Posted 24 October 2009 | link
SOUTH-EAST Asian countries were embroiled in a new rights row after excluding five activists from rare face-to-face talks with national leaders at a summit in Thailand.
The controversy threatened to mar the flagship launch of a new regional rights body by the Asean at the 10-member bloc’s meeting in the elite resort of Hua Hin.
The national leaders had been due to meet 10 so-called civil society representatives – one from each Asean member – yesterday morning.
But the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Singapore rejected activists from their countries at the last minute, said Debbie Stothard from the Asean People’s Forum, which nominated the activists.
Five other activists, from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, were told they could go to the meeting but would not be allowed to speak, she said.
“This is an outrageous development. It is a rejection of civil society and of the democratic process by which they were selected,” she said.
“Through this action, the governments concerned are fundamentally undermining the spirit and content of the Asean Charter that they ratified a year ago.”
Myanmar and Singapore had offered government-sponsored re-placements to the civil society members, Stothard said.
In Myanmar’s case, this would be a former chief of police representing a Myanmar anti-narcotics association.
The banned representative from the Philippines, Catholic nun Crescencia Lucero, said she was “very disappointed” with Manila’s role in the matter.
“I did not expect this from a supposedly democratic government with which we have negotiated all these years,” she told a news conference.
“They are afraid that we might embarrass them; speak the truth about the people who are being killed, disappeared and tortured.” — AFP
by Mergawati Zulkafar
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