Economy & Trade, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

APEC SUMMIT: Human Rights Take a Back Seat to Economic Interests

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Nov 12 2004 (IPS) - At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held next week in the Chilean capital, the agenda will include multilateral cooperation in the fight against terrorism, but will completely ignore the human rights violations committed by a majority of its members.

"Both China and Russia have troubling records of human rights abuses," international analyst Raúl Sohr told IPS. "But there isn’t a single country in the world that refuses to trade with China," one of the biggest APEC members.

The violations committed in both nations figure prominently in an Amnesty International (AI) report on the APEC member countries, which also highlights the poor human rights record of the United States, including the mistreatment of war criminals and the wide-scale use of the death penalty.

Presidents George W. Bush of the United States, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hu Jintao of China will be the most prominent figures in attendance at the APEC summit.

Established in 1989 as an informal dialogue group, APEC has become a powerful 21-member multinational bloc aimed at promoting free trade and economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

Chile, Mexico and Peru are the only Latin American members of the forum, which also comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Viet Nam.

APEC’s 21 member economies represent 55 percent of world trade and 57 percent of global GDP. Together, they are home to 40 percent of the world’s population – roughly 2.5 billion people – and accounted for 70 percent of global economic growth over the last decade, thanks largely to the spectacular economic expansion experienced by China with its "market communism" model.

At the upcoming Nov. 19-21 summit in Santiago, the leaders of the 21 economies will study the idea of converting APEC into a massive free trade agreement to help achieve the group’s free trade goals, divided into two stages: liberalisation of trade among its developed nation members by 2010 and with the developing countries by 2020.

Also on the agenda will be a recurring theme since 2001: fighting terrorism by coordinating the efforts of national law enforcement authorities and sharing information on suspicious movements of both people and money across international borders.

But as Sohr, an international analyst for the Chilevisión TV network, pointed out, "Respect for human rights is one of the most effective ways of preventing the proliferation of terrorism, and should therefore be a prime concern of the APEC members."

Although APEC deals fundamentally with economic cooperation, "there should also be room for expressing reservations regarding the human rights violations committed in its member economies," said Sohr, who is also the author of numerous books, including The Wars That Await Us.

A coalition of left-wing organisations has filed a lawsuit against Bush in a Chilean court, for violations of international conventions on torture and the treatment of prisoners of war, based on the cruel and degrading mistreatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by U.S. soldiers.

The judge who heard the case in a court of first instance declared it inadmissible, on the grounds that the U.S. president is entitled to immunity under conventions on the protection of foreign diplomats and dignitaries. The plaintiffs, however, have filed an appeal that is still waiting to be heard in a Santiago court.

The AI report also documents the mistreatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and in military installations in Afghanistan.

The human rights watchdog additionally notes that since 1976, the death penalty has been handed down 885 times in U.S. courts, and some of those sentenced were under 18 years of age when the offences were committed.

Sohr pointed out that in the republic of Chechnya, which is seeking independence from the Russian Federation, "atrocious massacres have been perpetrated by the Russian armed forces, but the international community has maintained complicit silence, as a means of preserving an anti-terrorist alliance."

With regard to China, the AI report notes that the authorities have done nothing to introduce legal and institutional reforms aimed at bringing an end to the grave violations of human rights.

Behind the Chinese "economic miracle", AI says, there are thousands of prisoners who are deprived of the freedom of expression and face the risk of abuse in the country’s jails, while the death penalty is used on a massive scale. Ethnic and religious persecution of Tibetans, Muslim minorities and other groups is also widespread, the organisation reports.

Repression rooted in religious exclusion, xenophobia and national security measures is common in many of the Asian members of APEC, such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Viet Nam, according to the report.

Human rights violations also occur in some of the most developed member states, including Japan, where the use of torture in jails has been denounced, and 20 percent of women are physically or psychologically abused by their spouses.

Violence and discrimination against the aboriginal peoples of Canada and Australia are frequently reported, and both countries, along with Japan and New Zealand, are accused of violating the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers.

Mistreatment of prisoners is also commonplace in Chile, Mexico and Peru. AI additionally highlighted the murders and disappearances of hundreds of women in the Mexican cities of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, as well as the threats and intimidation against human rights activists in Peru.

"There undoubtedly should be concern for human rights in APEC, because the economy should not only serve the interests of profit, it must also serve human beings," said attorney Nelson Caucoto, a prominent defender of victims of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) in Chile.

For his part, Patricio Quevedo, a representative of the Chilean branch of AI, told IPS, "It is wrong to subordinate the defence of human rights to economic interests."

Quevedo also pointed to the lack of a space for the participation of civil society in APEC. "We are saddened by the fact that economic affairs take complete precedence, and we have called on the APEC members to pay more attention to human rights, and to develop policies to protect them," he added.

"The issue of human rights cuts across all countries and the community of nations," said Caucoto, who criticised the stance of countries that place economic and commercial interests above the defence of basic freedoms in other states.