AsiaRights : Issue Seven

EDITORIAL

There was a time in the billboard charts of human rights abuses Burma and Australia were ranked far apart, with Burma/Myanmar roughly situated as the ‘bad state' and Australia as the ‘good state.' But times are changing. Although the Burmese regime has remained intransient and her human rights records steadfastly ranks amongst the worst in the world, Australia's record has deteriorated. Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, especially in detention centres and border legislation has shown a newer and deeply disturbing trend to bending human rights. Issue Seven investigates some of the responses both internally and externally to these two nation's recent human rights records.

In Australia, the three-year Temporary Protection Visa, or TPV was created in October 1999 in an attempt to deter and control asylum seekers arriving by boat since then more than 9,000 Temporary Protection Visas have been issued. Taylor-Neumann argues that the TPV legislation created a state of exception to the Rule of Law by excising a group of residents on Australian soil from the full protection of their rights. One such group live in the Murray Bridge community Taylor-Neumann engaged argument sets out the devastating effects of this unnecessary and Sisyphean bureaucracy on human beings, and the hope that is encapsulated by the inclusion by the Murray Bridge community of these people who have been literally caged by abusive Australian legislation.

The people of Burma/Myanmar have suffered for two generations under military dictatorships. Their economy, legal and social orders, cultural diversity and political freedoms have all steadily declined during that time. In an indepth and thorough re apprasail of the situation in Burma, Kinley and Wilson examine Burma's human rights record, considered by many to be one of the worst worldwide. They authors argue that the various responses to the regime from international diplomatic condemnation, imposition of economic sanctions, and withdrawal of aid and international co-operation, to responses of countries in the region typically less punitive measures of conciliation and dialogue rather than isolation and punishment. The authors argue that neither approach appears to have had any discernable impact on the attitude of Myanmar's military Government or on the plight of its people. New strategies to break the impasse are now being contemplated in both the West (more conditional engagement) and the East (more strident conditionality). Kinley and Wilson analyse a controversial Australian human rights initiative that ran in Myanmar from 2000 to 2003, which might be considered a forerunner to these new ‘third way' approaches. They describe the objectives, nature, composition and implementation of the program; assess its advantages and disadvantages, its risks and potential, and explore some of the criticisms and praise the program engendered. They suggest that some tentative lessons in terms of the protection and promotion of human rights in both the specific context of Myanmar, and also, by implication, in the global community's approach to intransigent, pariah states may be drawn from this example.

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