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"Asian Values" and the Rule of Law

By
Alice Erh-Soon Tay

Since the end of the Second World War, numerous new, independent states have been created, springing from the former colonies in Asia. Originally applying to Europe, the words of Defoe and the 19th century quip are also timely reminders to the Asian states seeking in recent decades national identity and cultural uniqueness.
So what is "new" about Asian nation-building and identity-seeking in the years following independence? There are several significant contexts in which they arose and which drove their course of development. These contexts have to be visited and given their place if we are to explain or seek to explain, how "Asian values" come to be used as a defining feature of present-day Asian societies, what they consist of and how they relate to the role of the rule of law in Asian societies.

For most of the East Asian leaders the argument is as much about economic priorities as it is about treatment of subjects, people and peoples. "Asian values" by placing the family, the community, society and nation before the individual, puts the claims for economic development before civil and political rights. Economic development, supposedly, would result in improved standards of living; the denial or postponement of civil and political rights - freedoms of movement, speech, dissent, association, and so on - would help maintain the social order and political stability necessary for economic progress and create the benefits that flow from this. One is tempted to ask, "Necessary for what and for whom?"
Let me end on a note of hope. In 1992, Asia-Pacific Non-Governmental Organisations, in preparation for the World Conference on Human Rights, issued a statement with the following reference to the universality of human rights:
Universal human rights standards are rooted in many cultures. We affirm the basis of universality of human rights which afford protection to all of humanity, including special groups such as women, children, minorities and indigenous peoples, workers, refugees and displaced persons, the disabled and the elderly. While advocating cultural pluralism, those cultural practices which derogate from universally accepted human rights, including women's rights, must not be tolerated.
As human rights are of universal concern and are universal in value, the advocacy of human rights cannot be considered to be an encroachment upon national sovereign.

For further reading please look below as:
http://www.juragentium.unifi.it/en/surveys/rol/tay.htm

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