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RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS
E-Newsletter
Vol.2 No.30
July 24, 2000
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Religious Perspectives on Human Rights is now available online at: http://www.rghr.net
Religious Perspectives on Human Rights is a weekly e-newsletter issued by Buddhist, Muslim, Catholic and Christian Groups on Human Rights, initiated by the Asian Human Rights Commission.
1)
MALUKU: INDONESIA SENDS MIXED MESSAGES
AHRC, Indonesian Christian and Muslim groups and many
individuals and NGOs around the world have called on the ASEAN
(Association of South East Asian Nations) and UN (United Nations)
to provide assistance to the Indonesian government to end the
bloody sectarian violence raging in Maluku. The Indonesian
Foreign Minister, Alwi Shihab, is adamant that no outside help is
needed or welcome, and is expected to proclaim this message at
this week's ASEAN meeting and when he meets with the UN and US
State Department next month. However, the message from
other parts of the government is contrary, with both the
President, Abdurrahman Wahid, and the National Police Chief
stating last week that outside assistance may be called for, and
that unless the Indonesian military can prove they can make an
impact very soon, help 'will be difficult to refuse'. No
doubt responding the the mounting pressure, the UN Secretary
General, Kofi Annan, personally called Pres. Wahid regarding the
Maluku violence.
AHRC's Joint Human Rights Statement on Maluku has been signed
by well over 1,000 organisations and individuals. The
Statement calls for the UN and ASEAN to offer practical
assistance and provide human rights monitors to help the
Indonesian military and police to end the bloodshed. The
Statement asserts that the military have inflamed the conflict in
Maluku and that without outside help, many more will doubtless be
killed. AHRC will send the petition to the UN Secretary
General, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the ASEAN
secretariat, the leaders of the ASEAN countries, the Indonesian
Human Rights Commission, the Indonesian government and the
leaders of the states participating in the Asean Regional
Forum. We encourage everyone to keep up the pressure on the
international community to offer assistance and on the Indonesian
government to accept this help.
2)
ASEAN TO DISCUSS ESTABLISHING REGIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
There have been a number of meetings in the past in which some
NGOs have participated together with members from ASEAN
(Association of South East Asian Nations) governments to discuss
the possibility of establishing a Regional Human Rights
Commission. We know that the agenda for the ASEAN meeting
to be held in Bangkok this week includes tentative discussions
about the establishment of such a commission in the future, which
would be limited in its powers to challenge member
governments. This is an issue that all concerned groups
should keep track of and follow up.
3)
POST-DOVER: NOT THE WAY TO TREAT IMMIGRANTS IN A GLOBAL ERA
by Saskia Sassen
(Ed. Note: This article appeared on the opinion page of the
International Herald Tribune on 23 June 2000. The writer, author
of Guests and Aliens, is a professor of sociology at the
University of Chicago and a visiting professor at the London
School of Economics.)
Last year more than 2,500 would-be immigrants died trying to
get into Europe. That is many dead, but not many immigrants for a
continent of more than 350 million people. The 58 victims found
in a truck in Dover, England, on 19 June are part of this year's
count. An issue that has got lost in the post-Dover
exclamations of horror and pity is the fact that this concerns us
all, affects us all. Yes, the central victims are the men and
women who die, but we would be foolish to think that we can allow
these deaths to happen and remain untouched.
Whom is it that we are fighting the determined, tiny minority
of men, women and children from mostly poor countries who will
come no matter what or the criminals who profit? The large
and looming issue confronting societies under the rule of law is
whether policies that brutalise people and promote criminalised
profitmaking are sustainable if we are to keep up our systems
based on the rule of law for which our forebears fought so hard.
Sooner or later, allowing this sort of brutalisation and
criminality begins to tear at the fabric of the lawful State.
Are there ways of regulating the flow of people into our
societies that strengthen its civil fabric? Facts like the 58
deaths in the Dover truck do not. They risk producing
indifference when it happens over and over again, even when not
in such numbers. They risk promoting acceptance of these deaths
among ourselves and our children, all in the name of maintaining
control.
The price we pay for allowing the abuse that is human
smuggling is much higher than the cost of accommodating these
people, who just want a chance to work. And work they do. For
instance, 17 percent of entrepreneurs in London belong to ethnic
communities.
Continuing to use policies that make possible the
brutalisation of would-be migrants and the profitmaking of
criminal smugglers is a cancer deep inside our states and
societies. It is the price we pay for criminalising undocumented
immigrants and, more generally, for resorting to policing as the
way to regulate immigration.
The United States illustrates this to some extent. In the name
of control, it has strengthened policing by reducing judiciary
review of immigration police actions in the U.S. 1996 Immigration
Act. A crucial issue here is the object of expanded policing. The
object is not known criminals, or firms suspected of violating
environmental regulations, or drug dealers. It is a population
sector, not even select individuals, but a fairly broad spectrum
of men, women and children.
Sooner or later this policing will get caught in the expanding
web of civil and human rights. Policing, when unchecked by civil
review, can easily violate citizens' rights and interfere with
the functioning of civil society. Sooner or later stronger
policing and the weakening of judicial review will interfere with
the aspiration toward the rule of law that is such a deep part of
our inheritance. Sooner or later, this type of police action will
touch us, the documented.
4)
DIGNITY AND DISPLACEMENT: A REFLECTION ON FOOD SCARCITY IN BURMA
by Basil Fernando
A scene in some recent video footage:
Four persons, three men and a woman, are pounding rice with
wooden poles. One, two, three, four and then it begins
again and goes on and on. It is midnight already.
Why work at night and why in such a hurry?
They must escape the Burmese army. Soldiers may arrive any
time. They must pound the rice and prepare it to be hidden, so
that they can escape fast, before their arrival.
If they fail, who knows what might happen. Soldiers will
destroy all food. A very simple technique to force anyone out.
The scene is somewhere near a border of Burma/Myanmar. In the
jungles.
It has been going on and on. The world, which laments its
failure to intervene when tragedies were in fact taking place
(like, for example, in Cambodia) is allowing this to happen.
Among the fleeing, the children grow without education.
What will life mean to them? One day, if peace comes, the
world will offer them the right to vote. Will such generosity
mean anything?
For now, they must flee like animals; Yes, the hunters may be
nearby.
They must hide their food. That is all the dignity they are
entitled now. Maybe one day the world will offer them the full
dignity, the right to vote.
5)
REMINDER: HIROSHIMA DAY ?6 AUGUST TO BE A DAY OF PRAYER
**** Please remember this day!
- For the victims of all nuclear accidents.
- For the ratification of CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty)
and the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)
- For the adoption of measures to prevent break-out, nuclear
theft and nuclear terrorism/criminality
- For opposing the production, testing, and the use of weapons of
mass destruction.
....more info on this next week....
Posted on 2000-07-24
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