The skeleton in ASEAN's closet
THE PRESENCE of Burma's military junta at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations earlier this week caused no end of humiliation for the group's members.
Although it includes democracies, communist regimes, and monarchies, ASEAN harbors an ambition to emulate the European Union's transformational mission: to mold a community not only of free-market economies but also of democracies that respect the human and civil rights of their citizens. The brutal behavior of Burma's ruling junta is making a mockery of that aspiration.
The heads of state and foreign ministers in Singapore had to decide how to respond to September's spectacle of peacefully protesting Buddhist monks and other citizens of Burma being beaten and killed by the junta's security forces. At the time, ASEAN called the regime's assaults on the people of Burma "repulsive." But in Singapore, with junta officials in their midst, member states reverted to their timorous habit of declining to interfere in each other's internal affairs.
They made a last-minute decision to revoke an invitation that Singapore had extended to the United Nations' special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, to give a briefing on his recent visit there. At the summit, the regime's prime minister insisted that Gambari was entitled to address only the United Nations, not ASEAN. And ASEAN shamefully caved to the junta.
Another symptom of the group's backsliding was apparent in the charter the members signed Tuesday. Originally intended as a rulebook for enlightened democracy similar to the treaties that bind together the countries of the EU, the charter's preamble commits ASEAN members "to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms." But the charter includes no enforcement mechanism.
At least President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines insisted that the charter be enforceable. She released a statement warning that if Burma "signs the charter, it is committed to returning to the path of democracy and releasing Aung San Suu Kyi," the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years. Arroyo said the Philippine Congress "would have extreme difficulty in ratifying the ASEAN charter" until the junta undertook such a transition to democracy.
The generals who rule Burma are like an occupying army that has laid waste to their own country. Even China has been more forthright than ASEAN in calling for democratic reform in Burma. Instead of ASEAN's hands-off approach, the nations of the world need to maintain unrelenting political and economic pressure on the ruling generals to release political prisoners and permit a peaceful transition to democracy. 