Luis V. Teodoro » Just words

By Luis V. Teodoro

MANILA, Philippines — New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark may have been “impressed,” but it’s not likely that most Filipinos were.

Here was the most authoritarian leader the Philippines has ever had since Ferdinand Marcos declaring , albeit indirectly, the members of Burma’s ruling military junta “forces of authoritarianism,” and demanding the release of oppositionist Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.

Alone among all the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Gloria Macapagal Arroyo made that statement last Wednesday during the summit of Asean leaders which was also attended by the representatives of Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. She also warned that the Asean Charter faced non-ratification unless Aung San Suu Kyi was released.

If that sounded like a warning, forget it. Mrs. Arroyo signed the Charter anyway, as did the rest of the Asean leaders. What she did was to pass the buck to the Philippine Senate, which has to ratify the Charter to make it binding. Be that as it may, the likelihood is that, after the usual song-and-dance in which various personalities will pretend to be concerned over human rights among the Asean nations, particularly Burma, the supposedly historic Charter, including its mandate to create a human rights body, will pass the Senate.

Mrs. Arroyo claimed to have been pleased by the inclusion of “language in the Charter that advances human rights and democracy,” and that’s exactly what the Charter does: pay lip service to human rights by listing it only as a specific issue below the concern for sovereignty and non-interference.

What’s wrong with sovereignty and non-interference? Nothing. They’re grand principles every self-respecting country must honor, and respect for them should be the basics of state-to-state relations.

Except that, if anyone’s thinking that this will be invoked when, say, the US Ambassador to the Philippines mouths off again on domestic issues ranging from the arrest of CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison to the Glorietta 2 blast, or threatens to halt the “training” of Philippine troops unless a rapist is transferred to her custody, he or she would be mistaken. Instead, these will be invoked whenever any country, or the United Nations for that matter, criticizes or comments on the human rights records of, or the human rights situations in, Asean member countries–including, perhaps specially, the Philippines.

A report containing recommendations to this effect has in fact come to light via the Associated Press, which on the same day that Mrs. Arroyo hurried home supposedly to look after the victims of typhoon “Lando” saw print in the major dailies.

The report recommendations emphasize that the human rights body the Asean Charter is committed to establish should not intervene in human rights issues in Asean member-countries, but on the contrary should protect them from foreign interference. “Foreign interference” presumably refers to statements, comments, criticisms as well as other acts relating to human rights issues in each country not only by non-Asean countries but also by each Asean country about another.

But would, say, intervention by the United Nations in the human rights situation in an Asean country constitute “foreign interference”? Apparently it would, if we’re to judge from the cancellation, under pressure from the Burmese delegation, of a briefing by UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari on the human rights situation in Burma early this week Gambari was supposed to have conducted for the Asean leaders and their guests.