Indonesia Ratifies ASEAN Charter

Indonesia ratifies ASEAN charter

Last member of regional bloc to OK document





JAKARTA -- Indonesia on Tuesday ratified the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) charter committing member nations to human rights principles and envisaging a single free-trade area by 2015.

Indonesia was the last member of the 10-nation regional bloc to ratify the charter after the Philippines signed up earlier this month, clearing the way for its formal adoption at a summit in Bangkok in December.

The charter commits the group to promote human rights and democracy, sets out rules for members and transforms ASEAN into a legal entity.

"By ratifying we have shown that ASEAN has made such progress that the working relationship among member countries is effective," said lawmaker Marzuki Darusman, the head of the committee that helped draft the ratification law.

"Indonesia is showing solidarity in this matter. We have maintained the spirit of ASEAN," Darusman said.

ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The charter will give the bloc, much maligned as a pointless talking shop, greater clout in international negotiations, but critics argue black sheep like Myanmar will continue to get away with gross human rights abuses.

Its proposed new rights body is toothless and the charter has no provision to sanction members such as Myanmar, where the junta has kept democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the past 18 years.

Myanmar ratified the charter amid much fanfare at an ASEAN ministerial conference in Singapore in July.

The bloc has been criticized for its policy of "constructive engagement" toward Myanmar's secretive junta, which is under European Union and United States sanctions over its long record of human rights abuses.

Some lawmakers in the Philippines have called the charter a "sham" while others in Indonesia have said it must be amended to give teeth to the proposed human rights body.

"This is a milestone for Indonesia and ASEAN and it will put human rights more at the centre of the agenda," Asmara Nababan, head of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Jakarta, told Agence France-Presse.

"But there is a lot of work to do to make it more effective in the promotion and protection of human rights if you compare the region to Europe and the United States."