Human Rights in Asia, Research Paper Example

Asia itself is a subject beyond the understanding of one person, and each of the topics that “Asia” is composed of is going to approach that threshold, if not exceed it. And so it is with the subject of human rights in Asia. The problem we are confronted with is how to reduce a subject so large into smaller units that we can hope to organize and make sense of.

First, we are talking about human rights violations, because the subject of human rights achieves public notice only when they are being denied. But before we can discuss violations, we need an agreed-upon definition of what our human rights are. Our starting point can be the United Nations, which has been providing detailed definitions since 1948, when it declared and later passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is now composed of 30 articles.

Next we need a definition of “Asia”. On the surface, that’s easy. Asia is earth’s largest continent populated by almost four billion people and divided into six geographic subregions. Currently there are at least 48 recognized states in Asia. But that doesn’t tell us much because it tells us too much, and only hints at the scope the many different races genetically considered Asian. We could just as well define Asia negatively, by listing regions that are not a part of it. We can do that by stating that no country in Asia is part of the Western Hemisphere. Europe isn’t in Asia, and neither is Africa, nor western Russia, Australia and New Guinea. That’s about it.

Next we need an objective and numerical scale of measurement. Freedom House, a partially U.S. government–funded rights agency, annually provides nations a grade from 1 to 7, with 1 being the highest and most free, and 7 the lowest and least (Freedom House).

North Asia

This area mainly encompasses the nation of Russia and its eastern area known as Siberia. Since Tsarist times both regions been isolated from the West and subject to waves of tyranny. This area also once encompassed the former Soviet Union, so we can say that North Asia has probably shown the greatest human rights improvement of any other part of Asia since 1953, when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died; and also since 1989, when the communist government he helped create collapsed. Since 1917 Russia and Siberia both were the home of the famous Soviet Gulag prison system, made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his series of books called The Gulag Archipelago. The old Gulag system is gone now, although Russia still has a long way to go, being viewed by many as a kleptocracy kept afloat by high oil prices. Russia has just reelected Vladimir Putin as its President, an election that has created a protest movement that threatens to turn Red Square into a Russian version of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square protest movement. Numerous human rights organizations struggle to exist. The First All-Russian Emergency Congress in Defense of Human Rights was a milestone in the movement for rights in Russia.

Russia has seen numerous high-profile and unsolved murders of journalists and activists critical of the Putin regime, and public gangland-style killings between criminal gangs have been common in the years following the end of communism. Russian nationals have been heavily involved in human trafficking, including children, both of their own citizens and foreigners.

Human rights abuses were widely reported in Russia’s wars against the breakaway Republic of Chechnya. Although military operations have ceased, Russia’s military has long been a source of human rights abuses against its own members, a phenomenon called dedovshchina which, although increasingly publicized, continues to be unofficially tolerated.

Freedom House rating: Political freedom: 6. Civil liberties: 5.

Southeast and Southwest Asia 

Southeast Asia encompasses the region east of India and south of China to Australia (except for the eastern half of New Guinea). It has its own political umbrella group, called Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It was formed in 1967. Its members are Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The group has its own charter which reaffirms its members commitment to human rights, democracy, international law, and the United Nations charter. It has its own human rights commission too, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. ASEAN has its critics, however, who claim that it is soft on its mission, and mostly just talk to each other.

During ASEAN’s existence Southeast Asia played host to two devastating wars, in Vietnam and Cambodia. Vietnam is a typical case of where human rights got worse after a communist victory and takeover, in this case of South Vietnam by North Vietnam. But since then the reunified country has made great strides in Westernizing its economy, undermining the entire premise of its long U.S.-involved war. Cambodia is a much worse example, undergoing outright genocide at the hands of its communist leader Pol Pot after the U.S. withdrawal in 1975. Cambodia has begun to come to terms with its past, although its government still employs former members of the murderous Khmer Rouge. The country is gradually Westernizing as well.

Burma, after years of military rule and a free election in 2010, was visited by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a nod to its progress. Thailand has lacked a constitution since 2006 following a coup, freedom of the press is under increasing threat, and its southern areas have been in the grips of an increasingly violent insurgency. The Philippines has been cited in U.S. Library of Congress report for its abuses, particularly by its police forces (AHRC).

Freedom House regional average: Political freedom: 5. Civil liberties: 4.5.

Southwest Asia is also known as West Asia and if that term sounds unfamiliar, it’s because it is a recent term devised by the United Nations to replace the more familiar Near East and Middle East. Regardless, it is an area with significant human rights abuses. That will be made clear by listing its eighteen nations: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. I will discuss in the next two pages a representative sample of them.

Armenia and Turkey have a long running human rights dispute stemming from the Armenian Genocide of 1915, and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the events as constituting genocide. The result is an ongoing tension limiting travel and contact between these two nations and their peoples. Turkey has been accused of serious violations during its conduct of its war with Kurdish insurgent groups seeking independence, and for the resultant displacement of peoples within its borders. The European Court of Human Rights has investigated hundreds of claims against Turkey and has leveled fines against it in the millions of Euros. Armenia itself has been charged with abuses, based for police brutality and restrictions on freedom of religion.

Iraq is teetering on civil war following the U.S. withdrawal and is arguably one of the greatest human rights offenders, both in the past and present. Saddam Hussein’s regime committed genocide against its own Kurdish population as well as countless other atrocities. The recently concluded U.S. occupation witnessed numerous deliberate and inadvertent killings by American forces of Iraqi civilians, and violent abuses by Shia and Sunni insurgents against each other. The war and uprisings have created hundreds of thousands of internal and external refugees, a problem without any immediate solution and one that may get worse, depending on the whether Iraq can ever become peacefully reunified and achieve a stable government. Iraq and its people, divided along religious lines, face a bleak future under the best of scenarios.

Israelis and Palestinians are at perpetual war with no end in sight. Israel has been accused by many observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, of practicing apartheid in its treatment of non-Israeli citizens in areas that it has seized in its wars over the years. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the resultant separation barrier for the former and the blockade against the latter are hot spots. Both have resulted in humanitarian impacts against the peoples of these areas, such as access to clean water and regular power generation, sewage disposal, conflicts with Israeli settlers, restrictions on travel, military actions, and mass arrest and imprisonment. Israelis criminal gangs have been active in human trafficking, particularly from Russia. Governmental corruption has gotten wide notice lately (Sanders) and in 2008 and 2009 Israel recognized the UN Convention against Corruption and the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

Syria, a one-party state with no practice of free elections, fighting a formally recognized government in exile and now banned from the Arab League, is currently battling regime change. In 2009 it was rated “Worst of the Worst” by Freedom House (Schriefer 4).

Iran has jailed journalists, lawyers, student- and women’s-rights activists, and religious/ethnic minorities, and has stepped up its rate of executions, including juveniles. Explicit discrimination against women is codified by Iranian law, rendering them second class citizens.

Saudi Arabia practices what has been called sex segregation, and employs very few women in its workforce, far out of proportion to the number of women who graduate from its colleges. It maims convicted criminals and practices public executions. The Internet is filtered, the news media is actively censored, and only recently has the ban on public cinemas begun to be relaxed. Professional and volunteer religious police publically enforce Sharia Law with canes.

Freedom house average of the above six: Political freedom: 6.6. Civil liberties: 6.5.

Central Asia

This is the only land-locked region in Asia, although two of them border the Caspian Sea. Afghanistan (deserving a paper of its own), western China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan compose the region. Except for Afghanistan, and western China, this group is composed of former Soviet republics. So like that of North Asia, their human rights status has improved virtually by definition. Even so, Central Asia is not an area hospitable to human rights and Freedom House rates only Mongolia as free. Three of them, China, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, received the lowest ratings for political and civil rights. Although the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought a brief flowering of liberty called the Central Asian Spring, the model since then has been strongman rule at the hands of former Soviet communist leaders. The region has also become an important oil producer, bringing its own heavy social tax of violence and corruption.

As noted, Afghanistan is in a class by itself. It suffered a brutal crackdown under the Taliban, and now is engaged in a war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. In addition to all the horrors of war must be added the horrors of some of Afghanistan’s cultural traditions, which might described as medieval, with its oppression of women and denial of access to education, denial of freedom of religion, corruption, and institutionalized trafficking in opium and guns.

In 2005, Kyrgyzstan underwent a peaceful change of government, called the Tulip Revolution, but despite that promising start the country has backslid into violence and fraudulent elections, culminating in major riots in 2010. In neighboring Uzbekistan, 2005 saw a massacre of political protestors in the city of Andijan. Freedom House has rated Uzbekistan among its Worst of the Worst, and the U.S. State Department has cited its suppression of religious freedom.

Freedom house regional average: Political freedom: 5.6. Civil liberties: 5.1.

East Asia

The region consists of China, Hong Kong, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, like India, deserves its own paper but very briefly, being a communist country established through war and revolution, it has a genocidal human rights record, including famine and mass executions. It has modernized greatly, yet still enforces a one-child policy, domestic travel restrictions, domestic surveillance, lacks an independent judiciary and lacks due process of law. Private property is not protected from state seizure, and both national and local governments suffer from endemic corruption. The police employ torture and religion is suppressed. Minorities suffer discrimination. The natural environment is not protected, the leading example being the Three Gorges Dam, a project condemned by environmentalists around the world.

As bad as China is, North Korea is vastly worse and considered a totalitarian dictatorship. It’s difficult to know where to begin with this hermit pariah. Systemic secrecy, all-encompassing state propaganda, leader deification, famine as policy, torture, state-mandated infanticide and prostitution, public executions, political prison camps, reeducation camps, starvation-level food rations, killing of the disabled, forced resettlement, persecution of religion — the list inspired the U.S.’s passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, designed to help aid N. Korean refugees. There is reason for hope, however, in the country’s new young leader, Kim Jong-un.

Great Britain ceded Hong Kong by treaty to the mainland communist People’s Republic of China in 1997. Its status as an international city, a trading hub vital to the world financial system, has protected it from full absorption into the communist orbit. This is deliberate policy. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are ranked equal in human rights, one point below the maximum. It is hoped that their treatment of their ethnic minorities can improve.

Freedom house regional average : Political freedom: 3.6. Civil liberties: 3.5.

South Asia

This region consists of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Pakistan. Bangladesh was born as a human rights disaster in 1971 and the whole area has remained one ever since, an ongoing dystopia following the usual recipe of corruption, brutality, persecution, ignorance, superstition, tradition, tribal hatred, nationalism, slavery, and overall oppression and chaos.

The usual manifestations are in place: human trafficking, drug trafficking, police corruption, judicial complicity, internal displacement, religious persecution, suppression or self-censorship of the press, etc. Leo Tolstoy’s wrote: All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. From the above list we might paraphrase that All happy nations are happy in their own way, all unhappy nations resemble one another.

Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are related in the sense that all were at war with each other during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, and all possess to a great or greater degree the same problems, although realizing that there are major differences between them as well, and great differences within them, and that not everything about them and their peoples is bad. India alone deserves a more comprehensive review, unfortunately outside the scope of this paper. So it shouldn’t be thought that local wars explain local human rights abuses themselves. They would exist anyway, even in peacetime. Nepal is an example of this, where pervasive human rights violations, a cultural tradition, long predated its own civil war, concluded in 2006.

Maldives is currently undergoing political uncertainty due to the resignation of its president this year in the face of numerous systemic problems with his administration and the effects of the 2004 tsunami. Maldives prohibits the open practice of any religion other than Islam, and Islamic extremists have destroyed pre-Islamic Buddhist and Hindu artifacts.

Freedom House regional average: Political freedom: 3.3. Civil liberties: 4.2.

Conclusions and Predictions 

The winners are Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, with Mongolia of all places putting in a respectable showing. The first three will likely be the winners in the future as well. As for Israel, it is rated Free, but some would argue that, whatever the reasons and the necessity, it obtains its freedom at the expense of its neighbors. This definitely can’t be said for the others, even and perhaps especially South Korea. Mongolia’s relative liberty may last as long as no one wants it badly enough to take it and keep it, or at least finds the effort too expensive to justify. It gets most of its export earnings from mineral mining, which is performed by foreign companies. With luck, there will be no Alaska-California-South Africa–sized gold strike, or Saudi-sized gusher.

The Arab Spring changed everything for the rest of Asia, and indeed all the world’s tyrannies and kleptocracies. Technology and social media has already toppled regimes outside of Asia (in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt) and promises to do the same inside it within the year (in Syria). The question is whether such revolutions are translatable into stable democracies, or whether the existence of dictatorships in these regions is the only alternative to media-fed chaos. That may be a political problem beyond the power of technology to solve. What’s needed is technology and a tradition of pluralism and private property protected by the rule of law.

This is a problem that applies to Russia and its former republics as much as it will eventually apply to N. Korea (minus the oil, which Korea doesn’t have). Although Moscow is outside of Asia, most of what we think of as Russia is inside it. Inside of Asia the rule of the tribe still rules many people’s hearts and minds, and tribes do not respect national boundaries. It may be that the model of the nation-state is still premature for them, and that a nation-state model can only be imposed on them by force if at all. Finally, much depends on the West and how it will react to all these changes to come. If the past is any guide, the West will bring mixed blessings.

Works Cited

Freedom House. Freedomhouse.org. Web.

Schriefer, Paula. Worst of the Worst 2011. “Selected Data from Freedom in the World.” Freedomhouse.org. Web. May 2008.

AHRC. “Philippines: Civilian complaint mechanism against the police deliberately undermined by the state.” Asian Human Rights Commission. Web. 20 Mar. 2008.

Sanders, Edmund. “Israeli good government proponent looks at political corruption.” Los Angeles Times. Web. 16 Oct. 2010.