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Friday : Session F :
Asian Human Rights
Dr. Toshi Yuki Tanaka
Crimes Against Humanity: Perspectives Towards Revitalizing the Spirit
of Hiroshima
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki typifies two kinds of crimes
against humanity – indiscriminate bombing and mass killing.
In the European theatre of World War II, indiscriminate bombing to terrorize civilians escalated as the war intensified, and many civilians in major cities such as Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Berlin, and Dresden were victimized as both the Axis and Allied sides were engaged in such bombing which inevitably resulted in mass slaughter. In the Pacific too, many cities on Japan’s main islands became the targets of U.S. air raids. For example, on March 10, 1945, about 100,000 people in the Tokyo metropolitan area were burnt to death within a few hours by fire-bombs. Indiscriminate bombing reached its peak when mass-killing atomic weapons were used to annihilate two Japanese cities in August 1945. Yet what the Japanese also need to remember is the fact that it was the Japanese Imperial Forces who engaged in indiscriminate bombing first in the Asia Pacific region. The victims of Japan’s attacks were Chinese civilians in Nanjing, Wuhan, Shanghai and Chongqing.
The aim of my paper is to find a way for the citizens of Hiroshima to
overcome their existing self-imposed restriction on nuclear issues and
revitalize both the realms of research and peace action through a study
of the history of indiscriminate bombing.
Dr. Toshi
Yuki Tanaka (Professor), Hiroshima Peace Institut, Hiroshima
City, Japan
http://serv.peace.hiroshima-cu.ac.jp/
Ayaz Latif Palijo
Untitled
The tragedy of 11th September and its after effects have endangered
the fate of millions of South and Central Asian people. Since early 90s
more than 80 million people in South Asia have become unemployed and as
a consequence, millions of people have been reduced to absolute poverty
and hundreds of thousands have been forced into immigration and crimes.
It is an established fact that South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular
remained a land divided between the hopes of the rich and the despair
of the poor in which the richest one-fifth earned almost 40 percent of
the region's income and the poorest one-fifth makes do with less than
10 percent. Dealing with issues like poverty, corruption, religious extremism,
governance, economies, gender discrimination and social injustice, our
today begins the struggle of survival for 115 million poverty-ridden destitutes,
and tomorrow threatens the future of 395 million illiterate adults. In
case of Pakistan, which has one of the lowest literacy rates and lowest
indicators of gender development in the world, widespread poverty prevails
because of most powerful feudal-industrial interests and illiteracy. Now
a days internationally more emphasis and more concentration have been
paid to right to say, job security, security against crime and civil and
human rights worldwide but Pakistan legs behind developed world and Fareast
Asia in terms of Human Rights awareness, refugee and prisoner rights and
individual security. At the threshold of the 21st century, we live in
the worst governed region in the world where illiteracy, violence, human
trafficking, terrorism, honour killings, child marriage, trafficking of
women and children and bonded labor are upheld in the name of traditions
and religion, where women are often denied basic human rights and minorities
continue to struggle against prejudice and discrimination.
In this catastrophic situation SRC and other human rights, advocacy and women organizations stress that civil, human, legal & political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social & cultural rights and they work for recognition and promotion of individual civil & political liberties and securities. Since early 90s we have been working and advocating for equal opportunities of education, freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of movement, association & expression, for religious, conscientious & philosophical liberty and struggling and lobbying against biased educational policies, fundamentalism, detention without trial, torture and other cultural and human maltreatments of rural communities.
The conflicts between religion, human rights & ethnic identities,
the gendered causes & consequences of religious movements would be
the prime concerns of this paper and it would also focus on religious
perspective of social change in South and Central Asia. The paper would
also try to unveil the class privilege and inequality. It will discuss
the institutional strategy of different NGOs for Peace Restoration in
South Asia, Scientific and Technological Literacy and would also discuss
the impacts of organizing informal village education network for women,
former students of religious schools (MADARSAS) and prisoners. The paper
will expose the religious fanaticism and intelligence agencies sponsored
Muslim Fundamentalism of eighties and nineties and will focus on the role
of academicians, politicians and NGO policy makers for a just, democratic,
peaceful and tolerant / secular society and for community based Technological
know how and scientific skills. It will also discuss the future role of
NGOs, CBOs and Farmer Organizations (FOs) in grassroots participatory
Human Rights movement and development of ethical values. The paper will
seek to demonstrate how rescue-driven, awareness and advocacy organizations
in Sindh Pakistan can contribute to strategic policy changes in favour
of end of terrorism and trafficking and for high literacy rate, regional
peace and remote rural awareness.
Ayaz Latif Palijo
Advocate: B-48, Prince Town, Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan
Badrinath Rao
The Best Is Yet To Be: A Critique Of The State And Civil Society Initiatives
On Human Rights In India
In June 1975, Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, imposed
a state of emergency and suspended fundamental rights and liberties for
the next 19 months. Since then, human rights and civil liberties have
become central to the political discourse in India. To oppose the draconian
measures initiated during the emergency, concerned civil libertarians
and human rights activists formed the Peoples Union of Civil Liberties
(PUCL) in 1975. In the last 25 years, the PUCL has grown into a nation-wide
movement and has been in the forefront of virtually all major human rights
struggles. Functioning as a citizen’s movement with no funding or
support from the government, it has relentlessly exposed human rights
abuses by the state and its agencies and provided relief to victims. More
importantly, PUCL has created a culture of human rights and civil liberties
where none existed before. In stark contrast to this citizen’s initiative,
the state in India has been a major violator of human rights. It was only
in 1993, following international condemnation of its dismal human rights
record, the state promulgated the Human Rights Act, 1993, and established
the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Though hamstrung by statutory
limitations and limited resources, in the last decade, NHRC has repeatedly
intervened on behalf of the victims of human rights abuses and held the
state accountable for its violations. Yet, given the magnitude of human
rights violations on the one hand and the reluctance of the state to guarantee
the basic human rights of its citizens on the other, the efforts of NHRC
have been largely symbolic. This paper tries to offer a critique of the
human rights initiatives of both the civil society and the state by examining
the strengths and limitations of PUCL and the NHRC. It argues that a genuine
commitment to human rights on the part of the state would require it to
reinstate accountability and transparency in its affairs and provide full
autonomy to bodies like the NHRC and other law enforcement agencies. The
interventions of the PUCL would be more useful if, in addition to addressing
day-to-day human rights issues, it works for a fundamental transformation
of the polity based on social justice and human rights.
Badrinath Rao, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor, Sociology and Asian Studies, Dept. of Liberal Studies,
Kettering University, Michigan, USA
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