Page 13 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

of status quo.
In truth, poverty and marginalization is one fundamental problem
of deprivation, that is, deprivation of the people’s rights to access to
resources. P.M. Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand for once did indeed talk
about something like “transforming rights into capital”, to the delight
of listeners like myself. But the phrase somehow is being shifted to
“transforming assets into capital” in the fashion of modern business ideology
in the age of globalization. To take on an optimistic note, nonetheless,
the two could be coordinated, thus enlarging the scope for public policy
manoeuvre and performance. It significantly means that what is called
public policy should not be left to mere one-sided top-down affairs.
Meanwhile, it is patently lacking active and positive contribution from the
bottom-up. It is symptomatic of under-developed state of the body politic,
no matter how much you gain in terms of the growth of GDP. Such is
precisely the current state of our peoples in this part of the world, in actual
fact the world over as people are perforce to come under development
and globalization syndrome. Saying all this need not be anti-development
and globalization, as too often falsely claimed. Only that democracy and
development must go hand in hand to make human progress. It is certainly
not the question of either one or another. And here human rights have
a vital contribution to make. So why be so afraid and unnecessarily
suspicious of human freedom and progress?
Admittedly, I am somewhat long-winded here. I need to, I am afraid.
It is just to make a point to demonstrate how so closely inter-related it is
between civil and political rights on one hand, and on the other hand
economic, social, and cultural rights. Indeed, it is characteristic of tropical
resource-based societies of Southeast Asia, where community way of life
together with open access to resources is the norm. We have already
learned of the adverse lessons of the enclosure movements in the midst of
Industrial Revolution in eighteenth century England. Similar things are
happening in our tropical resource-based Southeast Asia. Hence

OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 7