HIGH hopes were expressed by exiled Burmese activists, with the approaching adoption of the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) next week by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, that the travails of their countrymen under the military junta would finally get the necessary corrective action.

The AICHR, a vital component of the Asean Charter, is designed to address all cases of rights atrocities committed against nationals of the 10 member-countries. The rights body also seeks to guarantee respect of cultures, political beliefs, democracy, freedom and rights of the region’s migrant workers.

The 15th Asean Summit during which the right commission will be adopted will be held in Hua Hin, Thailand, where the Asean leaders are also expected to adopt a regional response to the progressing degradation of the climate that has been brow-beating the economies and ecologies of member-countries lately.

The Philippines is the second worst-hit Asean nation so far with more than 4 million people affected, around 500 deaths from two devastating back-to-back typhoons last month. The first is Indonesia with over 3,000 deaths at the initial count from an earthquake last week.

The Asean climate-change document and the need to recalibrate regional risk reduction will also be presented by the bloc to the United Nations meeting on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

The Task Force on Asean and Burma, meanwhile, will attend the Asean People’s Forum and Asean Civil
Society in Cha-am, Thailand, this week to call urgent attention to the need to address the junta’s violations of the Asean Charter.

Ashin Sopaka of the International Burmese Monks Organization will speak on political and security issues in Asean.

Rights groups will also raise issues of sexual violence, environmental exploitation, child soldiers, and political and ethnic oppression under the hands of the military junta.

Khin Omar, coordinator of Burma Partnership, said the regime’s volatile approach to consolidating power in the run-up to the 2010 elections, including attacks against ethnic groups and democratic opposition, “is a clear threat to regional peace and security.”

Leaders at the Asean must address the junta’s serious breaches of the Charter, she said. “It can start by engaging in critical political dialogue with the regime and supporting the Burmese people’s efforts toward national reconciliation.”

The Task Force on Asean and Burma is a network of Burma’s civil-society actors working to promote a people-centered Asean that supports the cause of democracy, human rights and peace in Burma.