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ASIA: More Democracy Means Better Lives, Says UNDP
By Mahesh Uniyal
BANGKOK (IPS) - Asian nations have entered the new millennium enjoying much greater political freedom, says a new U.N. report released Thursday, asserting that this is vital for durable economic growth.
This is specially true in East Asia where the economic crisis that began in 1997 ''exposed'' the ''neglect'' of civil and political rights, adds the Human Development Report 2000 issued by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).
According to the report, while the signs of East Asia's rapid recovery from the crisis are proof of the region's sound economic base, the financial trouble also led to a ''remarkable change'' in its civil and political rights situation.
''Much of East Asia is not only recovering from the economic crisis but doing so under greater political freedom than before,'' noted the UNDP's annual survey of progress by nations of the world in improving the quality of life of their citizens.
Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Taiwan have ''become more open, with greater recognition of the need to advance civil and political rights,'' it added.
Thailand comes in for special praise with comprehensive guarantees in its new 1997 constitution being cited as an example for other East Asian nations that are trying to make the transition from centralised, authoritarian rule to genuine democracy.
''I would like to congratulate Thailand for its most remarkable progress. We've seen here that democracy and an open and vibrant society are indeed two pillars of strength that support the country through difficult times,'' said J K Robert England, the UNDP's resident representative in Thailand, while releasing the report here ahead of its global launch in Paris.
This year, the report, which annually ranks 174 countries by gains in raising life expectancy, educational standards and material well- being, looks at the relation between human rights and human development.
''Human rights and human development are in fact two sides of the same coin. They are both aimed at expanding peoples' life opportunities and at securing human freedom, dignity and equity for every individual,'' said England.
The report finds greater concern among society and governments in Asian nations for civil and political rights, which is a ''far cry from earlier false claims that 'Asian values' justified neglect'' of these freedoms, argues the UNDP report.
However, nations like Cambodia and Indonesia have a long way to go toward raising a real democratic system over ''the ashes of a brutal past.''
This would involve ''healing deep wounds, taming repressive institutions, changing violent attitudes born of conflict and creating a culture of consensus,'' says the report.
Cambodia went through decades of civil war and strife, including the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge in the seventies.
Indonesia's President Suharto was forced to step down last year amid public outrage and riots stoked in part by dissatisfaction over the effects of the Asian crisis.
The survey also advises other multi-ethnic Asian countries to learn from Malaysia's example of protecting the rights of its minority Chinese. It says this policy has not only successfully racial tension but redressed economic imbalances between the affluent Chinese and the majority Malays - though the New Economic Policy continues to have its critics as well.
The Malaysian government's answer to race riots in 1969 was not to nationalise the riches of the ethnic Chinese community, but to use affirmative state action to address the grievances of the majority. By the early 1990s, the gap between the per capita incomes of the two communities was substantially narrowed, according to the UNDP report.
While the average Malaysian Chinese earned twice as much as the Malay in 1969, the latter's income was two-thirds of the Malaysian Chinese in 1990.
However, merely ensuring political and civil rights is not enough as even democracies can ''crush minorities.'' It lists the case of Sri Lanka where, despite multi-party democracy and guaranteed civil and political rights, the majority Sinhala people began ''imposing a single-language national identity.''
Without saying so clearly, the report indicates that this absence of ''inclusive'' democracy is at the root of the 17-year-old internal conflict that has claimed more than 60,000 lives in the Indian Ocean island nation. Tamil Tiger rebels are battling for a separate home for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the north and northeast.
''The spirit of democracy has to be inclusive, embracing the principle that power must be dispersed and shared,'' it observes.
''The multiple layers of people's identity and loyalty -- to their ethnic group, their region and their state - have to be recognised and given fair play in democratic institutions -- or explode into conflict,'' it warns.
Political freedom is also vital for protecting one of the most basic rights -- freedom from hunger, says the report. This lack of self- rule led to the worst food famines in colonial India in the early 1940s, which killed more than two million people, it adds.
The world's second most populous nation also got freedom from hunger with independence from British rule in 1947. Anti-famine policies designed by the colonial rulers did not work because people ''had no political voice to demand that they be activated,'' says the report.
''A democratic India has been able to pull back from the brink of famine because popular pressures - through the media, an active civil society and democratic multi-party political processes - do not allow the government to remain inactive,'' it points out.
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