Politics, not law, will determine Suu Kyi’s fate

At a meeting of lawyers in Hong Kong this April, Aitzaz Ahsan described how as counsel for the Chief Justice of Pakistan in the petition against his unconstitutional removal from office during 2007, neither the president nor any other senior official had even read the charges brought against the judge, which they had signed. Had they done so, they would have noticed that the charge sheet was full of blank paragraphs with the word “deleted” alongside. And anybody looking more closely should also have found that the petitioner had not even presided over an appeal in which he was accused of having struck a deal with one of the parties; yet a number of the judges trying him had.

Although the charges against the Chief Justice of Pakistan were framed in legal terms, neither their factual accuracy nor formal correctness was supposed to have mattered. Politics and military power, not laws and civilian authority, were meant to have determined the judge’s fate. Yet to his credit, as well as to that of his advocate, the Supreme Court bench and the legal community of Pakistan, the court reinstated the judge despite the wishes of a dictator.

The case now running against Burma’s democracy icon, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is of the same type.

Thailand’s anti-human rights commission

Despite concerns from human rights defenders at home and abroad, Thailand’s upper house on May 1 approved the seven nominees for the country’s National Human Rights Commission. The seven consist of a top cop, a judicial administrator, a civil servant, an industrialist, an academic, a former senator and a road safety advocate.

Only the ex-senator and academic have experience and knowledge to warrant their appointments, although critics observe that both also are tainted by their links with an army-installed government after the 2006 coup. The civil servant is a social worker who has some idea about children’s and women’s rights. The other four have no clue.

The policeman says that due process in some cases should be balanced with crime control, like in the country’s restive south. As a representative of Thailand’s preeminent agency for human rights abuse, he is now situated to block inquiries into security forces that abduct, torture and kill people on this pretext, be they near the Malaysian border or anywhere else.

The court administrator counts his human rights experience as having been involved in the drafting of a number of constitutions, including a couple written for the benefit of military dictators. He also reckons that he contributed to verdicts favorable to rights, although this is an odd and unsupportable claim from someone whose role is not supposed to include telling judges how to decide cases.

The road safety guy seems unaware that the body to which he has been appointed is a human rights commission, not a rights and duties commission, as he has so far been unable to talk about one without remarking on the other.

The businessman describes human rights as a tool for international groups to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, such as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency backing the spiritual group Falun Gong to cause trouble for China. He also says that other countries are violating the rights of Burma’s military regime by imposing sanctions. And that’s not even the start of it.

A more ugly lot of rights commissioners would be hard to find. But now they’re in, can anything be done to get them out again? Or is Thailand saddled with an anti-human rights commission for the next six years?

Thailand’s new rights commission is a joke

(คณะกรรมการสิทธิมนุษยชน ชุดใหม่ ของประเทศไทย เป็นเรื่องตลก)

This week the Asian Human Rights Commission issued three open letters on the selection of candidates for the new National Human Rights Commission of Thailand. The regional body has warned that if the Senate goes ahead and accepts the seven current nominees then the commission may cease to meet international standards, causing it to lose its status before the United Nations.

The seven candidates have been thrust forward after a hurried selection process about which almost no one in Thailand knows anything. The process began only in March after a long delay. It is set to be completed Friday, when the country’s upper house of military and bureaucratic yes-men will consider making the appointments. [UPDATE: The Senate on Friday elected all seven candidates to the NHRC. See further below.]

While few people in Thailand know that new commissioners have been nominated, few of the nominees know about human rights. Only one of the seven aspirants, Nirand Pithakwachara, formerly an elected senator under the repealed 1997 Constitution, has practical experience. Nirand has worked with environmental and citizens’ groups on a variety of issues, and was on Senate committees that inquired into rights abuses prior to the 2006 military coup.

The other six include Police General Vanchai Srinuwalnad, who states that he has conducted various human rights training courses but does not indicate from where he has obtained his knowledge on the topic; Constitution Court Secretary Paibool Varahapaitoorn, who claims to have participated in the making of judgments favorable to human rights, even though his role is administrative, not judicial; and Taejing Siripanich, head of a group that does good work in discouraging drunken driving but which has little if any relevance to the job for which he is applying.

The worst of the lot is Parinya Sirisarakarn, an industrialist who was a part of the undemocratic assembly that drafted the regressive 2007 Constitution. Not only does he have nothing to suggest himself to the post of rights commissioner, he was himself named in a 2007 NHRC investigative report as responsible for causing environmental damage in the northeast, where he holds a license to extract salt.

Unhappy Human Rights Day in Burma

While governments and groups around the world made effusive statements and gave awards to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, the Asian Human Rights Commission struck a more somber note.

“The celebration,” the regional body said, “is a grim reminder that even after 60 years of the adoption of this great declaration, the gap between what is declared and what is actually achieved … is enormous. Both in the field of civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights, people in Asia … have so little to celebrate.”

The downbeat mood was certainly shared in Burma. There, a handful of people belonging to local group Human Rights Defenders and Promoters gathered in Rangoon to mark the date.

Their International Human Rights Day event was muted by comparison to most around the world, and even compared to the one that they had held the year before. But that they got together at all demonstrated their commitment to what the day represents.

Frantic week behind Burma’s court doors

It has been a frantic week in Burma’s closed courts. At least 60 people have in the past few days been sentenced for their roles in last year’s mass protests, including high-profile activists, monks, a blogger and a poet.

The blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was given a sentence of 20 years and six months for having defaced images of national leaders, writings and cartoons in his email inbox, and for having had contact with other people involved in the protests.

The young man’s mother cried when she heard the verdict. She had been told to expect a sentence of around 10 years, but on just one charge under a new hold-all Internet law he was given 15.

The poet, Saw Wai, was sentenced to two years on a much more old-fashioned charge of upsetting public tranquility, which can be thrown at just about anyone for anything. He got it for writing a concealed anti-dictator message into a Valentine’s Day poem.

It wasn’t very well concealed. But well enough that the censors missed it and the magazine went to print before he was found out.

Then there was Ma Su Su Nwe, who received 12 years and six months for being at the forefront of protests that began after the government increased the price of fuels in August.

No show trials for protestors

Over a week ago, the Asian Human Rights Commission issued an appeal on behalf of U Ohn Than, who is imprisoned in Kamti in upper Burma. The 60-year-old was among the few who protested last August against the government’s unannounced dramatic increase in fuel prices, precipitating the historic monk-led revolt in September.

Ohn Than went out alone, standing opposite the U.S. Embassy in the center of Rangoon with a placard that called for United Nations’ intervention and pleaded for the armed forces and police to join in efforts to topple the junta. (VIDEO)

His protest did not last long. Within a few minutes an unidentified vehicle pulled up and a group of men threw him inside and drove away. For the public, that was it. For Ohn Than, it was only the beginning.

The state of human rights in Asia 2007

“The year 2007 will be remembered as a year in which historic struggles for human rights brought out increasingly belligerent responses from ruling elites across Asia. It is certain that throughout the region more and more people are resolved to assert their rights. It is also clear that its autocrats will respond more and more aggressively in order to keep control. Instead of acknowledging the need for change, states throughout Asia are continuing to prefer overt violence and blatant constraints on basic freedoms…”

— The state of human rights in eleven Asian nations, 2007 (AHRC)

Who should be the NHRC?

“Who should be a member of the NHRC [of Thailand]? According to the 2007 Constitution

‘The National Human Rights Commission consists of a president and six other members appointed by the King with the advice of the Senate from persons having apparent knowledge and experience in the protection of the rights and liberties of the people, having regard also to the participation of representatives from private organizations in the field of human rights.‘ (Section 256)

So who do you think fits these qualities? Please give your comments, and in the coming days and weeks we’ll use this blog to find the right people for the job…”

— “ใครควรเป็นกรรมการสิทธิฯ — Who should be the rights commission?” blog

With or without the US, torturers have their way

(การทรมานในเอเชีย ไม่ต้องการตัวอย่างของสหรัฐ)

An article in the Asia Times this week linked a secret U.S. facility in eastern Thailand with the torture of people in the country’s south. According to Shawn W. Crispin, “Rights advocates monitoring southern Thailand’s conflict note a striking similarity between the torture techniques U.S. agents are known to have used against terror suspects … with those now in practice by Thai security forces against suspected Thai Muslim militants.”

That soldiers, paramilitaries and police in the south routinely torture their detainees is beyond doubt. Journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders have documented hundreds of cases over a number of years, although concerns for the safety of the victims, their families and persons recording their stories mean that many cannot be publicized. As the abused persons also hold no hopes of redress through the courts, they can expect no more than a small payoff in acknowledgment of wrongdoing with which, it is understood, their silence also is bought.

But have rights advocates really noted a “striking similarity” between these cases and what has gone on in Guantanamo? Isn’t it more relevant to talk about the striking similarity between the abuses in the south and what goes on in police stations all around the country? Or how about what goes on in the Philippines, Sri Lanka or Cambodia?

Dead pigs, dead Burmese, poverty & policing

หมูตาย พม่าตาย ความจน และระบบการทำงานของตำรวจ

A former senator this week decried the treatment of the 2 million or so migrant workers now in Thailand, most of whom have come from Burma. In a Bangkok Post article, Jon Ungphakorn offered up some instances of abuse in factories and on fishing boats to support his remark that “we don’t seem to see them as human beings.”

Well, here’s another instance.

A month ago, Ko Thet Lwin Oo was a healthy young man working in the fishing industry on southern Thailand’s western seaboard. He went there not to seek his fortune, but like most others, just to make ends meet by working hard for long hours. Yet even this modest goal proved too great. On Oct. 21 the 35-year-old reportedly died of injuries in the Ranong hospital.

The wounds were not caused by accident. Three days earlier, Thet Lwin Oo had gone to speak with a seafood wholesaler whose car had been damaged when neighborhood children threw rocks. He wanted to say that his five-year-old son had not been involved. But something went wrong. According to an eyewitness, the trader first punched him, then hit him with a piece of lumber on his leg and waist, and finally, on the head.

Thet Lwin Oo was hospitalized and his wife Ma Thanda Moe made a criminal complaint on the same day. But instead of investigating, the police began pressing her to take money and stay quiet. When her husband died, the pressure and money both increased. At first she refused, but after a couple of weeks she relented and accepted 100,000 baht (around US$3000).

Why did she change her mind? She explained over the phone.

Teaching grandma how to peel onions

The lead article in last Sunday’s South China Morning Post breathlessly reported that some of those involved in recent protests throughout Burma had received training from the National Endowment for Democracy, a group funded by the United States government. Its editorial tut-tutted that Americans are yet again meddling where they shouldn’t be.

In a letter to the editor, Basil Fernando, director of the Asian Human Rights Commission, observed that hundreds of groups from around the world have been working openly along the Thai-Burma border for some two decades now, many engaged in this sort of training, which he likened to teaching grandma how to peel onions.

Anyone presuming to instruct people from Burma on how to defy military dictatorship, or planning to write about others doing so, should first take the time to learn a little history. Resistance to coercive rulers there goes back a long way.

If you can’t beat them, beat them up

On June 15 a man in upper Burma emerged from a crowd to smash another in the face with knuckledusters. Then he ran off and hid in the office of an organization under the patronage of the country’s senior army commander.

The identity of the assailant remains unknown. Police officers called to the scene were denied entry to the office, even though they have the right to search any premises in pursuit of an alleged criminal.

The victim was 70-year-old U Than Lwin (above right), a parliamentarian from the 1990 annulled general election. He had just led a small group of local residents in prayer, as part of a peaceable nationwide campaign for the release of political prisoners.

Than Lwin and his colleagues had informed the trustees of pagodas in Mettaya that they would come that morning, and they had not been refused access. So they were apparently taken by surprise at the crowds of thugs hanging around the entrances to each compound. Hoping to avoid a disturbance, they instead went to a nearby monastery. Only after praying did they see that the gangs had come to wait there too, where Than Lwin had his nose and cheek busted.

The assault on Than Lwin speaks to how the military government is itself systematically undermining the law and order that it claims ad nauseam to uphold, and upon which it has based its mandate since assuming power almost two decades ago.