Claude E. Welch Jr. - Asian Perspectives on Human Rights

, Claude E. Welch, Jr., and Virginia A. Leary

PART ONE
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Global Change and Human Rights: Asian Perspectives in Comparative Context, Claude E. Welch, Jr.

The Asian Region and the International Human Rights Movement, Virginia A. Leary

PART TWO
ASIAN CULTURAL TRADITIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Islam, Islamic Law and the Dilemma of Cultural Legitimacy for Universal Human Rights, Abdullahi Abmed An-Naim

Traditional Values and Universal Human Rights: Caste in India, Jack Donnelly

A Buddhist Response to the Nature of Human Rights, Kenneth K. Inadd

PART THREE
GROUP CONFLICT AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Ethnicity, Ethnic Conflict and Human Rights in Malaysia, Chandra Muzaffar

Human Rights NGOs in Indonesia and Malaysia, Daniel S. Lev

Human Rights as Dynamic Process: The Case of Indias Untouchables, Barbara R. Joshi

Human Rights in Mass-Based Ethnic Conflict: South Asian Examples of Dilemmas of Definition, Monitoring and Protection, Barnett R. Rubin

Protection of Religious Minorities and Women: The Impact of Islamic Law in Pakistan, Asma Jahangir

Human Rights and the New Industrial Working Class in Bangladesh, Shelley Feldman

PART FOUR
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Human Rights in South and Southeast Asia: A Selective Bibliography, Nina Cascio

Claude E. Welch, Jr.

DOI: 10.4324/9780429033674-2

A half-century of change has left South and Southeast Asialike much of the rest of the worldprofoundly altered. Among the most important changes, analysts would readily agree, have been: (1) the shift over time from world war to cold war and then to localized and civil war, all under a shadow of unparalleled destructive power held by the United States and the Soviet Union; (2) the tripling of the number of states belonging to the United Nations, the overwhelming majority of them situated in formerly colonized parts of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Oceania; (3) the massive resurgence of world trade, fueled by the post-War vitality of the United States, recovery and economic integration in Western Europe, and the recent rise of Pacific Rim states, notably Japan and the four tigers; and (4) the instantaneous electronic links possible with modern mass communications.

The world of the early 1940s was tom by global conflict; now it is marked by a combination of relative peace among the militarily most powerful, and uneasy peace within and between many countries of the Third World. The map differs markedly, comparing 1940 and 1990. Western empires crumbled in waves after the war. Colonies from Aden to Zanzibar have gained their independenceand often new names and boundaries. The term Third World is itself a post-World War II term, coined to reflect the dramatic changes of decolonization. The United Nations shifted from a chummy, 50-member club dominated by countries bordering the Atlantic to a sprawling, 160-member conglomerate of micro-, mini- and maxi-states from all reaches of the globe. The links of international commerce now reach even more deeply into societies. Trade among nations, its spread interrupted in the early 1940s by Germanys and Japans efforts at military conquest, grew exponentially after the war under American leadership; then, in the early 1970s, witnessed the resurgence of Japans and Germanys economic might, now through peaceful means. Revolutions in communications technology influenced political change at an increasing pace, as dramatically shown in 1989. TV minicameras, portable telephones, VCRs, fax machines and communications satellites spread news around the world in milliseconds of dictatorships under assault. Tanks in Tiananmen Square briefly halted by a lone man; thousands of Germans chipping away at the Berlin Wall or marching for democracy in candle-lit silence; the bloodied corpse of a slain dictator: all these flashed across television screens almost instantaneously. Truly then, basic transformations have occurred within this half-century.