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In the Philippines, though legislative and local elections concluded on May 14, the violence and corruption prior to the elections was appalling. The day after the elections, the Philippine National Police announced the death of 126 people, a large number of whom were both incumbent candidates standing for re-election and those contesting for the first time. A further 132 people were wounded in what the PNP referred to as election-related violent incidents.
In spite of these facts, it was amazing that Avelino Razon Jr., the deputy director general and deputy national police chief for administration, announced, "Overall, the situation was generally peaceful except for some untoward incidents." All the reported incidents, however, demonstrate the lack of respect for the rule of law and the extreme violence used to deny ordinary citizens in the Philippines the right to vote.
Around the same time, Sri Lanka witnessed an escalation in violence between the military and the armed insurgents, which has caused untold suffering to the civilian population, including about 500,000 people internally displaced. A Buddhist monk, reputed to have good relations with both the Sinhala and Tamil populations in the east of the country, and who for a long time had taken a strong position against the war, was gunned down in broad daylight. This was a fluent Tamil-speaking Sinhala monk who had admitted a Tamil boy as a novice for monkhood -- a rare event in Sri Lanka. While the people in the area mourned his death, Buddhist monks associated with ethnic political positions remained silent. The debate for and against a military solution to the conflict in Sri Lanka has reached such deep levels.
Behind the violence lie authoritarian regimes, which have gained dominance in the region, and try to use the environment of violence to maintain their power. Such violent environments arise due to the frequent rise in political power through illegitimate means, which deny the basic electoral rights of the people. In the Philippines, the legitimacy of political authority has long been challenged for the failure to hold free and fair elections. Several attempts at redressing this problem through legal processes have failed and such circumstances have resulted in the strong increase in extrajudicial killings, most of which have been attributed by independent inquirers to the military. Worse, the government has not taken any action against such findings reported by the Melo Commission and by Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
In Pakistan, the present regime came to power through a military coup. The recent actions against the chief justice are seen as attempts by the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to extend his term in office for a further five years, so that the judiciary does not challenge his unconstitutional placement.
In Sri Lanka, the system of an executive presidency that places power in the hands of a single individual and undermines the position of the legislature and judiciary has created a situation in which stable governance has become almost impossible. About 105 people have been offered various ministries and portfolios to ensure that they remain loyal to the government and to prevent it from collapsing. The government continues to use emergency and anti-terrorism laws to deal with mass discontent at a time when high inflation in essential commodities and unemployment are thriving.
These three countries, as well as several others in the region, have displayed a shift toward authoritarian rule and away from democracy. This tendency, long persistent, has not received sufficient attention from the global human rights communities, including the U.N. human rights agencies.
These current situations have not only violated the rights of individuals but have made it impossible to realize many of those rights within the system. The right to equal treatment before the law, the right to protection against illegal arrest and detention, the right to a fair trial, the right to information and association as well as basic economic, social and cultural rights are undermined in a manner that impinges the legal, social and political processes.
The current political developments pose a major threat to the protection and promotion of rights -- in contrast to former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's promise of a new era in the implementation of rights. Instead, Asia is witnessing a new era of comprehensive denial of rights. Those who care for human rights and democracy should understand and resist this devastating process before it is too late.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia.)
