for human rights over the past year is the establishment of the International Criminal Court. European Union members have played a critical leadership role in making the new Court a reality. To date, however, the ICC Treaty has been ratified by very few states in the Asia-Pacific region, and by none of ASEM's Asian partners. The Philippines, Thailand and the Republic of Korea have signed the treaty, but have reportedly come under U.S. pressure not to ratify. In line with the European Union's Common Position on the ICC, we urge you to use the ASEM summit to promote ratification of the ICC Treaty by Asian states. The European Union should offer governments in the region advice and technical assistance on the issues involved, including the enactment of national implementing legislation.
At the time of your meeting, the United States is in the process of seeking bilateral agreements with many European and other states that would require them to send an accused American citizen back to the United States instead of surrendering him/her to the ICC. We are aware that the European Union is in the midst of formulating its common response to this demand, but we urge you to use the Copenhagen meeting to sensitize ASEM partners to the fundamental principles of international law at stake, and encourage them to refuse any such bilateral agreements with the United States which would be in violation of the ICC Treaty, or at the very least defer negotiations and confer with European partners and other members of the Like-Minded Group. Now is the time for the European Union to work with supporters of the Court in other regions to safeguard the Court's effectiveness and legitimacy and reject any attempts to undermine this important institution.
Burma
While we recognize that the question of ASEM expansion, including the possible addition of Burma, will be on the agenda for the next ASEM summit in Hanoi, we hope that the Copenhagen ASEM will reinforce the concerns expressed by the E.U. foreign ministers at their Madrid meeting in June, welcoming Burma's cooperation with the U.N.'s special envoy and the U.N.'s special rapporteur and calling on Burma to release all political prisoners, end all forced labour, and end the recruitment and use as soldiers of children under the age of 18. In light of the EU troika visit to Burma from September 8 - 10, it is important to keep up the pressure for the lifting of restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly and to continue to provide humanitarian assistance especially on HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment.
We appreciate your attention to our concerns and trust that you will raise them in your discussion on September 22. We wish you a fruitful meeting and look forward to a continued dialogue with you.
Sincerely,
Mike Jendrzejczyk
Acting Executive Director
Asia Division
Human Rights Watch
Lotte Leicht
Brussels Director
Human Rights Watch
