Asian values?

Asian values? What are Asian values? The protesters at the Australian Embassy on Sept. 22 seem to think they know, but I must confess I remain in the dark.

Are Asian values represented by the Mongolian herdsman, the Parsee merchant, the Thai go-go dancer, the Israeli soldier (ah, the Israeli soldier), the son or daughter of an Iraqi or Yemeni Jew; he or she is just as much an Asia as the Bengali poet or the secret policeman in Myanmar.

Are Asian values, this impossible abstraction, also at work in the death of Sander Thoenes, whose mutilated body was found at a Dili roadside the other day? Or in the lying, cheating, immoral attempt by "certain" people to lay the blame for East Timor's tragedy on the foreign media?

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta