Home Blog Page 563

The classic divide-and-rule strategy

Anil Netto
-
0

As we celebrate 50 years of Independence and 44 years of Malaysia, we would do well to consider some of the cleavages in our society that have given rise to simmering tensions every now and then.

Our ethnic-based political system compartmentalises us into neat categories of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, Iban, etc. And now we have certain groups dividing us on the basis of religion.

Granted, not all these divisions are created by the politicians but they have to bear some responsibility for allowing the system to unleash these forces and divisive laws and rules on the population. The bumi-non-bumi dichotomy is one such example; you know, the emphasis on race, rather than need, when it comes to affirmative action policies.

In the last few years, a new divide has emerged: the Muslim-non-Muslim divide. This has arisen from a number of factors which we won’t go into in this piece.

These divisions and cleavages are not a uniquely Malaysian phenomenon.

According to Asghar Ali Engineer of the Mumbai-based Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, the ruling classes in India have used caste and communal issues to divert attention from horrific problems such as poverty, malnutrition and deaths from hunger. “The Gujarat carnage of 2002 took place precisely when the BJP Government was signing various international trade treaties and liberalising (the) economy benefiting (a) handful of economic elite.”

This is a piece I wrote in December for the Herald:

Chomsky regards fundamentalism and conservatism as a conscious effort to try and undermine progressive social policies.

Christian religious groups are mobilised into a political force to focus on specific moral issues such as gay marriages that are of no threat to CEOs of major corporations, he said. Meanwhile, the social dimension of the Gospel is ignored. Christ’s path of justice and peace has been shoved aside in favour of war and exploitation of human and natural resources.

As Chomsky notes, “And if you can shift the focus of debate and attention and presidential politics to questions quite marginal for the wealthy — questions of, say, gay rights — that’s wonderful for people who want to destroy the labour unions, or to construct a social/political system for the benefit of the ultra-rich, while everyone else barely survives.”

In Malaysia, notice how the focus on religious disputes has shifted attention away from certain crucial socio-economic issues.

During the recent Umno general assembly, the Article 11 coalition and other civil society groups came under fire from certain politicians. This succeeded in drawing the delegates’ – and the Malaysian public’s – attention away from the other major issues of the day.

What are these issues? The ongoing negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement with the United States; the widening gap between the rich and poor of all ethnic groups; the huge gulf between rich and poor Malays; the awards of contracts to cronies; the RM2 billion in non-performing loans suffered by Bank Islam; the Zakaria mansion fiasco and an array of corruption scandals. More recently, came the demolition of a squatter settlement along with the surau in Kampong Berembang, leaving Malay families homeless.

All these stories were marginalised as everyone started getting hot and bothered over the keris and the threats, whether real and imaginary, to various religious groups. Notice how successfully they have steered the debate away from these socio-economic issues to issues that divide society. It’s the classic colonial tactic of divide and rule.

Moses and Gandhi: From “small people” to inspiring leaders

Anil Netto
-
1

Very often, we admire the brave women and men of history who dared to stand up and lead their people against authoritarian and tyrannical rulers. We are so inspired by their raw courage that sometimes we fail to see that they were just ordinary people like us who felt compelled to act because of the injustice they saw around them.

Throughout history God has used “small people” to achieve miraculous deeds. It is almost as if He was trying to overturn the natural order of things. Most people usually regard the strong – rather than the meek – as the natural inheritors of the earth. When Moses was asked to lead his people out of Egypt, his first reaction was one of horror: he felt his lack of eloquence – some believe that he had a speech impediment or suffered from stammering – would be a major handicap.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Herald:

I couldn’t help but be struck by the parallels between Moses and Mahatma Gandhi. Like Moses, Gandhi was the unlikeliest of liberators. Frail and odd, he hardly showed any signs of greatness or courage in his early adulthood.

Studying law in England, he was incredibly tongue-tied and couldn’t speak in public to save his life – though he was somehow elected to the Executive Committee of the Vegetarian Society in England. Before long, one of the other committee members approached him, “You talk to me quite all right, but why is it that you never open your lips at a Committee meeting?”

Gandhi thought to himself: Not that I never felt tempted to speak. But I was at a loss to express myself. All the rest of the members appeared to me to be better informed than I.

Once when the Committee was discussing an important issue, Gandhi finally felt compelled to express his own views. How to do it was the question. I had not the courage to speak and I therefore decided to set down my thoughts in writing. I went to the meeting with the document in my pocket. But even with the help of notes written on paper, Gandhi was unable to read it out, so tongue-tied was he. In the end, the President of the Society called on someone else to read out Gandhi’s notes.

His shyness remained with him throughout his law studies in England. “Even when I paid a social call, the presence of half a dozen or more people would strike me dumb.”

And yet, this was the same Gandhi who was called upon to inspire and mobilise the Indians both in South Africa and India. He took on the might of the British Empire – peacefully, through sheer moral force – and won independence.

So you see the striking parallels between Moses and Gandhi as far as their lack of eloquence was concerned. Neither Moses nor Gandhi had the benefit of Toastmasters International training sessions. But when push came to shove, when they heard the “call”, they were transformed into men of courage who would eventually free their people from domination and imperialism.

Scomi and the “gift” to Penang commuters

Anil Netto
-
1

In February, newspapers reported that government-owned RapidKL would take over the management of the bus system in Penang, putting an end to Penangites’ public transport woes after years of shoddy bus service. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said it was the government’s “Chinese New Year gift” to Penang commuters.

The government’s “quick” move rendered obsolete the Penang state government’s move to set up its own firm, Penang State Bus Service (BNPP). At that time, I wondered why the federal government was preempting the BNPP, which had been in the midst of applying for permits from the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board. The Penang state government for its part had already obtained a RM50 million (US$14.2 million) soft loan to buy new buses.

Fast forward to the present.

The Edge (30 April) reports that government-owned Syarikat Prasana Negara Bhd, which owns public transport infrastructure, recently awarded a RM31 million contract to supply buses for Penang to Scomi Engineering Bhd, a company whose major shareholder is Kamaluddin Abdullah, the prime minister’s son. Of course, Scomi “technically and financially gave good products and pricing,” said the Prasarana CEO in justifying the decision. So, it looks like Scomi is more qualified than any other company to supply buses, huh. Hmm…

That is just the appetiser though. The real prize is the RM20 billion at stake for urban rail projects: RM1.2 billion for the proposed Penang monorail project; RM5-10 billion for the Kota Damansara-Cheras line; and at least RM10 billion for LRT extension in the Klang Valley.

The Edge says that jostling among companies for the various contracts has already started: “But whispers along the corridors of power in Putrajaya allude to only the well-connected getting a slice of the pie, especially the job to provide the rolling stock and designing and implementing the electrification system.”

Those jobs were previously handled by foreign firms but now “local names have surfaced”.

The business weekly lists them as:

  • MTrans Technologies Sdn Bhd, a company under – you guessed it – Scomi Engineering;
  • MMC Metrail under Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary; and
  • Doxport Technologies Sdn Bhd, a firm whose chairman is Umno treasurer Azim Zabidi.

The Edge quotes a source as saying, “Many are well aware of the power play behind the scenes and some companies have been subtly told not to waste time in bidding for the job. The lesser names would stay out. Even the foreign companies are likely to tie up with the local names to get a part of the job.”

Come again? This is a “gift” to Penang commuters? Let’s see who Prasarana awards the Penang monorail project – and the rest of the rail projects to – in the end. Watch this closely.

Anyway, this is an earlier article I wrote about how the deregulation and privatisation of the Penang bus service has proven to be disastrous, forcing the government to step in.

PENANG, Malaysia, Mar 12 (IPS) – A state-owned bus company is set to take over public transport in this traffic-clogged northern state after a concerted civil society campaign highlighted the failure of the existing privatised, deregulated bus service.

But public transport campaigners are not about to celebrate. They are wary of a federal-level firm, albeit government-owned, coming in to manage what is essentially a state-level metropolitan bus service. Earlier with the lack of enforcement by a federal-level regulatory board has not inspired confidence that an ‘imported’ solution is best. Full article: State to run city buses as privatisation fails

Ijok: Is there more than Najib vs Anwar at stake?

Anil Netto
-
0

So I gather some see this by-election as a proxy battle between Najib and Anwar. Others see it as a mini-referendum on the Barisan Nasional’s performance. Then again, there are many who are totally put off by the way the BN announces millions of ringgit in development allocations in the run-up to polling day. They call it a “buy election”. Where is the morality; does anybody care about ethics?

In the heat of the by-election campaign, there has been much discussion about the ethnicity of the candidates and whether Keadilan did the right thing in appointing Khalid to counter the BN’s candidate from the MIC.

To me, the candidates’ ethnicity is completely irrelevant. What I want to know – and this is what voters should ask – is their stand on the issues that really matter. Of course, it is also important to have a significant opposition presence in Parliament to act as a check and balance.

One of the most critical issues that voters should be concerned about is the ongoing FTA negotiations with the United States. We may have missed the United States’ “fast-track” deadline, but that has not stopped both sides from pressing ahead with the negotiations. That shows us how badly the United States wants an FTA with Malaysia after putting Korea in its pocket. Let’s hear what the two candidates have to say about this.

I am against an FTA with the United States because I believe it will hurt a developing nation like Malaysia in the long run. I want to know why the Malaysian government is pressing on with the FTA when it hasn’t made public a cost-benefit analysis. Has it even prepared a comprehensive analysis? Shouldn’t the public know about these things? Most of us are not aware that the US trade unions themselves have joined forces with the MTUC to oppose the proposed pact.

Why would trade unions in both countries oppose an FTA pact? This is what I wrote for IPS:

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 22 (IPS) – Trade unions from the United States have joined forces with their Malaysian counterparts to strongly oppose ongoing negotiations for bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) until workers’ concerns are first addressed.

The American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) and the Malaysian Trades Unions Congress (MTUC) are poised to ink a joint declaration agreed upon in Kuala Lumpur last week.

The declaration resembles those that U.S. labour federations had previously signed with their counterparts in South Korea in June, Central America (2002) and Australia (2001),

The Kuala Lumpur declaration on the proposed US-Malaysia FTA asserts that economic integration between the two countries must result in broadly shared benefits for working people and communities, not simply extend and enforce corporate power and privilege. It also warns that violations to workers’ rights had reached crisis levels. Full article: US unions oppose free trade with Malaysia

The not-so-golden golden years

Anil Netto
-
3

Whenever we talk of marginalised groups, many of us tend to think of migrant workers, Orang Asli, refugees, plantation workers and squatters, people with HIV/AIDS.

Often, we tend to overlook the fact that many of the senior citizens among us are no less marginalised, whether at home or in public life, while the young take centre stage.

It is a sad fact that the contribution of senior citizens to society and their wisdom are rarely recognised. Many of them receive only a few hundred ringgit a month in pension or have long since used up their meagre EPF savings and have to rely on their children for financial support. For most of them, it is a daily struggle to balance their budget.

I had a long chat with William, a sprightly senior citizen, several months ago. He told me about the deep loneliness and insecurity that accompany old age and the alienation that senior citizens often feel. It prompted me to write a piece for the Malaysian Herald, an excerpt of which is reproduced below:

When you consider that the cost of living has soared, it is hard to imagine how retirees make ends meet. This is especially true in the case of health care. On the one hand, private hospital treatment is so expensive, while on the other the queues at government hospitals are so long. If Jesus were around, he would surely have pity on the crowds, many of them senior citizens, waiting to see doctors, waiting at the pharmacy to get their medicines, waiting for buses to take them to hospital. If they need to see a specialist or need specialised tests such as an MRI, they may have to wait for weeks if not months. God help those who need urgent specialist attention and who don’t have the money. Even if the serious ill are admitted to hospital, how are the bed-ridden treated there and what is the quality of nursing care like?

But getting to the hospital itself is another challenge. They either have to rely on family members and friends for transport. Taxis are of course expensive, especially for those struggling to make ends meet. Our public transport, on the other hand, is hardly friendly to senior citizens and the disabled nor does it take you up to the hospital doorstep. For senior citizens to use public transport, it has to be safe, accessible, efficient, caring and inexpensive. Can that be said for the public transport we have in Malaysia?

Moreover, to use public transport, you have to first walk along the road and cross at junctions. Crossing a busy road can be a nightmare for the ailing senior citizen or disabled person as unfortunately, here in Malaysia, motor vehicles rule the road.

The pavements are no easier as many of them are designed without the senior citizens and disabled in mind. They have all kinds of obstacles in their path, with steep steps up and down ever so often. The pedestrian will be confronted with motorcycles (parked illegally), lampposts, telephone booths, signboard stands, tables and chairs. How are senior citizens and the disabled supposed to navigate their way through this obstacle course? This is in stark contrast to more developed countries, where senior citizens often use public transport at discounted rates and walk along or even use wheelchairs along wide empty pavements that are much friendlier to their needs.

Will Asean follow the EU model?

Anil Netto
-
0

Few people are aware that Asean’s ‘Vision 2020’ of economic integration and competitiveness is to be further developed into the concept of an ‘‘Asean Economic Community (AEC)’’. The AEC is seen as the end-goal of economic integration in Asean and it could become a reality by 2015.

So will Asean follow the European Union route? Not quite.

The EU provides for the free movement of goods, services, capital (including investment) and people across the borders of member nations. Aseans seeks to do the same for goods, services, investment, capital and skilled labour. There is no freedom of movement for the poor, including the migrant workers, who have hardly any rights in Asean member countries. There will be no freedom of movement for refugees, either.

In other words, economic integration is to benefit the corporations and its managers and knowledge workers under a regime of neo-liberal policies. Not the lower-income group and the dispossessed.

This is an article I wrote for Inter Press Service last November.

Critics suspect the lack of public consultation over the Charter could be due to the real intention behind the blueprint. They see the Charter as giving a legal personality to Asean, paving the way for a regional economic framework that would facilitate investment and trade in the region, while the interests of ordinary people — workers, the poor and the marginalised — could come a distant second.

They point to the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA), which will eliminate tariffs on all products in the region, and the Asean Framework Agreement on Services, which aims to achieve a free flow of services, both by 2015. Meanwhile, the Asean Investment Area agreement aims to facilitate a free flow of investment. Full article: Charter for Asean bloc by-passes civil society.

The great tragedy of our time

Anil Netto
-
0

The Beirut-based journalist Robert Fisk once said, “War is the total failure of the human spirit”.

I know what he is trying to say. War brings out the worst in human nature. Bloodbaths. Torture. Senseless killing. Indiscriminate bombing. Rape.

Then again, I am not sure if it is fair to blame the human spirit as a whole. After all, the decision to proceed with war is often made by a small group of political leaders, often after whipping up patriotic fervour and manipulating their populations into throwing their support for war with the help of a compliant or servile media. Often war is fought to seize control of territory for strategic or economic interests. These wars are planned by the rich, while the victims are largely young soldiers who, for the most part, do not know the real reasons they are waging war. Moreover, in recent times, millions of people have protested against war.

Unfortunately, despite the impressive numbers on the streets, notably in 2003, they have not been able to prevent war.

Iraq is the great tragedy of our time. It is crystal clear that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was to further the economic interests of the United States and its allies. In particular, to seize strategic control of the stupendous reserves of oil in West Asia.

Since World War Two, the world has witnessed several great tragedies. Think of the occupation of Palestine and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after the formation of Israel. The misery from this displacement and occupation continues to this day.

From October 1965 to January 1966, the Suharto-regime massacred close to half a million “suspected communists” in Indonesia. The ‘helpful’ Americans supplied up to 5,000 names from a hit list to Indonesian army generals. And from 1975, the year Indonesia invaded East Timor with a nod and a wink from the US and Australian governments, some 200,000 Timorese – a third of the population – were killed.

In the 1960s and 70s, the killing fields of Vietnam and Cambodia claimed millions more lives. For a decade in the 1960s and 70s, the American military’s operations in Vietnam – through a massive land army, tonnes of bombs and chemical agents – resulted in more than 3 million dead Vietnamese. Then, in the early 1970s, the American bombing of Cambodia killed 600,000 people, raising the curtain for the genocidal Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot to emerge.

Thousands more were tortured and killed in Latin America at the hands of US-trained death squads during the Reagan years in particular. All this to pave the way for neo-liberal economic policies in the continent.

Then, in 1994, as the United Nations dithered and debated, between 800,000 to a million people were killed in a bloody genocide in Rwanda.

More recently, the brutal violence between the Sudanese-backed Janjaweed (“devils on horseback”) militia and the land-tilling tribes in Darfur has led to the loss of 400,000 lives.

But perhaps no other nation has suffered more in recent times from war than the people of Iraq. If you take the deaths from the US-driven sanctions imposed in the 1990s and those following the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the figure easily surpasses one million and could well be reaching two million by now. That’s not counting the couple of million others who have been displaced by the war. And that’s also not counting the dead and wounded Iraqis and Iranians – close to a million in all –  during the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s, when Iraq was backed by the United States.

Indeed, Iraq is the tragedy of our time. A war based on lies and deception whose perpetrators – Bush and Blair and Howard – are nothing less than war criminals.

This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:

If Saddam was the Butcher of Baghdad, what do you call American and British leaders who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis since the 1990s? Think of the first Gulf War, when ‘coalition forces’ took part in a turkey shoot of retreating Iraqi soldiers, even burying some of them alive.

And think of the genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq under a UN blockade, devised and controlled by the United States and Britain, during the 1990s, which were responsible for more than half of million ‘excess deaths’ involving children. Humanitarian relief that should have gone to Iraq was held back.

When the then US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was questioned in 1996 about the loss of so many lives, she callously and infamously replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price– we think the price is worth it.”

Think of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which according to the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, has resulted in 650,000 excess deaths since 2003. Every day, dozens of people in Iraq continue to be killed. Think of Fallujah (and the assault and capture of the hospital there) and the torture at Abu Ghraib… and the use of horrific weapons such as depleted uranium (DU) only adds to the crimes against humanity. The use of DU has led to a massive increase in birth defects and cancer among Iraqis.

And don’t forget the 20,000 people killed in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the 3,000 killed on Sept 11. So all in, more than one million dead in recent times.

While all this is going on, people are forgetting the daily Palestinian suffering and the rising death toll in the vast prison camp of Gaza at the hands of Israel, a US ally.

The United States never faced a threat of attack from Iraq. Thus, the US-UK invasion of Iraq was outright aggression. Such a crime was referred to during the Nuremberg trials after World War II as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. And 650,000 dead Iraqis is the result of the accumulated evil unleashed in Iraq by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of the country.

A classic PR battle

Anil Netto
-
0

You may not have noticed, but a classic PR battle is being waged between the agrichemical industry and anti-paraquat campaigners.

Round One went to the anti-paraquat campaigners, when they succeeded in getting the Malaysian government to ban the dangerous pesticide.

The industry lobby fought back in Round Two and, using the  immense resources at their disposal, succeeded in getting the ban “temporarily lifted” for “further study”.

But the ‘umpire’ was far from neutral. Why did the government cave in to the industry lobby over the interests of pesticide sprayers, many of them women who are exposed to these hazadous substance? Well, that’s the million dollar question. Actually, lots of millions at stake.

The use of pesticides ties in with the Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s emphasis on agrobusiness-driven agriculture, which focuses on lucrative cash crops. Such cash crops not only benefit large corporations but they invariably involve the extensive use of pesticides. It is the estate workers and plantation workers – rather than the fat-cat plantation bosses and their agrichemical counterparts – who are the most vulnerable to pesticide use.

This is an article I wrote for IPS last October:

PENANG, Oct 18 (IPS) – The Malaysian government has stunned activists by ‘‘temporarily lifting” a ban on the toxic weed-killer paraquat so that ‘‘an extensive study” can be carried out.

The move, this month, follows an intensive lobbying campaign by the Swiss agrochemical giant, Syngenta, which markets the herbicide under the brand name Gramoxone, and other industry groups. Full article: Return of paraquat – Activists aghast.

Local democracy or local comedy?

Anil Netto
-
0

Few of us are aware that our country had a thriving system of elections to local councils in the 1950s and 1960s.

Back then, we had 373 local authorities – 40 town councils, 37 town boards, 289 local councils and 7 district councils. Out of some 4,200 local councillors (not including those in the Kuala Lumpur municipality), more than 3,000 were elected. George Town, Ipoh and Malacca were the most prominent of these councils and Penang itself had fully elective councils throughout the state, including the mainland. In fact, the first elections in Malaya were held in George Town in 1951 to elect nine councillors.

The government later abolished local government elections. The deathblow came with the enactment of the Local Government Act of 1976, which effectively killed off local council elections and replaced them with a system of appointments that rewards ruling coalition politicians and supporters with positions in local councils.

This is an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald:

I once watched a hilarious comedy performance by Comedy Court’s Indi Nadarajah and Allan Perera, in which one of them played the part of an elected representative chastising a colleague for not coming up with more ‘creative’ ways of justifying junkets abroad. With these creative justifications, there would be no need to worry about being caught for wasting taxpayers’ money on tours that include, say, belly dancing performances along the Nile. Our two comedians concluded that such foreign junkets could easily be explained away by euphemisms such as “understanding cultural practices” (belly dancing!), “studying the landscape” (a golfing holiday), and “examining consumer spending patterns” (a shopping/sightseeing tour)!

Now you might wonder what local council elections have to do with Christianity. Actually, a lot. Grassroots, bottom-up democracy at the local level is very much in line with Catholic Social Teaching (CST). One of the most constant and characteristic directives of CST is the principle of ‘subsidiarity’, which has been present since the first great social encyclical Rerum Novarum. This principle, which implies participation, means that responsibility for decisions should be as close as possible to the grassroots. This would allow people or communities who are most directly affected by decisions or policies to participate in the decision-making process.

“Participation in community life is not only one of the greatest aspirations of the citizen, called to exercise freely and responsibly his civic role with and for others, but is also one of the pillars of all democratic orders and one of the major guarantees of the permanence of the democratic system” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, No. 190 ‘Participation and democracy’).

Do we have such participation in community life as part of our democratic system? The only time we have a say is once every five years during the general election, during which there is an intense media and PR campaign to get people to vote in a certain way. But these elections do not cover town councils.

Surely, democracy is more than that. Authentic democracy means public and popular participation in the decision-making process at all levels. Reviving elections to local councils would go a long way in restoring genuine democracy at the local level….

People in the dark over Asean Charter

Anil Netto
-
1

Few people are even aware that a major development is taking place in South-East Asia. As usual, we are in the dark.

Before long, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will come up with a Charter. In other words, work is in progress towards coming up with a ‘constitution’ for the regional grouping of 10 nations.

Strange, they are talking about forming an Asean Community by 2015 and yet most people don’t have a clue what’s going on.

Here’s an extract from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October:

You would think that on a subject of this importance, the people of Southeast Asia would be consulted and a broad range of views solicited. You would think that our newspapers and television and radio programmes would be discussing this week in and week out to discern what exactly should be included in such a Charter. You would think that our political leaders would be asking us for our views and suggestions.

That’s not happening, is it?

Perhaps that’s because the real intention of such a Charter is to come up with a regional framework to facilitate business and trade. Maybe the ordinary people come a distant second. It reminds me of the high-level secrecy surrounding the negotiations for the Free Trade Agreement between Malaysia and the United States… Not good…

Human rights groups and other civil society organisations are now pushing for the inclusion of certain crucial ideas into the Charter.

They want the Charter to be people-centered as opposed to business- or trade-centred. In other words, the interests of people (labour) should take precedence over the interests of corporations (capital).

Bearing in mind there are quite a few authoritarian and undemocratic governments in the region, they also want the Charter to uphold universally accepted democratic and human rights norms.

In particular, these human rights groups are asking the drafters to ensure that human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related Conventions are explicitly upheld in the ASEAN Charter. The recognition of these rights should form the overarching framework of the Charter, which should also be gender-sensitive and oriented towards sustainable development.

But all the fine words in the world will be useless if they remain mere words on paper. Activists want the drafters to ensure that effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and institutions are provided in the Charter. These mechanisms could include semi-judicial bodies such as a regional human rights commission and judicial bodies such as a regional human rights court.

1...562563564565Page 563 of 565
© Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv