Moral values
are booming
August, 16th, 2012
The fight between Asian values and universal
human rights revives. Or maybe it has never calmed down.
Edmund Burke stated in the 18th century that in India religious laws as
well as land and honour laws are all one and that this law forms individuals
and societies forever. Hundreds of years later, at present, some organizations
of the civil Indian society accuse the consequences of this system.
Among them, we can find the People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights
(PVCHR), whose leaders stress that the universality of human rights doesn’t penetrate into the country due to the
resistance of traditional circles, who refuse to renounce to their powers, which were conferred to them by
millennial habits. Yet, the most recognized living intellectual of the
subcontinent, Amartya Sen, reminds us how many centuries ago the emperor
Ashoka, who is considered to be the founder of India, included among his goals
of government the absence of aggressions, impartiality and good manners towards
all creatures.
At the end of the 90s, the comparison between the inflexible tradition
described by Burke and PVCHR and the egalitarian harmony in which Ashoka takes
pride was outlined, and the defence of tolerance praised by the latter
surprised a great deal of people. Only 15 years ago, the debate about the
irreconcilable character between the universal human rights and the so-called
Asian values was at its peak. The defence of the latter was based on the
supposed incompatibility of human rights with traditional principles, which
prize order and collective values above individual freedom. According to their
supporters, the pre-eminence of Asian values prevents the degradations of
customs characteristic of the Eastern way of life. This argument was used by
governors such as Lee Kuan Yew, ex prime minister of Singapore, who took it to
new practical dimensions by popularising the idea that authoritarian leadership
favours economic growth.
The comparison between Asian values and human rights promoted by the
liberal Western democracies is based on a rather vague idea, as it is
impossible to encapsulate the complexity of Asian traditions in a sole concept.
Yet, it does work as an agglutinating element for different countries who share
economic and moral arguments in order to avoid intromissions. The Chinese model
of rapid growth and political inflexibility seems to support Lee’s theses: authoritarian
pragmatism is more interested in the glorious national economic future than in
the corsets of tradition. In the case of
India, human rights remained behind not only because of pragmatic visions of
the future, but especially due to the urge to preserve the traditional elites as
well as the society’s religious organizations. Given that Asia is a huge
continent, each country finds its own reasons to avoid adopting the universal
human rights completely.
The debate seems a little outdated nowadays, but the Asian scepticism
towards the concept of human rights is still present. China still believes in
the in the indispensability of the “iron hand” as a fundamental of economic
growth. India, especially in rural areas, believes in the unquestionable
defence of the cast system. The link between authoritarianism
and economic development, which used to be considered characteristic of the Far
East rather than of the Indian subcontinent, becomes evident in the Indian
authorities. According to the last report published by Amnesty International,
Mahomman Singh’s government focuses on economic growth at the expense of human
rights.
The rise of Asian values and the doubts about Western ideas are also
present in the current process of the regional
integration of human rights. After having walked a common path for 45 years,
the ASEAN nations plan to approve a declaration of human rights in November.
Experts who could see the text draft affirm that, contrary to the claims of Asian
value supporters, the document doesn’t explicitly position the rights of the
community over those of the individual. Yet, the declaration stresses the
inviolable principle of no interference in the member states’ sovereignty,
which diminishes its reach considerably.
The declaration is even more weakened by the geographic, religious and
cultural disparity of the countries that compose ASEAN, where communist
regimes, constitutional monarchies, multiethnic democracies and authoritarian
city states are included. Among these countries, figures the always exceptional
and metamorphosed Myanmar, whose opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is one of
the regional political figures, who has most criticized the Asian values as
impermeable against the universality of the human rights. Faced with the
disparity of values and interests, the Asian nations don’t find common
objectives that would help them reach a consensus in the declaration. Contrary
to what happened in Europe, where the rise of communism and the trauma of
Nazism provide solid arguments for the European Convention of Human Rights, the
motivations in Asia seem less imperative and more linked to each state’s
predilection.
Disagreements on this and on other issues occur in various continents, not
only in the Asian one. Yet, it is in Asia where we can find some of the most
outstanding examples of banishing human rights in the background. It seemed to
have been of little use that Amartya Sen stressed in 1997 that economic success
doesn’t depend on the “iron hand”, but on improvement in education, on land
reforms, on investment incentives and on the rational use of international
markets. Lee’s theses seem particularly appealing in a moment Europe shows its
economic deterioration and restricts many rights European citizens have enjoyed
until now. The rise of Asia and the decline of the West keep giving cultural
evidences that human rights are not an obstacle for national sovereignty nor
economic growth.
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