By Luke Hunt
A submission to the UN Human Rights Council calls out ASEAN countries for torture and extrajudicial killings.
A submission by the Hong Kong-based Asia Legal Resource Center (ALRC) to the Human Rights Council in Geneva went largely ignored by the mainstream media over the last week, making just a few paragraphs in newspapers with sharp-eyed reporters.
The ALRC has turned up 10 countries where torture and extrajudicial killings are common. The great shame is that five of those countries – Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines – are among them and are all part of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The remaining five named in the submission – Bangladesh, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan – are nearby. It said torture was often related to deaths in custody or extrajudicial executions which were “common to these states.”
“Despite having some of the most stable and rapidly developing countries in the world, Asia is notorious for extrajudicial executions,” the submission said.
“Both state and non-state actors commit these crimes. As in all human rights abuses committed by state agencies, when it comes to extrajudicial executions, Asian states lack prompt and independent investigation and adjudication modalities.”
The submission will go before the 26th session of the Human Rights Council later this month and was hardly a ringing endorsement of “the ASEAN Way” amid advanced plans to form a single ASEAN economic community by the end of 2015.
Read the full story at The Diplomat