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BURMA HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT OCT 95 (2
Subject: BURMA HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT OCT 95 (2.1-2.14)
/* posted Sat Jan 27 6:00am 1995 by DRUNOO@xxxxxxxxxxxx(DR U NE OO) in igc:reg.burma */
/* -----------" BURMA HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT, OCT 95 (2.1-2.14) "---------- */
Following materials are reproduction from the findings of Human Rights
Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affair, Defence
and Trade of the Parliament of Australia, published in October 1995.
Anyone wishing to inquire about the book may contact Ms Margaret
Swieringa, Secretary, Human Rights Sub-Committee, Parliament House,
Canberra A.C.T. 2600, AUSTRALIA.
Best regards, U Ne Oo.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER TWO: (2.1 - 2.14)
*************************
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia
Joint Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
A REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE LACK OF PROGRESS TOWARDS DEMOCRACY
IN BURMA (MYANMAR) October 1995
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN RIGHTS (2.1-2.14)
------------------------------------
A Definition
2.1 Human rights are the rights we have because we are human beings; they
do not belong to us because we are Australian or Burmese, Chinese or
American and therefore they cannot be modified or coloured by our
nationality, our historical experience or our culture. this principle was
declared, but not invented, by the international community in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Since 1948 this Declaration has been
defined and elaborated upon by a series of covenants and conventions. The
Universal Declaration in conjunction with the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) make up the International
Bill of Rights. These documents represent the international consensus on
the rights of human beings. They define rights that are universal,
inalienable and indivisable - shared by all people of all cultures
regardless of race, creed or stage of development. The promotion and
protection of human rights as defined by these agreed standards is the
obligation of all governments who are members of the United Nations and
therefore adhere to the Charter and the Universal Declaration. Being
universal rights, they are not subject to the limitations of national
sovereignty nor can governments claim exemption on the basis of
international laws on non-intervention. This view has been reaffirmed by
the consensus of the international community as recently as 1993 when the
World Conference of Human Rights adopted the Vienna Declaration.
2.2 The concept of human rights represents not simply a moral imperative,
although it rests upon the inherent dignity of human beings. It is driven
by the pragmatic recogintion that the abuse of human rights retards
development by causing instability and insecurity - oppression, rebellion,
war and the outflow of refugees. Such consequences affect the vital
interests of neighbouring countries and entitle them to scrutinise the
policies of other governments as far as those policies affect the human
rights of their citizens.
2.3 Burma is a member of the United Nations and voted in favour of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It has not ratified the tow
major covenants, the ICCPR or the ICESCR, and of the main conventions on
human rights, the Burmes Government[1] has ratified only a few. However,
many of the human rights complaints made against Burma concern breaches of
obligations agreed to in the conventions they have signed[2]. The Burmese
Foreign Minister, U Ohn Gyaw, in October 1994 in addressing the General
Assembly in New York affirmed that his Government was committed to the
principles contained in the Charter of the UNited Nations and the UNiversal
Declaration of HUman Rights.
2.4 The Universal Declaration asserts that it is a common standard of
achievement for all peoples and all nations' and that:
Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards
one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in
this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race,
colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, property or other status.
2.5 The Foreign Minister's initial emphatic affirmation of support for the
human rights principles of the international commuity was accompanied by
equibocation and contradiction in the rest of his speech. For example, he
believed that there was still a need to develop a consensus on accepted
norms. However this ignores the fact that international consensus has long
been achieved in the signing of the Universal Declaration and in the
subsequent covenants and conventions. The promised democracy, he argued,
would be one that corresponded with the 'historical experiences and
prevailing conditions of the country [3]. In relation to democratic
development he warned that 'no nation can claim monopoly over values [4]
that'[Burma was in] transition period and we cannot permit excesses of
freedom' and that 'too hasty a process will only lead to chaos and
instability'[5]. He also complained that there was a 'clamour for
individual rights' which ignored the right to decent food, clothing and
shelter and peace and security. His misunderstanding of and hostility to
any notion of democracy was evident in the stridency of this statement:
In placing emphasis on individual rights above everything as
expounded by some people, are we to permit promiscuity, to break
down family values, to ignore respect for elders, to replace
consensus building attitude with competition and confrontation.[6]
2.6 The argument that civil and political rights are a Western construct
inimical to the security and development of developing countries and given
precedence over economic, social and cultural rights was propounded in
Bangkok in the preliminary regional meeting to the World Conference on
Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.
2.7 It is an argument frequently heard in this region. But it is an
argument difficult to sustain in the face of the Vienna proclamation of the
indivisibility of the two covenants; neither covenant should preclude the
other nor precede the other.
2.8 The Bangkok NGO Declaration made prior to the World Conference on Human
Rights made none of the qualifications evident in the statements of
governments from this region. It concluded that 'Universal human rights are
rooted in many cultures. We affirm the basis of universality of human
rights ... and .... We affirm our commitment to the principle of
indivisibility and interdependence of human rights, be they civil,
political, economic, social or cultural.' The NGOs claimed to speak for
ordinary Asian people and they claimed that many Asian governments were
elitist and unrepresentative and did not speak for the aspirations of their
people in the pronouncements they made on human rights. They believed the
governments feared the accountability inherent in human rights.
2.9 The experience in Burma clearly supports this claim. In the election of
1990 the party suppoted by the SLORC gained only 10 per cent of the vote.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) gained over 80 percent of the vote.
It is the NLD not the SLORC that has the only legitimate claim to speak for
the people of Burma. The NLD does not support the cultural relativist
argument on human rights. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the General Secretary of
the party, stated:
It is precisely because of the cultural diversity of the world that
it is necessary for different nations and peoples to agree on those
basic human values which will act as a unifying factor. When
democracy and human rights are said to run counter to non-western
culture, such culture is usually defined narrowly and presented as
monolithic. In fact the values that democracy and human rights seek
to promote can be found in many cultures. Human beings the world
over need freedom and security that they may be able to realise
their full potential. The longing for a form of governance that
provides security without destroying freedom goes back a long
way.[7]
2.10 The Committee rejects U Ohn Gyaw's argument about cultural relativity.
Nor is it accurate to claim htat countries like Australia, committed to
human rights, 'clamour' for individual rights at the expense of the rights
of communities. In the Western tradition, there is always a tension between
the rights of the individual and the rights of the community. It is the
role of independent courts in a country governed by the rule of law to make
judgements on the balance of these rights.
2.11 Australians, particularly, have a long tradition of adherence to the
rights and duties due to communities. Australia was a social laboratory at
the beginning of this centure which saw the new Commonwealth government
provide protection for the poor, the aged and the invalided. The Harvester
Judgement of 1907 heralded a radical approach to the social contract by
seeking to determine a basic living wage for a family. In the discussions
leading to the establishment of the UN the then Australian Foreign
Minister, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt, fought to have included in the UN Charter,
Article 56, which states that full employment and a high standard of living
are goals for the international community.
2.12 In Australia the ideal of the family has legislative recognition as
the fundamental group unit of a society and it retains a strong emotional
force. Loving and honouring one's parents is a central requirement of
Christanity. The strains on the family are as much a product of the
atomising effects of industralisation as of the philosophical stance.
Industralisation in Asia will, and is, producing similar effects, despite
Confucianism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.
2.13 Aung San Suu Kyi propounds a similar view:
Many of the worst ills of American society, increasingly to be
found in varying degrees in other developed countries, can be
traced not to the democratic legacy but to the demands of modern
materialism. ... [C]ould such a powerfully diverse nation as the
United States have been prevented from disintegrating if it had not
been sustained by democratic institutions guaranteed by a
constitution based on the assumption that man's capacity for reason
and justice makes free government possible and that his capacity
for passion and injustice makes it necessary[8].
2.14 It must be stressed that the democratic tradition is born of the
belief in the corruptibility of power; it is governments which, more often
than any other group, tyrannise their citizens. Through the separation of
legislative, executive and judicial powers, democracy seeks to defend and
protect the individual from the excesses of goernments and the powerful.
This is neither an expensive nor chaotic system, nor is it rampant
individualism.
Footnotes:
----------
[1] The SLORC took power in 1988 and despite the outcome of the 1990
election it has continued to act as the Government of Burma. The nature of
the takeover is described in Chapter 5. For the purposes of this report and
largely for convenience the SLORC will be referred to as the Government of
Burma but this should in no way be taken as a recognition of its
legitimacy.
[2] The Government of Burma has ratified the Geneva Convention of August
1949 relating to the conduct of war, the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Slavery Convention of 1926,
Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the
Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, ILO Conventions - the Forced
Labour Convention, 1930 (NO 29) and the Freedom of Association and the
Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No 87), the
Convention on the Political Rights of Women, and the Convention on the
Rights of the Child.
[3] Mr MIchael Nyunt submission, p. S29.
[4] ibid., p. S29
[5] ibid., pp. S41-42
[6] ibid., p. S42
[7] Aung San Suu Kyi, Empowerment for a Culture of Peace and Development,
address to a meeting of the World Commission on Culture and Development,
Manila, 21 November 1994, presented in her absence by Mrs Corazon Aquino,
p.6.
[8] ibid., p.6. Here Aung San Suu Kyi has recast a quotation from Reinhold
Niebuhr. See footnotes to the address.
ENDS(2.1-2.14)\