Don’t participate in this race to the bottom

Instead of replicating each other’s failures, South Asian states should compete in valuing human dignity

For all the differences South Asia’s countries insist on, they have depressingly similar attitudes when it comes to human rights. After a gruesome 2015 in Bangladesh, where five secular bloggers were slain in separate attacks, the machete killings continued without any determined action from the government. LGBTI activists, Hindus, Christians, Sufi Muslims and academics became new targets. In Pakistan, this year began with the suspicious disappearance of four bloggers. They’ve all since returned home, but the government hasn’t probed it.

In 2016, according to the Pakistani Press Foundation, two journalists were killed, 16 injured and one abducted. In India, two journalists were also killed last year. Freedom of expression was curtailed by the authorities in several cases. In Bangladesh, Dilip Roy, a 22-year-old

student activist, ran afoul of the country’s Information and Communications Technology Act for allegedly making “derogatory remarks” about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid.

In Sri Lanka, despite commitments to deliver on accountability for alleged crimes under international law, the authorities made frequent use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Tamils suspected of links to the LTTE continued to be detained under the PTA, which permits extended administrative detention and piles the burden of proof onto the detainee alleging torture or other illtreatment. In Afghanistan, the conflict has been widening.

The humanitarian catastrophe is set to worsen as the world turns its back on Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers. In Pakistan, the UN refugee agency worked with the Pakistani authorities to forcibly return tens of thousands of Afghan refugees.

That the UN is complicit in this does not bode well for the rights of refugees in the region. Like so many other countries who have abandoned refugees over recent years, Pakistan justified its behaviour on grounds of national security.

It’s a principle that the Pakistani authorities have abandoned in Karachi and Baluchistan, and the Indian authorities in Jammu and Kashmir. Last year, authorities imposed curfews in the Valley and security forces deployed excessive force against protestors.

Instead of replicating each other’s failures on human rights in a race to the bottom, South Asia’s countries might want to focus their rivalries instead on who can provide a better future for their people – where each country is distinguished by the value it puts on human dignity.