Page 8 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

with a view to overcoming all the politico-military discrepancies and
contradictions, as well as promoting cohesiveness and solidarity, within
the region. The impressive record of the Southeast Asian peoples’
resourcefulness and resilience was well taken note of in their long history
of struggles for freedom and progress. It remained the question of how all
these potential endogenous qualities could be mobilized with a collective
sense of positive and creative regionalism. This was not only to serve as
countervailing force vis-à-vis the untoward intrusion of external powers,
but also positively to collaborate in the common task of socio-economic
reconstruction. And along with that, re-conceptualizing the norms and
practices of human rights and freedom in the global framework of peace,
security, and justice. Then, thanks to the foresight of the leaders of the time,
the non-military ASEAN of 1967 made the great and positive departure
from the SEATO era of bipolar confrontation, thus paving the path for
1
reconciliation and mutual trust. But, as we all know, it was only after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire in early 1990 that the way
was open for effective rapprochement among the Southeast Asian
neighbors, and thus spontaneous entrance into the open arms of ASEAN.
My point of recalling our recent past is certainly not to revive all
those previous nightmares of falling prey to the international politics of
great powers’ rivalries and domination. That should absolutely be things of
the past, with ASEAN as institutional framework for creative and forward
looking in the current world of rapid and radical change. With a certain looking
back, I believe, it would greatly help put our common task here in proper
perspective. At this point, it is obvious that, in terms of both time and space,
the dialogues on an ASEAN human rights mechanism that have persistently
and progressively been going on ever since the 1997 ASEAN Vision 2000,
are quite achievements in themselves. That is, against the background of

1
Saneh Chamarik, “Towards Positive Regionalism in Southeast Asia”, paper delivered at the
conference on Peace and Transformation in the Asia-Pacific Region, Yokohama, Kanagawa,
Japan, 26-29 March, 1984.

2 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND