EDITORIAL - One small step

The regional grouping started by Southeast Asia’s authoritarian rulers unveils this weekend a landmark inter-governmental human rights commission. Aware of its limitations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is setting modest goals for the commission: promoting instead of protecting human rights. The commission cannot impose sanctions for human rights violations within ASEAN.

That sits well with the ruling junta in Myanmar, which has gone along with the creation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. Before the annual ASEAN summit in Thailand this weekend, the junta released several political prisoners but also arrested many others in the previous weeks. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been kept under detention for most of the past two decades, was also allowed to meet with Western diplomats.

Such minor concessions continue to give ASEAN hope that engagement with one of the most repressive regimes in the world might yet lead to democratic reforms. The junta has made it clear that it would not allow foreign interference in its internal affairs under any condition. When a powerful typhoon battered the country, the junta turned away humanitarian aid from governments critical of its rights record and confined foreign aid volunteers to the old capital Yangon.

Still, the mere creation of the human rights commission, with the approval of all ASEAN members, should bode well for the promotion of human rights in a region where Myanmar is only the most blatant violator of civil liberties. Even in the Philippines, whose government projects itself as a champion of democracy in the region and likes to lecture Myanmar on human rights, militant activists and journalists have been killed with impunity in the past decade, pulling down the country’s ranking in the Press Freedom Index. There are also continuing complaints about torture and the summary execution of suspected criminals.

The creation of the commission is expected to lead to a departure, however gradually, from the long-standing ASEAN policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of member countries. The commission can help promote the welfare of women and children. Transparency and good government can also receive a boost through the promotion of access to information and freedom of expression. The creation of the human rights commission may be a small step, but it’s headed in the right direction.