Human rights, anti-corruption must be linked: Sociologist
Human rights, anti-corruption must be linked: Sociologist
MANILA (JP): Human rights activists, particularly in Southeast
Asia, have yet to link their campaigns with anticorruption
awareness, a sociologist said.
Malaysian Syed Husein Alatas, known in Indonesia for his
translated book titled Sosiologi Korupsi, said yesterday that
rights advocates have failed to clearly see the relation between
corruption and human rights violations.
Alatas was one of the speakers of a two-day conference on
human rights, democracy and development, with focus on Southeast
Asia and European values.
"No corrupt government supports human rights...no corrupt
government wants change," Alatas said in the talks organized by
the Germany-based Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a non-government
organization.
Authorities in such governments "do not want to step down and
play according to the games," Alatas said.
"You can never solve the human rights problem until you solve
the corruption problem," he said. Both issues must be campaigned
simultaneously, he said.
As long as corruption is tolerated, the raising of human
rights issue is "not genuine" and functions only to embarrass
governments, he said. Authorities who hate criticism suppress the
press because of the need to have the resources to stay in power,
he added.
Corruption affects far more people such as in the form of food
scarcity and the effect it has on public health, while arrests
and subsequent torture, for instance, are among the effects of
corrupt authorities.
He told about 40 participants mainly from seven Southeast
Asian countries that activists have yet to learn "from the simple
farmer, who thinks every minute of the pest which is about to
destroy his crop".
Corruption, he said, "is the pest which could destroy the crop
of human rights".
The failure to link human rights to corruption among
authorities, "is like asking gangsters to enforce law and order,"
he told The Jakarta Post.
The 68-year-old professor at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
was talking on drawing from lessons in history and beliefs held
by Asians, to socialize human rights which have become values in
society -- "not the values of the rulers".
History needs to be studied and the facts distributed by human
rights advocates, he said. While corruption may be culturally
embedded in the region, few people know from history that it is
not condoned.
"For instance, how many Moslems know that some of the close
friends of the Prophet Mohammad were punished because of
corruption?" he said.
The campaign for both anticorruption awareness and human
rights would be more supported if people in the region could
relate to experiences in Asian history, Alatas said.
An effective campaign must come from within, as outside
pressure would not create enough public anger, he added. There is
no need to wait for pressure such as from the World Trade
Organization or the World Bank, for instance, as this would not
foster human rights.
In the later session on democracy and development, Marzuki
Darusman of the National Commission on Human Rights, referred to
"the rampant prevalence of unbridled corruption as a demoralizing
consequence of political disempowerment".
"The paralysis to effect meaningful corrective political
action against the abuse of public trust is today a gross
democratic deficiency," Marzuki said. (anr)