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Human Rights and Asia -- Part I



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Having had some very positive responses to an earlier article by John Tobin
on this subject, we're posting this expanded discussion in two parts.   

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TAKING MAHATHIR MOHAMMED SERIOUSLY:
HUMAN RIGHTS AND JAPAN IN THE AGE OF
GLOBALIZATION  -- Part I

(Unpublished Presentation at Miyazaki International College,
Miyazaki, Japan, September 29, 1995)

by John J. Tobin

I am not sure how useful my remarks can be to a discussion of
Japanese constitutional reform. Nevertheless, the issues I would
like to address will be of increasing relevance to Japanese
citizens, as the changes in the postwar international systems
compel Japan to confront issues in foreign affairs in a new and
different way.  I will eventually offer a few suggestions for new
constitutional provisions which bear on issues of international
human rights.

My comments mainly concern the dramatically transformed
international context and the changes in the human rights
policies of the major powers,  primarily the US.  Although this
international context has been dramatically changed in some
respects, I would like to show also that there are a substantial
number of continuities with the past.  I hope also to indicate
some of the implications of these changes for a future Japanese
human rights policy.

Rather then simply address what an appropriate human rights
policy for the government of Japan ought to be,  I would like to
keep the focus on what our  human rights policy should be, as
ordinary citizens.  This avoids to some extent the depressing
"realism" epitomized by a recent statement of John Shattuck,
the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor after the Clinton administration, with respect to
China, delinked human rights from trade.  "In this town, (he
means Washington, DC), you've got to live with political
realities and hook up your principles to those realities," It is my
hope that we can do more; that we can, perhaps, create political
realities which suit our principles.  This is, after all, the purpose
of human rights: to provide some defense, shelter and space for
human creativity.

Mahathir Mohammed is singled out in the title because the
Malaysian Prime Minister has been one of the most outspoken
critics of Western human rights rhetoric and policy.  He has co -
authored, with Ishihara, "The Asia that Can Say No".  To give
you a flavor of the current debate over human rights, I would
like to begin with a few provocative quotations, drawn from
recent statements by Mahathir and other East Asian leaders:

"Allowing Japan to send its forces abroad is like giving liquor
to an alcoholic." Lee Kuan Yew, Senior Minister of Singapore,
(Japanese have a tendency to go to extremes.)

On the breakdown of civil society in America: "The expansion
of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he
pleases has come at the expense of orderly society" Lee Kuan
Yew. 

"The liberal, intellectual tradition that developed after WWII
claimed that human beings had arrived at this perfect state
where everybody would be better off if they were allowed to do
their own thing and flourish.  It has not worked out, and I doubt
if it will." Lee Kuan Yew (called "Harry" until his thirties, still
by family and friends, British foreign secretary could say to him
in the 1960s,  "Harry, you're the best bloody Englishman east
of the Suez."  (Fareed Zakaria, "Culture is Destiny" 73 Foreign
Affairs 109 - 126 (1994)).

"All countries, large or small, strong or week,, are entitled to
freely choose their political system, economic structure, and
road to development suitable to their own national condition. 
(China's Jin Yongian, delegate to the Bangkok preparatory
meeting for the World Conf.. on human rights.)

"Old imperialist ways do not die, they merely metamorphose"
 ... Unless their own interests are at stake, as in Kuwait, they do
not risk anything in the cause of democracy.  (re. Kurds in Iraq
and Muslims in Bosnia)  Is it any wonder that many countries
are leery of the liberal system propounded by Western
democrats?" (Mahathir Mohammed at Chandra Muzaffar's
1994 "Rethinking Human Rights" conference in Malaysia.) 

"Western governments, their media and their NGOs are tireless
in their condemnation of non - Western countries' human rights
records.  They threaten sanctions, withdrawal of aid, stoppage
of loans, economic and trade union boycotts, and actual military
strikes against those they accuse of violating human rights."
(Mahathir Mohammed, same conference as above.)

"We believe the foreign media must learn the fact that
developing countries, including a country that is led by a brown
Muslim, have the ability to manage their affairs successfully "
Mahathir Mohammed, statement after banning British
companies from doing business in Malaysia after the Sunday
Times alleged he had been offered a bribe nine years earlier to
secure a contract for a building that was never built.)

The West's "professed concern about workers' welfare is
motivated by self - interest," because, low wages are the
developing world's only competitive advantage against the
industrialized West. (Mahathir Mohammed)

"Asians believe the intended beneficiaries (of the US pressure)
are not workers in Indonesia and Malaysia but American trade
unions belonging to the AFL - CIO who fear losing jobs to low -
wage countries." (Lee Kuan Yew) 

"Some people say that Japan and Germany should not send
troops abroad because they were the losers in WWII.  To my
mind that's really ridiculous, If you adopt that position, what
about Britain, China, and Russia?  They all lost wars."

"It's hard to say that Europe and the US have welcomed the
economic progress and political stability that smaller countries
in Asia have achieved since the war."  (Mahathir Mohammed,
from article on "The Asia That Can Say No," co - authored
with Ishihara.)  

"Economic development is the only force that can liberate the
third world.  Probably the most subversive force created in
history, it shakes up old social arrangements and enables more
people to take part in social and political decisions....  In dealing
with Asia, I am calling on America to take the long view. 
Asian societies have been around for hundreds, if not thousands
of years.  They cannot be changed overnight."  (Kishore
Mahbubani, deputy secretary in the Singapore ministry of
Foreign Affairs, speech in 1993)

"Western liberals, foreign - media, and human rights groups
also want Singapore to be like their societies, and some
Singapoeans mindlessly dance to their tune.  See what happened
to Gorbachev because he was beguiled b their praise.  Deng
Xiaoping received their condemnation, but look at China today,
and see what has happened to the Soviet Union. It's gone.
Imploded! We must think for ourselves and decide what is good
for Singapore, what will make Singapore stable and successful. 
Above all else, stay away from policies which have brought a
plague of social and economic problems to the United States
and Britain" (Singapore P.M. Goh Chok Tong,  "Social Values,
Singapore Style",  Current History", Dec. 1994, 422.  Here he
is praising the traditional family structure, Asian respect for
parents, as the bulwark against chaos and the guarantee of
prosperity.

The international system in now clearly in a period of social,
moral and political crisis.  Three closely linked phenomena:
economic globalization, the end of the cold war, and the decline
of the economic dominance of the United States, have produced
a sea change in post - WWII economic and political
arrangements, both domestically and internationally.  Where
ever one looks -- the American two - party system, the LDP in
Japan, the Christian Democrats in Italy, the Labor Party in the
U.K., secular nationalist movements in Algeria and India -- 
former certainties are being shaken, and strange bedfellows
appear.

Almost weekly, another "unthinkable" matter becomes a
possibility, even a reality. A few examples might include the
dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the independence of
Quebec from Canada, the possible further breakup of Canada,
with some provinces joining the United States, the independence
of Northern Italy from the south, the dismantling of basic
elements of the social safety net in the industrialized countries,
the revival of forced labor for the poor, the removal of children
from poor parents, placing them in special institutions, genocide
in Africa and in Europe, mass rape conducted by men who were
former neighbors of the victims in the former Yugoslavia, the
formation of a broad network of armed militias in the US, the
emergence of members of Congress with strong links to such
armed militias, the abolition of the system of public education
in the US, the reemergence of Nazism as a force to be reckoned
with among European and American youth, etc .

Globalization of capital, finance, and to some extent labor -- the
product of dramatic advances in telecommunications, transport
and computation -- now allows for production to occur
simultaneously in several countries for large - scale currency
trading to take place virtually 24 hours a day, and for business
to shift capital rapidly anywhere on the planet in search of
profitable markets, low - cost labor, and raw materials.  Not
only do poor countries compete for foreign investment, by
offering tax incentives, full repatriation of profits, and a stable,
inexpensive work force, but the same sort of competition is now
occurring among individual American states.  The "race to the
bottom" is in full swing and the logic of international
competitiveness and the market seems unassailable.  With the
collapse of the so - called "socialist alternative," the failure of
reformist social democracy, and the bankruptcy of secular
nationalism, there seem to be few alternatives, and the
Enlightenment idea of human progress is brought increasingly
into question by intellectuals and politicians and some religious
leaders.  

The consequences of this borderless world, with increasing
economic competition for many of the developed countries are
well - known: stagnation or decline in family earnings, high
unemployment, and attendant social ills.  Japan has yet to feel
the full effect of "hollowing out" and "downsizing," but the
social consequences in the US have been immense and
devastating; an example of the social and economic polarization
is a recent study showing that America has become the most
economically stratified of industrial nations.  Federal Reserve
figures from 1989, the most recent available, show that the
wealthiest 1% of American households -- with net worth of at
least $2.3 million each -- owns nearly 40% of the nation's
wealth. (In Britain, the most stratified European country, the
corresponding figure is 18%) (NYT, Apr. 13, 1995, p. A1) 
The consequences in the former socialist bloc and in the third
world have been generally worse: Susan George has pointed out
that "when the notion of progress was invented in the eighteenth
century, the wealth gap between "North'' and "South" was about
40 to 1. Today it is about 70 to 1.  (Susan George, "One Third
In, Two Thirds Out," "New Perspectives Quarterly", Spring
1993, p 56).  This situation has produced a shift in rhetoric,
even in ideology, with dramatic implications for human rights,
and with particular resonance in Asia.

The explosive atmosphere of crisis is filled with striking
contradictions:  increasingly barbaric social and economic
conditions accompanied by an increasingly sophisticated
rhetoric of human rights;  radical inequality and an acute
awareness by the poor of the gap in levels of existence; a high
degree of economic interconnection, yet a radical disconnect of
large numbers of the population in places like Africa, people
who have been made irrelevant to the international economic
system, providing neither profitable labor, nor markets for
goods and services.  There is also the contradiction of economic
recovery without jobs, economic dynamism in Asia and
stagnation virtually everywhere else, the proliferation of human
rights standards treaties, declarations and institutions, with a
corresponding explosion of widespread violations.  This is the
environment which Japan now faces, as it embarks on
fundamental changes in its foreign policy. 
  (to be continued)


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