Page 51 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

relevance to mainland Southeast Asia where a great number of natural
resource rich communities, large and small, have per force been converted
into “minorities”. More of this, to be later touched upon. In short, the
principle and practice of exclusive state sovereignty itself turns out to be
infringing upon human security and potential creativity.
It is precisely against this background of the current nation state
regime that the phenomenon of minorities is being artificially created. It is
merely man-made under a specific structure of power relationships that
counts only the two levels of authoritative value: nation state and inter-
nations community. And all this, with no due regard to the most basic
social and political entities at the grassroots. That is why, under such
domineering and oppressive structure, the number of minorities keeps on
proliferating into quite a variety of forms and predicaments. This is well
demonstrated, for example, in the case of those in the frontier areas
between “Myanmar” and Thailand. Presumably, it is not much different
elsewhere. The areas accommodate a good number of ethnic and tribal
groups and communities, large and small, with socio-cultural identities
and governing structures of their own independent of the others. A few
like Shan, Kachin, and Chin, for instance, do have a high level of culture
and governing structure as city state. As a matter of fact, all these “becoming
minorities” have been struggling for centuries to preserve their identities
and autonomy. And then suddenly under the newly-formed nation statism,
there emerge new categories of minorities, lawfully dubbed “refugees” and
“internally displaced peoples”, now numbering some 13 millions and 21.8
millions respectively all over the world, according to the U.S. Committee
for Refugees’ Report. Of this, about 1 million within the nation state of
Myanmar, and of course a good number unavoidably encroaching into the
neighbouring Thailand.
All these phenomena have already been well known. It is the moot
point as to how to deal with them. Sympathy and humanitarian aid abound
and tirelessly keep on going. What is glaringly lacking is a kind of holistic

OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 45