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Asian society: Changes from within - FT.com

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Last updated: June 13, 2013 8:40 am

Asian society: Changes from within

By David Pilling

Technology has helped civil activists but some query their success rate

AFP

Out and about in Hanoi: activists have w orked to promote aw areness of gay rights in Vietnam

ast month in Ly Thai To park in central Hanoi, a group of about 1,000 young people wearing rainbow bandanas and carrying rainbow flags erupted into a carefully rehearsed song-and-dance routine. The flash mob, which sparked similar events in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and Can Tho in the Mekong Delta, was intended to promote awareness about gay and lesbian rights. This being Vietnam, a one-party state run by a Communist party that does not take kindly to mass outpourings, the burst of activity was not quite as spontaneous as it may have appeared. The organiser, Le Quang Binh, a 40-year-old activist, had sought permission from the authorities to hold the event. Unlicensed gatherings of more than five people are banned under strict security laws and the former Fulbright scholar, who spent a decade abroad working for Oxfam, has regular cups of tea with secret police to keep them informed about his activities.
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The way we are working is in collaboration with the government. We dont confront the government, says Mr Binh, a new breed of Vietnamese activist finding room to operate in one of Asias most authoritarian countries. I believe in freedom. People should be able to participate in the political process, he says. We are creating space for people. So the flash mob looks like entertainment, but its about emboldening each other. Mr Binhs activities are part of a phenomenon that has taken root in many countries across Asia. In one-party states, such as Vietnam, and in nations where democracy is a work-inprogress, including the Philippines and Malaysia, people are seeking to participate in the political process in ways that go beyond the formal exercise of voting at the ballot box. Much has been written about the growth of civil society in China, where protests over issues such as the environment and land seizures have become common. Less noted, however, has been the stirring of civil society across other parts of Asia, whether in Bangladesh, where female garment workers have taken to the streets to press for better working conditions, or in Malaysia where a broad coalition has been pushing for more open elections. There is a general weariness and frustration across the region with all the formal channels of politics, says Eddin Khoo, a Malaysian author who has campaigned for cultural rights in his own country. Civil society groups are spearheading calls for public participation and the opening of democratic space. One way of looking at what is happening is to compare participatory democracy to advances in technology. Some countries that never had a properly functioning fixed-line telephone system have leapt several stages of technology and gone straight to 3G or 4G. In the same way, some states with weak, or even non-existent, democracies have begun to embrace issues such as gay rights or universal access to healthcare that remain contentious in older democracies. Thus, in rapidly reforming Myanmar, the government is drafting a law to ban discrimination against disabled people. In Hong Kong, the special administrative region of China where universal suffrage remains a distant dream, the Court of Final Appeal last month ruled that a transgender woman had the right to marry her boyfriend. As in many other parts of the world, an explosion of technology has had a profound effect, enabling people to organise themselves more easily and share information. In Asia overall, there were more than 1bn internet users by the second quarter of 2012, twice as many as in Europe and four times more than the US, according to Internet World Stats. In India, there are more mobile phones than toilets, while Indonesias Facebook users are more numerous than anywhere outside the US, Brazil and India. In Vietnam, where only a decade ago few owned a mobile phone, internet penetration is 4 percentage points above the world average, at 34 per cent. Unlike in China, where the
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government has succeeded in controlling online behaviour to some extent, Vietnamese authorities have been less willing or less able to put a lasso around cyber space. They tried and failed, tried and failed. I think theyve just given up, says Mr Binh of attempts at censorship. A lot of blogs are very critical about corruption, the role of the party, manipulation of power. I think were experiencing a loss of fear. Some analysts, such as Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion, have challenged the idea that the internet is a tool for liberation, arguing that states can just as easily use it to restrict freedom. In Vietnam, true enough, some prominent bloggers have been jailed and police harassment of online activists is common. Nevertheless, some internet campaigns have had a real impact. Mr Binhs own work on gay rights involved bringing together disparate online groups and helping transform them into a more coherent force. As a result, attitudes towards gay rights have changed markedly in recent years, both in the state-run media and in the wider population, he says. Other Vietnamese internet activists have helped investigate scandals in state-owned enterprises. So egregious and public has been the governments mishandling of the economy that last October Nguyen Tan Dung, the prime minister, took the unusual step of apologising for mistakes to an open session of the National Assembly. The internet has also helped people connect across the region, allowing groups and ordinary citizens to compare their situation more easily with that of other countries. Civil society groups are in touch all the time, says Mr Khoo. Theres an effort to see these things regionally. It is difficult to quantify the upsurge in democratic engagement across Asia. The number of non-governmental organisations is one proxy. In Indonesia, for example, a country with a population of 240m people, there were just 800 registered NGOs at the end of the Suharto regime in 1998. Today there are more than 20,000. That has produced a counter-reaction in the form of a proposed Mass Organisation Bill, which would set legal guidelines for civil society groups. In India, frustration at the inability of politicians to tackle fundamental problems has sparked recent mass mobilisations over at least two issues: corruption and rape. Last year, a fast by anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare brought tens of thousands of middle-class protesters on to the streets. There was a similar outpouring after the horrific gang rape and killing of a 23year-old paramedical student in Delhi last December. Ironically, for civil society to become more influential, the state In Malaysia, the rise of Bersih, a multi-ethnic group campaigning for cleaner elections, has galvanised civil society. In last months general election, the opposition came closer than ever to dislodging the ruling coalition that has governed continuously since independence in 1957.
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Asian society: Changes from within - FT.com

Bersih has raised the awareness of people tremendously, says Ambiga Sreenevasan, who chairs the organisation. Voter turnout last month was 85 per cent, the highest in the countrys history. Many - Michael Buehler, expert in statevolunteers stood guard over ballot boxes to ensure fair play, she civil society relations says, though even then there were accusations of vote-rigging. In Singapore, another state dominated by one party, there has been a similar opening up of the political process. needs to become stronger ... Still, there are limits to what civil society can achieve. In authoritarian states, such as China and Vietnam, activists have learnt to stick to issues that do not directly challenge the government. Mr Binh says he concentrates on gay and ethnic-minority rights as well as issues around freedom of association but has never taken on the Communist partys legitimacy. We focus on community building. We talk about equity, discrimination, human rights, love, but we dont blame the state, he says. One western diplomat who works with NGOs in Hanoi says: People have internalised where the red lines are. They have figured out where there is room to negotiate. Those red lines can shift, though, for example when Hanoi allowed, and then clamped down on, protests about Chinas territorial claims to waters off Vietnam. Nor is the ability to air grievances an end in itself, says Michael Buehler, an expert in state-civil society relations at Northern Illinois University. Civil society is becoming more vocal across the region but thats completely different from becoming more influential, he says. He cites pressure groups in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia, among others, which have championed the cause of universal access to healthcare and education. But many Asian states lack the legitimacy, financial wherewithal or technical capacity to respond. In Indonesia, for example, some 60 governors and local government heads have adopted initiatives to extend healthcare and education to the poor. In practice, though, little has changed. Indonesia collects tax worth just 11 per cent of gross domestic product and lacks credible institutions to distribute even that small amount, he says. Ironically, for civil society to become more influential, the state needs to become stronger, he says. The state no longer directly suppresses civil society. But the states capacity to implement change is so low that civil society may not be much more influential than it was 20 years ago. ... Some of the noise being made by civil groups may be less a catalyst for real change and more a letting-off of steam. In India, for example, the government has responded to Decembers outpouring by taking some small steps to address what appears to be an endemic culture of rape. From now on, all Delhi police stations will have female officers and the government has set up two committees, one to consider laws and procedures for prosecuting crimes against women
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and another to examine womens safety in cities. Yet Mr Buehler is not convinced that the sudden outrage against a single event when so many similar incidents go unreported will produce lasting change. I dont think this says very much about the strength of civil society, he says. I see it as an isolated incident, rather than a sign of changing attitudes within Indian society. There can even be a dark side to greater public engagement, what one academic, Verena Beittinger-Lee, research associate at the University of Kent, calls uncivil society. She has studied Indonesia, documenting the types of groups that can flourish in a weak state, including radical religious groups, civil militias and vigilante organisations. In the Philippines, whose weak government holds only a tenuous grip on outlying islands of the archipelago, such groups can be a virtual law unto themselves. In Myanmar, a rapid shift away from authoritarianism has given many previously silent citizens a stronger voice. Some of that freedom has been used to foster hatred for the Muslim minority, particularly the Rohingya, about 80,000 of whom have fled to makeshift camps as a result of violence directed against them. Not everything that bubbles up from the populace is progressive or desirable. Nevertheless, Mr Binh is convinced that his work and that of others is gradually changing public attitudes for the better and creating space for dialogue with the state. As a result, he says, the Vietnamese governments tolerance on issues has increased: We are pushing the envelope a little bit and waiting to see how they react. Then we push a little bit more. Additional reporting by Nguyen Phuong Linh

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