EU'S HOLLOW LECTURES ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The Asia-Europe Summit - By Philip Bowring (IHT); Friday, June 25, 2004
|
HONG
KONG: Arrogance and hypocrisy remain two repetitive themes
of Europe's approach to East Asia. In the balance at the
moment is the future of the Asia-Europe summit due to be held
in Hanoi in October over the participation of Myanmar, a
member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or
ASEAN. The meeting is supposed to group the EU 15 with the
ASEAN 10 plus China, Japan and South Korea.
If Europe bans Myanmar from a Euro-Asia Finance Ministers
meeting due to be held in Brussels next month, ASEAN will
exclude the new EU members from the summit, which will thus
collapse.
There are plenty of reasons to regard the Yangon regime with
the utmost distaste. It was always unwise of ASEAN to admit
the country until it demonstrated a modicum of effort to move
towards a political and economic structure more in line with
the rest of the group. ASEAN efforts to influence Myanmar's
rulers have been largely ignored and the pro-democracy leader,
Aung San Suu Kyi, remains under house arrest.
EU members are entitled to boycott Myanmar if they wish, but
neighbors in the region have to deal with realities on the
ground. EU efforts to determine ASEAN members' own policies
are quite extraordinarily arrogant.
More than that, they focus largely on the person of Aung San
Suu Kyi rather than on the many other evils of the regime -
drug dealing, corruption, oppression of minorities, economic
failures. She may be a Nobel Price winning heroine. But former
Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang of China has been under house
arrest for a lot longer - 15 years - without a squeak from the
Europeans although he arguably did more for liberalization
than Aung San Suu Kyi could ever do.
Indeed, Europe has tried harder than almost anyone to
ingratiate itself with his jailers, the perpetrators of
Tiananmen.
As for Vietnam, its political structure is as closed as that
of Myanmar, and Singapore runs close to Hanoi when it comes to
suppression, through one means or another, of political
dissent and challenges to the ruling party. Malaysia's former
deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, is also widely seen as a
political prisoner.
Europe has an uncanny ability to try to create cause célèbres
in countries which mean little to it but allow former colonial
governments to exercise "saviour" instincts on
behalf of oppressed Asians and Africans. But once political or
commercial advantages loom large the liberal instincts are too
often quickly forgotten.
That has long been the case with Singapore, whose utility has
triumphed over liberal pronouncements by European governments
and driven most western media to unparalleled levels of
self-censorship.
Just this week, the Singapore-based Asia-Europe Foundation
(ASEF), partly funded and staffed by the EU, was accused by
the International Federation of Liberal Youth, a grouping of
youth representatives from liberal and democratic political
parties, of withdrawing at the last minute support for a
meeting in Kuala Lumpur because of participation by Young
Democrats of Singapore, an opposition group.
A long self-justificatory denial by the ASEF public affairs
director, Albrecht Rothacher, ended by hoping that the
allegation "was not calculated to create difficulties
between ASEF and the government of Singapore, our host
country" - a remark which only served to contrast the
difference between Europe's view of political oppression in
Singapore and in Myanmar.
It was the case with Indonesia under Suharto and is very much
the case with China today. National self-interest is
triumphing over proclaimed ideals. That is hardly surprising
but it is more hypocritical than the equally self-interested
attitudes of China towards Myanmar.
As for ASEAN, the more lecturing it faces from faraway
Europeans on how to deal with Yangon, the less pressure it is
likely to apply. Let ASEAN, like the EU, learn from its own
mistakes.
|
|
