AHRC on the new NHRC

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has recently posted a commentary on a set of questions answered by Amara Pongsapich, the new chief of Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). As always, the AHRC is insightful.

Their criticism of the NHRC as well as the ASEAN human rights body is particularly sharp:

“Q. How will the Asean human rights mechanism and the National Human Rights Commission work?

A. There are some worries that the regional human rights body might not be strong enough. But I think we should have it first and shape it later. I don’t think there will be overlapping areas of work between the national human rights body and the Asean body, which should take up regional issues such as the Rohingya displaced people better than the NHRC.

AHRC comment: Naturally, a hard issue like the Rohingya refugees (as human rights commissioner it would not be right to call them refugees; better to say “displaced people”) will not be addressed through the NHRC because its approach is bureaucratic, soft and accommodating. Therefore, it will be left to the as-yet non-existent regional mechanism of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which also will do nothing. Here one of the real purposes of the ASEAN human rights body is clearly revealed for the first time: it is intended as a place for useless national human rights institutions to shift responsibilities and avoid blame coming to national authorities when people’s rights are not protected. This can be expected to happen a lot in the coming years, especially in cases coming from the meaningless and irrelevant National Human Rights Commission of Thailand.”

Read the entire AHRC document here: “New NHRC chief promises to ensure that human rights body is meaningless and irrelevant”

There is one question not answered that PPT would like an answer to: Will the NHRC take up lèse majesté cases as human rights cases, or not? If the answer is no, then what, precisely, is meant by ‘human rights’?