The cloud of gross human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslims
during the last few weeks that have darkened Myanmar’s sky will hinder the
transformation of ASEAN into a single community of nations by 2015.
In its press release on Aug. 1,
Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated that Myanmarese security forces had committed
killings, rape and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims after failing to
protect both the Muslims and Arakan Buddhists during deadly sectarian violence
in June.
Government restrictions on
humanitarian access to the Rohingya community have left over 100,000 people
displaced and in dire need of food, shelter and medical care.
However, ASEAN remains silent on
this human rights violation in a part of ASEAN. This contradicts the ASEAN
spirit of one vision, one identity and one community and the desire to show
collective solidarity, compassion and the will to help each other.
This spirit reminds us of what Jacques Delors
(1996) said “The world is our village: If one house catches fire, the roofs
over all our heads are immediately at risk. If any one of us tries to start
rebuilding, his efforts will be purely symbolic. Solidarity has to be the order
of the day: Each of us must bear his own share of the general responsibility.”
ASEAN as a home for all its
members, ironically, has not yet offered any solution to extinguish the
Rohingya fire. ASEAN therefore has to restore its credibility as a common home
for all ASEAN peoples including the Rohingyas by optimizing the ASEAN
Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), which has a special
mandate to promote and protect human rights across the region.
It mandates promoting and
protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms of the peoples of ASEAN,
upholding the right of the peoples of ASEAN to live in peace, dignity and
prosperity and contributes to the realization of the purposes of ASEAN as set
out in the ASEAN Charter in order to promote stability, harmony, friendship and
cooperation in the region, as well as the well-being, livelihood, welfare and
participation of the ASEAN peoples in the ASEAN Community-building process.
In the spirit of
non-interference, AICHR could facilitate the Myanmar government through various
capacity-building supports for their law-enforcement officials such as
community policing especially in the state of Rakhine.
This approach is in line with the
mandate of the Outcome Document of the 2005 United Nations World Summit
(A/RES/60/1, para. 138-140) and the Secretary-General’s 2009 Report (A/63/677)
on the Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect which stipulates that
the state carries the primary responsibility for protecting populations from
genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and their
incitement.
The international community has a
responsibility to encourage and assist states in fulfilling these
responsibilities and the international community has a responsibility to use
appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect populations
from these crimes.
If a state is manifestly failing
to protect its population, the international community must be prepared to take
collective action to protect people in accordance with the Charter of the
United Nations.
If AICHR cannot address such
gross human-rights violations, it will lose its credibility. In which case its
role could be undertaken by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC was established by the UN
to achieve justice for all, to end impunity, to help end conflicts, to remedy
the deficiencies of ad hoc tribunals, to take over when national criminal
justice institutions are unwilling or unable to act and to deter future war
criminals.
The Rohingya crisis has likely
met all these criteria.
Myanmar has acceded to all the
treaties, declarations and agreements in ASEAN, starting with those outlined in
the Bangkok Declaration and those elaborated and developed in various subsequent
treaties, declarations and agreements.
Thus ASEAN could adopt a
persuasive approach to pursuade the Myanmar government to take immediate action
to end the gross human-rights violations and initiate prompt, independent and
impartial investigations under both domestic and other mechanisms in line with
the spirit of a single ASEAN Political-Security Community.
Due to ASEAN’s silence,
Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) chairman, Jusuf Kalla, proactively offered some
lessons learned and best practices to address the Rohingya crisis. Kalla,
former Indonesian vice president, has long experience on conflict
transformation in various sectarian and horizontal conflicts in Indonesia.
The most prominent being his
achievement of ending decades of conflict between the government of Indonesia
and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) through the Helsinki Peace Accord on Aug. 15,
2005.
The PMI has played a proactive
role in the Rohingya crisis and sent aid to refugees from the deadly conflict.
The PMI has a legitimate mandate to address such conflict.
The 1949 Geneva Convention and
additional protocols, the core of international humanitarian law, regulate the
conduct of armed conflict and seek to limit its effects.
They specifically protect people
who are not taking part in the hostilities (civilians, health workers and aid
workers) and those who are no longer participating in the hostilities, such as
wounded, sick and shipwrecked combatants and prisoners of war.
Within the spirit of justice for
all and impartiality, the Rohingya crisis should not be reduced and
dichotomized into black and white issues of Muslims and Buddhists, otherwise
there will never be any rainbow over Myanmar’s sky and the ASEAN dream for a
single community of nations by 2015 will simply remain a beautiful fata
morgana.
The writer is a professor at the
State University of Jakarta and former director general of Human Rights at the
Law and Human Rights Ministry.
Hafid Abbas
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