August 06, 2008	Wednesday	Sha’aban 3, 1429

KARACHI, Aug 5: The country’s representatives in South Asian People’s Assembly on Tuesday termed the 15th Saarc Summit declaration disappointing, saying that it failed to spell out concrete steps to address the “core issues” from a people’s perspective at the South Asian level.

Addressing a news conference at the Karachi Press Club, they vowed to set up South Asian People’s Tribunal on Human Rights by the end of this year.

Karamat Ali of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler), who is also a member of the regional steering committee of South Asian People’s Assembly, said there was very little in the declaration that could adequately respond to the crisis-ridden situation prevailing in the region as a whole and in each member state. He was accompanied by co-chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and former Senator Iqbal Haider and other representatives of the people’s assembly.

Describing the declaration as “a pack of rhetoric”, he said it was disappointing because it failed to acknowledge the existence of conflicts between countries of the region and within a country.

He called for resolving all conflicts through dialogue by identifying and addressing the root-causes and taking firm measures to end militarisation and arms race in the region.

Reading out a written text, he said that omission of any reference to nuclear non-proliferation and reaffirmation of the commitment to make South Asia nuclear-free was surprising in the light of serious concern expressed by the people of South Asia over the Indo-US nuclear deal, which has all the ingredients of igniting another nuclear arms race in the region. It also indicated how much Saarc leaders were under the influence of the US agenda, he added.

Mr Ali said that people, fed up with the arms race, expected a firm commitment by their leaders to renounce war and enter into a no-war pact. But the leaders did not make any commitment that they would cut military expenditures and invest more in improving quality of life, he added.

He said that people had been waiting for Saarc to change its previous position and move ahead as a representative forum of the collective South Asian regional entity. He said all member states were known to be negatively interfering in each other’s affairs. Instead of strengthening each other, the government and intelligence agencies of every country had been engaged in covert and overt actions to weaken the other member state, he added.

No doubt, he said, terrorism was a problem that all the South Asian states were facing. But in each country it has, apart from the regional and global, its own indigenous dimensions. The governments in South Asia seem to be looking at the issue of terrorism from the American standpoint rather than going into the root-causes breeding terrorism in their own countries and finding a South Asian regional solution to the problem, he said.

National security & welfare state

The representatives of people’s assembly said the overarching concern of the ruling elites was focused on the so-called security of the state. It enabled them to use the pretext of terrorism to adopt undemocratic and very often repressive policies and introduce measures to curb fundamental rights of the people in the name of national security. “Only with the emergence of a clear South Asian identity the South Asian countries can transform themselves from national security states into national welfare states,” it was pointed out.

On behalf of the People’s Saarc, Karamat Ali urged each member state to pay urgent heed to the issues raised by the people’s assembly held from July 18 to 20 in Colombo and demanded of the governments to refrain from committing grave human rights violations as reflected in mass arrests, detention without trial, torture and disappearances of members and supporters of people’s movements struggling for their legitimate economic, social, cultural and political rights.

He reiterated the demand of the People’s Saarc for the establishment of a South Asian Court on Human Rights where citizens, communities and movements could lodge complaints against their respective governments and get justice. Senator Iqbal Haider and Barrister Zafrullah Khan volunteered to initiate this process together with colleagues from the Saarc region.

Explaining the background of the tribunal planned to be set up by the end of this year, Senator Iqbal Haider referred to the one set up by Bertrand Russell on Vietnam. He said that such platforms would boost moral pressure of the respective governments.Karamat Ali maintained that tone and tenor of the declaration reflected, as in previous such declarations, aspirations of the ruling classes instead of a clear and unequivocal commitment by the respective governments to address the core issues being faced by more than one and a half billion people of the region.

He said the declaration was not people-centric as claimed by its authors, because it did not give any specific timeframe for achieving development goals. Besides, he said it even failed to recognize the glorious struggle of the people of Nepal against monarchy.