Page 69 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

violence on the part of state authorities. And, interestingly, according to the
NHRC’s examining report, those involved in the incident are not confined
only to the operating police officers, but also include the ones in higher
up accountable both at the level of field command and at ministerial
policy level. Nothing has been done about all these wrong doings so far, despite
the NHRC’s report accordingly. At any rate, it is one of those cases that is
clearly valuable and relevant in the process of human rights education as
mentioned above.
And finally, there currently emerges the collective and communal
dimension of human rights that has been widely and increasingly
articulated and demonstrated under the adverse social and cultural impact
of post-war economic development and globalization. And now the
community rights come to be recognized and guaranteed under the current
reform-inspired 1997 Constitution. This is characteristic of Thailand as
part and parcel of the world’s tropical resource-based regions, and for that
matter the ASEAN as a whole. Indeed, the NHRC of Thailand earnestly
looks forward to close and concrete cooperation and coordination in this
particular field within the region. In a sense, this is in contradistinction to
unbridled individualism and private property rights of the West. All of which
is not quite universal as it is made out to be. So the common efforts in this
direction would greatly help contribute to the process of universalizing
human rights with a view to cultural pluralism and diversity, while doing
away with both essentialism and relativism: one claiming monopoly of
the partial definition of human rights, while the other denying the universality
of human aspiration for freedom.
All these lines of thought are within the purview of the NHRC
of Thailand, and hopefully we can get somewhere. At least, a sense of
direction has been set, and this is what we have been trying to do in a
most tedious process of institution building and development of human
rights culture at all levels of society.

OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 63