The lofty goal of recognizing and defending human rights and Myanmar’s State Peace and Development Council, i.e. military dictators, are difficult to place in the same country, let alone the same region. Yet that appears to be exactly what the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has at least attempted to do.

From the Bangkok Post:

Thailand’s last chance to pull a rabbit out of the hat and turn the ASEAN summit by the sea into a success seemed to rest on the long-delayed launch of the 10-member ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. The birth of the regional body was mildly welcomed by the United Nations and also NGOs as a vehicle to address human rights abuses in the region, but it is already being criticised for a lack of boldness in its design.

The hopes of having a functioning rights body in the near term have been dashed by the unashamed intervention of some ASEAN governments in the national selection processes of their commissioners _ though in fact the word commissioner is not officially used.

I’ve always thought that shame, the concept of honor, was one that played a strong role in Asian governments. Clearly that is not the case, they having learned well the lessons of the West. A glance at some of the members of the commission in instructive.

Burma has appointed its ambassador to the UN in New York, Kyaw Tint Swe, a great junta defender, as its AICHR representative.

Brunei has Abdul Hamid Bakal, a shariah judge, as its commissioner.

Particularly dismaying to outside observers is the presence of three of the body’s rules-drafters: Cambodia’s Om Yentieng, Laos’s Bounkeut Sangsomsak and Philippines’s Rosario Manalo.

The trio were members of the High-Level Panel, which drafted the AICHR’s toothless terms of reference. Most embarrassing perhaps is the presence of Mr Bounkeut, since he is also deputy foreign minister of Laos.

Only Indonesia and Thailand produced genuine champions from civil society groups with solid human rights credentials. Rafendi Djamin is a straightforward activist from Indonesia’s Human Rights Working Group.

All this looks like simply more condo building in the coop by the foxes.