From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Human Rights Watch: Asian businesses deals fuel HR abuses
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 05:04:25 GMT

/** reg.easttimor: 373.0 **/
** Topic: Human Rights Watch: Asia 1992 **
** Written  8:19 pm  Dec 10, 1992 by cscheiner in cdp:reg.easttimor **
From: Charles Scheiner <cscheiner>
Subject: Human Rights Watch: Asia 1992

/* Written  3:19 pm  Dec 10, 1992 by apakabar@igc.apc.org in igc:reg.indonesia */
/* ---------- "Human Rights Watch: Asia 1992" ---------- */


     According to a December 9 Kyodo story datelined Washington, 
a U.S. human rights group accused Asian governments and
businesses Wednesday of fueling human rights abuses through arms
deals, trade, or political pressure.
     The complicity of Asian governments in human rights abuses in
places beyond their own borders ''gave a new twist'' to the human
rights picture in the region, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
     The privately funded group said most of the human rights
problems in Asia otherwise remained largely the same as in 1991.
     The report cited continued harassment of dissidents in China,
political persecution of ethnic minorities in Myanmar, and alleged
repression by the Indonesian government in East Timor as among the
major features of human rights abuses in the region.
     The fall of President Najibullah in Afghanistan in March threw
the country into a state of chaos and factional fighting, raising
the specter of an ''Asian Somalia,'' the report said.
     One bright spot was Taiwan, where it said there is ''continued
progress toward a more open society.''
     The group said many of Asia's human rights problems involve
more than one Asian government.
     By way of example, it accused China and Thailand of compounding
human rights abuses in Myanmar, where it said the military
government is ''kept afloat'' by trade with the two countries.
     Arms sales from China also help prop up the ruling State Law
and Order Restoration Council in Myanmar, the report said.
     It criticized Japan for taking a largely hands-off stance on
human rights abuses in Asia by not flexing its economic muscle.
     ''Japan, as the region's largest donor and investor, had
enormous financial interests in countries with the worst human
rights records in Asia, but it chose not to exert its economic
leverage,'' the report said.
     Investors from South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were also
faulted.  It cited reports that workers' rights were particularly
abused in Indonesia in plants owned or managed by South Koreans.
     The group said similar allegations were made about ill
treatment of workers in factories in China that were financed with
Hong Kong or Taiwanese capital.
     Hong Kong is itself a victim of ''cross-border'' political
pressure in its exercise of human rights as China attempts to
prevent democratization in the British colony before its return to
Chinese rule in 1997, the report said.
     Apart from the involvement of governments and business in human
rights problems in the region, it said 1992 was marked by a growing
trend in Asia to set up formal human rights bodies.
     Cited as examples were moves within the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to set up a governmental human
rights forum for the region, and the establishment of a
parliamentary committee on human rights in Indonesia.
     Dismissing such moves as largely cosmetic, the report said they
''appeared to be more an effort to fend off international criticism
than a genuine attempt to ameliorate human rights abuses.''
     In 1992, ''the underlying message of Asian governments was that
while discussion of human rights issues was legitimate, control over
the interpretation and implementation of international human rights
standards should rest with the governments in question,'' it said.

** End of text from cdp:reg.easttimor **
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