Regime Security in Southeast Asia:

The Historical Continuity of ASEAN’s Subversion of Human

Rights

Stephen Campbell

When I first came across Lee's list of supposed Asian values, I saw values that
were not so much specific to Asian culture but good British upper class Tory
values dear to threatened elites everywhere.
Walden Bello,
(The Nation, 20 July 1998, Bangkok)

The emancipatory project of political liberalism is threatened most pervasively

by the centripetal tendencies of political regimes towards the consolidation of
power. It is this corruptive character of politics that most undermines individual
human rights, as integral components of the liberal polity. This view is
predicated on the assumption that while regimes tend towards consolidating
their positions of power, human rights weaken regime security by requiring that
political elites be held accountable to the domestic populace they claim to
represent. In this way, “human rights strike at the core of traditional elite
values just as they provide the tools to overturn prevailing political structures”
(Bruun and Jacobsen 2000: 11). Ensuring that human rights are respected
therefore demands that the tendency to authoritarianism be acknowledged and
curbed.

Conversely, ensuring regime consolidation, where democratic legitimacy is

lacking and violent repression in anything close to an absolute sense is
logistically infeasible, requires some measure of domestic consent to
authoritarian rule. The fact that authoritarian regimes attempt to justify their

Dialogue (2006) 4:2, pp 2-24

policies evinces how repression, qua repression, is illegitimate both domestically
and to the wider international community. Rhetoric legitimising authoritarian
policies is therefore necessary for the perpetuation of illiberal regimes in the
service of the entrenched elite (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 32). In the wider
project of promoting social justice through liberal equality it is thus pertinent to
deconstruct the language used by political regimes to manage ethical critiques
of their abuse of power. Seeing such authoritarian politicking as the self-
serving rationalism of threatened elites provides a basis from which to approach
structural injustice.

The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) presents a paradigmatic

case of such political manoeuvring as, for much of its history, it has been
composed primarily of authoritarian states which have used the institution to
mutually bolster member regimes (Christie 1995: 209). As Amitav Acharya
suggests, “ASEAN’s primary concern has been with regime survival” (1999:
428). It is therefore relevant to examine how ASEAN as an institution has
managed the international human rights regime.

Following the hypothesis that political power tends towards authoritarianism,

where not limited by institutional restrictions and demands for accountability, it
would be expected that ASEAN would work to establish, in rhetoric and
structure, a secure base from which to perpetuate the rule of its members.
This trend is particularly foreseeable given that the grouping has embodied, for
most of its history, an old boys’ club of authoritarian regimes. Indeed, as one
observer points out, “the main thrust of the current ASEAN statist leadership is
to maintain strong authoritarian states” (Saravanamuttu 2001: 93).

Since its inception during the Cold War, through the early post-Cold War and
subsequent Asian financial crisis and into the present post-9/11 era, ASEAN has

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resisted international and domestic calls to recognise civil and political liberties
and has served as a mutually reinforcing tool of regime security for member
states. Despite the political vagaries of these four broad periods, I argue here
that there is an historical continuity in the institutional approach taken by
ASEAN vis-à-vis human rights in rhetoric and policy. In a nutshell, ASEAN and
its member regimes have stressed issues of national security, development and
cultural continuity and simultaneously conflated ‘regime’ and ‘state’ in order to
bolster claims that ‘strong leadership’ is needed to protect the common good.
This practice has stifled criticism over illiberal rule and thereby maintained
entrenched regimes and the rule of incumbent elites.

Nevertheless, marginalised groups have felt increasingly frustrated with

Southeast Asian regimes’ unwavering adherence to traditional security
discourse at the expense of citizens’ individual human security (Caballero-
Anthony 2004a: 186). This dissatisfaction arises alongside five other
phenomena that are challenging ASEAN’s regime-serving rhetoric and policies,
namely: external criticism, transnational emergencies, the rise of regional civil
society, movements to establish national and regional human rights
mechanisms and democratisation within certain Southeast Asian states.
Despite elite intransigence, these factors could potentially undermine regime
security and pave the way for more accountable and participatory politics. As
such, structural changes towards liberal policies within ASEAN have become a
plausible, if distant, possibility.

The subversion of human rights within Southeast Asia and within ASEAN as an
institution is reflective of the general tendency of political regimes towards
authoritarian governance and of domestic populations towards political
emancipation. Despite changes in the international and regional environment,
the rhetoric and policies of ASEAN demonstrate an historical continuity in the

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aversion of regional governments towards the international human rights
regime. Nevertheless, national and regional actors have pressed for political
accountability and the institutionalised recognition of basic human rights. I will
therefore examine ASEAN’s origin and defining principles and address the
manner in which ASEAN, as an institution and as a conglomeration of regimes,
has engaged with the challenges posed by the international human rights
regime during the Cold War, immediate post-Cold War, Asian financial crisis,
and post-9/11 periods. Following this I will show how changing regional and
domestic factors are challenging ASEAN’s regime-centred policies and rhetoric
more directly and substantially than extra-regional appeals for human rights.
What this demonstrates is that the emancipatory project of creating liberal
democratic structures is alive within Southeast Asia in the tensions between
domestic citizens and established political elites.

Core principles of regime security in ASEAN

Formed at the height of the Cold War in 1967, ASEAN brought together
likeminded capitalist regimes mutually wary of transnational communism and
domestic communist subversion. ASEAN as a whole was especially sensitive
about internal dissent as its composition of newly independent states
represented “political entities with ‘weak’ state structures (e.g. lack of a close
congruence between ethnic groups and territorial boundaries) and an equally
problematic lack of strong regime legitimacy” (Acharya 2001: 57). Member
states therefore sought institutionalised assurance that regional governments
would refrain from supporting domestic insurgencies that threatened to
destabilise regimes in power. This assurance, expressed as mutual respect for
the principles of non-interference and state sovereignty, was finally codified in
the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, signed at Bali in 1976. More explicitly,
Article 2 of the Treaty reads:

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 5

 In their relations with one another, the High Contracting Parties shall be guided
by the following fundamental principles:
a. Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial
integrity and national identity of all nations;
b. The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external
interference, subversion or coercion;
c. Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;

While the above article stresses the primacy of non-interference in principle,

Acharya elucidates the practical consequences imposed on states as obligations
to abstain from intra-ASEAN criticism over domestic human rights violations; to
censure members’ contravention of the non-intervention principle; to neither
support nor host any groups opposing fellow member states; and to provide
mutual support against domestic dissidents (2001: 58).

These obligations have resulted in intra-ASEAN diplomacy following a model

termed the ‘ASEAN Way’. The lines of this approach emphasise consensus and
quiet diplomacy as opposed to institutionalised rules and direct criticism of
individual member states (Haacke 2003: 59; Eldridge 2002: 60). As such, much
of what can be discussed within official ASEAN forums is censored by the
“comfort level” of the individual regimes (Katsumata 2004: 238).

Human rights transgressions are therefore deemed to be domestic concerns

and outside the bounds of legitimate ASEAN diplomacy (Kraft 2001: 170).
Political elites within respective member states have limited legitimate ASEAN
objectives to the acceleration of “economic growth, social progress and cultural
development in the region” and the promotion of “regional peace and stability
through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in the relationship among
countries in the region” (ASEAN 2005). What this has meant in practice is that

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ASEAN regimes have refrained from engaging fellow governments over claims
of human rights abuses (Verma 2002: 114).

Changes in the Southeast Asian context and ASEAN responses

In the pursuit of legitimacy, as a requisite of sustainable rule, Southeast Asian
states, through the vehicle of ASEAN, have delivered rhetoric justifying the
centrality of the state over individual human rights and implemented policies
supportive of regime security. The changing international and regional contexts
have required that such rhetoric be tailored to the dominant political discourse
of the day. Notable shifts are visible from the Cold War, through the immediate
post-Cold War, to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and into the post-9/11
period.

At the time of ASEAN’s creation, with the imposition of US Cold War jargon onto
disparate domestic conflicts, Southeast Asian political elites were able to
reframe contextually specific internal dissent in the language of geopolitical
bipolarities and collapsing dominoes (Glassman 2005: 5). The non-communist
states of which ASEAN was composed could thereby inflame and harness Cold
War paranoia and the legitimising effect of US backing to bolster the position of
their respective regimes (Berger 2003: 426). It was out of this Cold War
context that ASEAN states could justify the language of non-intervention and
non-coercion that formed the basis of their regional diplomatic relations.
Where domestic civil and political rights were curtailed by presiding regimes,
national security concerns in the face of communist subversion, propounded ad
nauseam, functioned as a legitimising mantra (Caballero-Anthony 1995: 46).

At the end of the 1980s, the sudden decapitation of ASEAN’s Cold War
legitimacy left member states deprived of their traditional justificatory polemics.
Within the framework of George Bush’s ‘New World Order’ the United States

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shifted to the moral language of human rights and democracy in its public
rhetoric and diplomatic relations (Acharya 1995: 167). ASEAN as an institution,
where members’ illiberal styles of rule had previously been actively encouraged
by the United States as instruments of the latter’s Cold War policies, now came
under increasing “political and moral pressure… to reinvent itself and, in this
context, to reconsider its core intramural norms” (Haacke 2003: 61).

Disregard for human rights was undermining ASEAN’s relations with Western
states which felt these issues needed to be placed on the diplomatic agenda.
However, ASEAN continued to avoid formal statements on regional abuses.
The Thai military’s May 1992 massacre of pro-democracy protestors in Bangkok,
for example, failed to get the slightest response from the organisation (Acharya
2001: 59). ASEAN, if it was to continue as a bastion of regime security, needed
to adapt its rhetoric to the changing international order.

Appealing to the legitimacy of domestic economic expansion, ASEAN members

appeared confident in directly confronting external criticisms over their handling
of human rights abuses (Caballero-Anthony 1995: 40). The rebuttals of ASEAN
states cited two main issues: Western selectivity in applying human rights
standards, and cultural relativism, or, as it came to be known, ‘Asian values’.
By pointing to the double standards in Western, primarily U.S., human rights
diplomacy, ASEAN regimes challenged the legitimacy of foreign uses of
putatively ‘universal’ human rights language (Acharya 1995: 170). In this
respect, the self-serving manipulation of human rights standards by, and for the
benefit of, Western powers undermined the credibility of the human rights
regime as a whole (Caballero-Anthony 1995: 48).

The second defence against foreign criticism of regional human rights abuses
was that the Western predilection for civil and political rights was culturally

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 8

inappropriate in the Southeast Asian context where tradition favours economic,
social and cultural rights. Under the rubric of ‘Asian values’, ASEAN authorities,
most vocally Lee Kuan Yew, Mahatir Mohamed, and Suharto, defended cultural
relativism over universalism; communitarian duties over individual rights; and
economic development over civil and political rights (Kraft 2001: 166). The
derivative of these points is a conflation of state and society where entrenched
political regimes posses “the mandate to rule for the common good of
everyone” (Bruun and Jacobsen 2000: 3). Individual dissent subverts
traditional Asian Islamic and Confucian values and undermines the prospects for
economic advancement (Langlois 2001: 12). As former Singapore Prime
Minister Lee Kuan Yew put it, “Asia has never valued the individual over society.
The society has always been more important than the individual. I think that is
what saved Asia from greater misery” (quoted in Christie 1995: 208).

The strong interventionist state authority in this view plays a fundamental role
in protecting traditional values and also in providing “a stable political
environment” conducive to economic development and national prosperity
(Tang 1995: 6). Adopting a Western focus on civil and political rights would
therefore not only be culturally inappropriate but also detrimental to national
political stability and economic advancement.

Backed by the economic successes of certain East Asian states and the ‘Asian
values’ doctrine, ASEAN member states sought to challenge the direction of the
international human rights regime at the 1993 Vienna conference on human
rights. To that end, the Bangkok Declaration, a statement on human rights
through the filter of ‘Asian values’ asserted that human rights standards must
be neither a conditionality for foreign aid nor an “instrument of political
pressure” (Bangkok Declaration 1993: articles 4, 5 and 8). The Declaration
further maintained that, although human rights may be universal, their

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implementation must necessarily be determined by the “national and regional
particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds”
(Bangkok Declaration 1993: articles 4, 5 and 8).

While communitarian arguments on the nature of human rights are potentially

legitimate, the fact that proponents of ‘Asian values’ have been primarily those
political elites who benefit most from such perspectives undermines their
credibility. Many critics therefore see the ‘Asian values’ debate as mere state
rhetoric intended to bolster the security of status quo political elites and justify
continued suppression of internal dissent (Bruun and Jacobsen 2000: 6;
Langlois 2001: 29). Given the fact that ‘Asian values’ are used to justify the
repression of the very voices they ostensibly represent, this argument is easily
supported. If regional populations truly held such values, repression would be
unnecessary as opposition would be absent.

As the legitimacy of the ‘Asian values’ argument was, to a large extent,

predicated on the economic success of relevant states, the 1997-98 Asian
financial crisis was detrimental to its defence. Where authoritarian regimes had
claimed interventionist policies were economically and politically expedient, the
financial crisis stripped such assertions of their rhetorical weight and bolstered
criticisms of the model as a whole (Ahmed and Ghoshal 1999: 769). Domestic,
regional and international critiques over illiberal rule in Southeast Asia following
the crisis directly challenged authoritarian policies, supported the growth of
democratic opposition and called for the strengthening of civil and political
liberties (Acharya 1999: 419). Intraregional movements for human rights and
democracy were strengthened in the face of a discredited political model of
autocratic governance (Mohamed 2002: 230).

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The consequences for ASEAN of the new liberalising trend within East Asia were
democratic transitions within Thailand, Indonesian and the Philippines. These
countries thereafter became the region’s leading advocates of human rights
within other ASEAN states (Ahmed and Ghoshal 1999: 769). Evidence of a new
human rights consciousness within certain Southeast Asian governments and its
resulting pressures on ASEAN as an institution include the deferral until April
1999 of Cambodia’s accession to the organisation following Hun Sen’s 1997
coup (Ahmed and Ghoshal 1999: 770); Indonesia and the Philippines’ criticism
of Mahatir Mohamed following the then Prime Minister’s “arbitrary arrest,
imprisonment and torture of Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim”
(Acharya 1999: 430); and the 1998 proposal by Thai Foreign Minister Surin
Pitsuwan for more interventionist intraregional diplomacy under the rubric of
‘flexible engagement’ (Katsumata 2004: 238). Nevertheless, as is evident in the
treatment of Anwar Ibrahim, authoritarian tendencies in Southeast Asia, were
far from extinguished during this period.

The penchant for liberalism in certain Southeast Asian states, afforded by the
Asian financial crisis, came to an abrupt end following September 11, 2001.
With the expansion of the U.S.’s ‘War on Terror’ to Southeast Asia, ASEAN
member states have been able to capitalise on a return to the over-simplified
polemics of national security doctrine reminiscent of the Cold War. As one critic
notes, “today many of these [Southeast Asian] elites are cooperating – if
somewhat hesitantly – in packaging locally-rooted conflicts as exemplars of the
global terrorist threat in order to take advantage of the climate created by the
U.S. response to 9/11” (Glassman 2005: 5). By adopting the language of the
global ‘War on Terror’ ASEAN member states have justified a return to
repressive measures, principally “abuses associated with personal integrity or
personal security: the use of torture, detention without trial, execution,
disappearances, and the like” (Foot 2005: 415). Human rights abuses, when

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conducted under the rubric of ‘counter-terrorism’ no longer draw U.S. criticism
and have even led to increased financial and military support from the
administration of George W. Bush.

Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, where opposition movements are

challenging the ubiquitous authority of the state, have implemented especially
ruthless measures in the name of counter-terrorism and national security (Foot
2005: 418-419). The Indonesian army, for example, has intensified repression
of the West Papuan resistance and “embark[ed] on newly intensified rounds of
state terrorism in outlying regions” (Glassman 2005: 19). Prior to being
deposed, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, applied the language of
terrorism to the country’s southern insurgency, where, since 2003 he has
imposed martial law, thereby creating conditions conducive to human rights
abuses (International Crisis Group 2006: 3). Thaksin has further exploited the
global anti-terrorism campaign as a means to discredit and undermine domestic
political opposition to Thai Rak Thai, the country’s current ruling party
(Glassman 2005: 22).

The quick decision by Gloria Arroyo’s administration to ‘jump on the anti-terror

bandwagon’ has resulted in the Philippines becoming Southeast Asia’s largest
recipient of American aid. The ensuing militarisation in the name of attacking
terrorism in the southern Philippines around the area of Mindanao “has been
out of proportion to the actual threat of the insurgent forces in the region”
(Glassman 2005: 14). Members of her administration have also charged human
rights organisations with being terrorist “fronts” (Foot 2005: 422). In Malaysia,
the Internal Security Act, condemned by the US prior to 9/11 as deleterious to
civil liberties, is now praised by the Bush administration as instrumental in the
fight against terrorism (Capie 2004: 231).

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The return to the forefront of national security discourse in the defence of
autocratic rule of Southeast Asian states is reflected in intra-ASEAN ‘anti-
terrorist’ cooperation (Tan and Ramakrishna 2004: 95). Following a May 2002
ASEAN Action Plan to fight terrorism, a United States-ASEAN Joint Declaration
for Cooperation to Combat Terrorism effected the provision of “intelligence
sharing, capacity building and improved border controls.” (Capie 2004: 239).
These would not necessarily be disconcerting had the organisation not failed in
the ASEAN Declaration on Terrorism to clearly articulate a definition of terrorism
that would restrict arbitrary interpretations conducive to political repression.

Terrorism is no doubt a legitimate concern for state authorities. However, the

application of disproportionate force against internal dissent suggests a
potential return to traditional patterns of Southeast Asian oppression and
regime consolidation rather than a credible attempt to address the issue.
Despite the adaptation of national security rhetoric to the ‘War of Terror’,
current patterns of repression in Southeast Asia reflect an historical continuity
with ASEAN’s traditional subversion of human rights.

Challenges to regime prioritisation within ASEAN

The historical continuity of ASEAN’s prioritisation of regime security over the
rights of individuals seems to belie arguments of normative shifts away from
institutionalised protection of political elite towards a more expansive notion of
human security. Nevertheless, challenges to regime prioritisation have required
that ASEAN address criticisms over its inadequacy in managing and accounting
for regional and domestic developments. Aside from the Asian financial crisis
discussed above, five interconnected factors have been challenging ASEAN’s
traditional regime-centric framework. They are: external criticism over human
rights abuses; transnational emergencies; the rise of domestic and regional civil

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society; movements to establish national and regional human rights
mechanisms; and democratisation within ASEAN states.

Despite intra-ASEAN dismissals of Western appeals to human rights within

Southeast Asia, external criticism has resulted in a loss of institutional
legitimacy for the organisation. As Acharya suggests, “human rights have
rapidly become a threat to ASEAN’s collective image” (1995: 168). The most
salient of human rights issues in ASEAN’s diplomatic relations with its Western
“dialogue partners” has been the institutional acceptance of Burma’s military
junta (Acharya 2001: 109). Human rights groups documenting the country’s
atrocities have highlighted continuing political repression and abusive
militarisation as part of the junta’s ostensible ‘counter-insurgency’ campaign
(see for example, Human Rights Watch 2006).

Nevertheless, ASEAN has continued to refer to the principle of non-interference

in its relations with Burma and established itself as one of the junta’s most
consistent apologists. Loss of ASEAN credibility over the issue has led to
tangible obstructions in diplomatic relations with the West. European states
participating in the October 2004 Asia-Europe Meeting threatened to boycott
the summit if representatives of the Burmese authorities took part and the
country’s pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi remained under
arrest (Rowse 2004). Moreover, the organisation’s ineffective and discredited
‘constructive engagement’ policy towards Burma “has strained ASEAN’s political
relations with the West and undermined Western support for ASEAN’s
management of regional order when it relates to human rights issues” (Acharya
1995: 173).

While ASEAN responses to developments in Burma, such as expressed

disapproval over the military’s attack on Aung San Suu Kyi’s motorcade and her

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 14

subsequent imprisonment in May 2003, have sought to placate persistent
Western critics, they do not represent any substantial departure from the non-
interference principle over issues of human rights (Haacke 2005: 191). Indeed,
ASEAN as an institution has remained steadfast in its resistance to external
human rights criticism. The limited ground that the organisation has given on
issues of human rights appears to be no more than “building up an image more
acceptable to prevailing international norms” (Mohamed 2002: 231). The
significance of international condemnation over regional human rights abuses
lies not in directly effecting a change in the policies of ASEAN or individual
Southeast Asian governments, but rather, in showing support for, and solidarity
with, domestic and regional opposition to arbitrary abuses of power (Acharya
1999: 426).

The second challenge confronting ASEAN as an institution has been the

expansion of transnational emergencies. These include such issues as refugee
flows (Tan 2005), “environmental problems, economic disruption, terrorism,
drugs and transnational crime” (Katsumata 2004: 239). Where regional
problems are confounded or inflamed through the domestic policies of specific
states, the traditional discretion of ASEAN members regarding non-intervention
is far from prudent.

The Indonesian ‘haze’ of 1997-98 was especially detrimental to traditional

ASEAN diplomacy, coming as it did concurrent with the Asian financial crisis.
The ‘haze’ is a vast cloud of smoke extensive enough to affect neighbouring
states and resulting from a conglomeration of brush and forest fires (Cotton
1999: 331). The 1997-98 occurrence was the largest, but not sole, case. The
fires resulted from unsustainable logging practices perpetuated through corrupt
linkages with the Suharto regime. The incident contributed to debates at the
1998 ASEAN summit of foreign affairs ministers over the adoption of “a more

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 15

interventionist approach to its common concerns” (Cotton 1999: 350).
Furthermore, the contributions of environmental and advocacy groups
highlighted the supportive role that NGOs could play in addressing regional
problems. While not immediately eroding ASEAN’s principle of non-
intervention, such transnational crises will continue to challenge the
organisation’s traditional intramural diplomacy and the unquestioning support
given to member regimes.

Although ASEAN and its members continue to use the principle of non-
intervention to defend against external criticism over human rights abuses, the
rise of an increasingly critical domestic and regional civil society severely
challenge the legitimacy of such rebuttals (Kraft 2001: 179). Southeast Asian
NGOs have, for example, rejected the position taken in the 1993 Bangkok
Declaration (Caballero-Anthony 2004a: 181); challenged ASEAN’s ‘constructive
engagement’ approach to Burma’s human rights situation (Acharya 1995: 176);
and lobbied for a greater focus on human security within regional diplomacy
(Caballero-Anthony 2004a: 179).

The increasing capacity of domestic and regional civil society is a marked

phenomenon since the 1990s (Caballero-Anthony 2004b: 568). In the face of
intransigent political elites within entrenched regimes this growth is downright
subversive and has led to hostile responses on the part of state authorities
(Verma 2002: 125). Critics therefore suggest that rather than addressing civil
society concerns, ASEAN has been merely “paying lip service to an increasingly
assertive public demand for accountability” (Mohamed 2002: 230-231). It is
difficult to contend with this view so long as ASEAN stringently holds to its
institutionalised norm of non-intervention. As such, the most significant trend
within domestic and regional civil society has been the movements to establish

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 16

national and regional human rights mechanisms which directly challenge this
principle.

Human rights mechanisms providing institutionalised checks on arbitrary abuses

of power are the most feasible means to substantially improve human rights
within ASEAN and individual member states. To date, Thailand, Malaysia,
Indonesia and the Philippines have established national human rights
commissions with varying capacities to directly address grievances over human
rights abuses (Caballero-Anthony 2004a: 182-183). Although these
mechanisms have been hampered by state interference they offer in principle
the most effective means of promoting human rights at the national level. The
reluctance of other ASEAN states to establish such national commissions points
to their potential effectiveness in this regard.

An ASEAN regional human rights mechanism has garnered even less support
from member regimes, challenging as it does state power from outside national
boundaries (Mohamed 2002: 247). The absence in Southeast Asia, of any kind
of codified regional human rights standards is conspicuous given the global
trend to establish such measures (Campbell and McDonald 2000: 268).
Notwithstanding a declaration in 1993, in which ASEAN foreign ministers
“agreed that ASEAN should also consider the establishment of an appropriate
regional mechanism on human rights” (ASEAN 1993: 18) and the continued
lobbying by the unofficial Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights
Mechanism, observers suggest that no such instrument will be established until
national mechanisms are more pervasive throughout ASEAN states (Verma
2002: 113). Moreover, such a mechanism “is difficult to foster in the region
because its very existence will be seen to undermine the concept of the strong,
autonomous and economically-sound nation-state that Southeast Asian
governments have traditionally promoted” (Mohamed 2002: 231). National

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human rights commissions and, in turn, a regional one, are unlikely until further
regional democratisation provides an empowered public capable of demanding
regime accountability.

To some extent the ongoing process of democratisation within ASEAN states

has already begun to challenge the prioritisation of regime security and serves
as a call for greater attention to human rights concerns (Tan 2005). The moves
towards democracy within Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand following the
Asian financial crisis have contributed to the wider regional human rights
consciousness. As James Tang sees it, these “‘newly liberalised states’ have
sought to accommodate a more pluralistic polity and become more
representative to a widening domestic human rights agenda” (1995: 4).
Indeed, it was former Thai Foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan who proposed the
more interventionist ‘flexible engagement’ policy towards Burma’s human rights
crisis (Kraft 2001: 172). It is reflective of the limited democratic concerns
across Southeast Asia that the only other member state to support the proposal
was the Philippines (Katsumata 2004: 238). The eventual consensus within
ASEAN was to adopt ‘enhanced interaction’ whereby “individual member states
could comment on other members’ domestic affairs although ASEAN should
not” (Haacke 2005: 189-190). In effect this allowed for the release of
democratic pressures bilaterally rather than straining intra-ASEAN diplomacy
where the majority of states remained, to varying extents, authoritarian. As
such, there remains little substantive change in ASEAN’s “normative terrain and
institutional practice” (Haacke 2005: 212-213).

The economic growth of ASEAN countries has been a significant factor in the
democratisation of member states. With the concomitant expansion of a more
self-confident middle class, political elites within some ASEAN states have had
to address popular demands for political reform (Ahmed and Ghoshal 1999:

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767). This has led, for example, to the drafting of a more progressive Thai
constitution allowing individuals to charge the state with human rights violations
(Ahmed and Ghoshal 1999: 768; Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand 1997:
Chapter 3/28). Middle class expansion in certain countries has also served to
promote the independence of civil society at the expense of state cooption
(Saravanamuttu 2001: 94). Furthermore, the process of democratisation de-
legitimises ASEAN’s traditional “elite-centred regionalism.” (Acharya 2003: 381).
While democratisation within ASEAN member states remains restricted and
continues to be challenged by the fearful throws of a threatened political elite,
the above trends suggest the possibility of democratic expansion in Southeast
Asia and, in turn, the democratisation of ASEAN and improved regional
promotion of human rights.

It is not so much that these challenges to Southeast Asian regime security have
been effective in raising human rights to the forefront of ASEAN diplomacy.
Indeed, the above evidence suggests the contrary. Rather, the resistance
shown by regional political elites demonstrates the continuing reluctance of
these groups to give ground on human rights claims that threaten their illiberal
rule.

Conclusion
This examination highlights the measures taken by Southeast Asian political
elites to further the longevity of their respective fiefdoms. Since the
establishment of ASEAN at the height of the Cold War in 1967; through the
post-Cold War era and the Asian financial crisis; and into the present ‘War on
Terror’, the organisation’s role has been primarily an instrumental one in
bolstering the security of member regimes. There are, however, factors that
have begun to challenge ASEAN’s traditional state-centric policies; namely:
external criticism over illiberal rule, transnational crises, a burgeoning domestic

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 19

and regional civil society, the movement to establish national and regional
human rights mechanisms and wider Southeast Asian democratisation.
Nevertheless, such challenges have continued to meet with regime
intransigence as political elites remain reluctant to relinquish their status quo
power. ASEAN as an institution has sought to manage the international human
rights regime in a manner subversive of the very emancipatory goal the
movement aims for.

The long road to social justice through political equality, not to mention
economic equality, requires determined contestation of the justificatory rhetoric
of entrenched illiberal regimes. Although ASEAN member states continue to
manipulate the organisation for self-serving ends, cynical responses seem
myopic. The historical continuity of ASEAN’s subversion of human rights is only
half the picture, as resistance to such practice has been increasingly
demonstrated throughout the region. While the emancipatory project of the
international human rights regime is threatened by the corruptive character of
power politics, the entrenchment of illiberal regimes is undermined by collective
solidarity in the name of such rights and continued vigilance against
authoritarian rule.

Stephen Campbell recently completed a Masters of International Studies

(Peace and Conflict Resolution) at the University of Queensland. He is currently
working with the Karen Human Rights Group in Mae Sot, Thailand.

Dialogue (2006) 4:2 20

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