V Other News
| Date | 01 September 1994 |
| DOI | 10.1177/016934419401200310 |
| Published date | 01 September 1994 |
| Subject Matter | Part B: Human Rights News |
Human Rights News
diplomatic campaign aimed at Philippine president Ramos. In late May, for example, the
Indonesian government postponed the peace talks it was hosting between the Moro
National Liberation Front and the Philippine Government, thereby staking its role as
intermediary.
Due to Indonesian pressure, president Ramos decided to bar foreign participants from
entering the country. As much as ten foreign delegates were turned back and at least
thirty others were banned, including resistance leader Juan Ramos-Horta, human rights
activist Danielle Mitterand (the wife of the French president), Irish Nobel laureate
Mairead Maguire and a member of the Portuguese parliament. Just a few hours before
the conference was going to begin, the Philippine Supreme Court overruled a lower-court
decision, taken at the request of the authorities, to ban the conference altogether. It
nevertheless upheld the government's special powers to bar foreigners on the grounds of
'national security and national interest' .
Some 50 delegates from 20 countries nevertheless managed to attend the five-day
meeting in whole or in part. They agreed to establish a coalition for East Timor
('Philippine Solidarity for East Timor and Indonesia' or PSETI) based in the Philippines.
Furthermore, the participants presented a peace plan based on the gradual withdrawal of
the Indonesian armed forces and proposed a referendum on the territory's independence.
In a way, the conference was another expression of the growing solidarity among Asian
NGOs on the universality of human rights since they first criticized their respective
governments for stressing, in the Declaration of Bangkok last year, so-called 'regional
particularities' .
While the conference (and the East Timor issue) was widely covered by the
Philippine press, the incident, caused by Jakarta's over-reaction, has undoubtedly fuelled
the friction between both ASEAN Member-States. 'We understand Indonesia because we
went through a dictatorship and we understand the intensity of Indonesia's feelings',
president Ramos' security adviser Jose Almonte explained, asserting that Jakarta 'now has
a very good idea of how Philippine democracy works. '5
V
OTHERNEWS
A. Conference on the Rights of Children in Armed Conflict
Jacqueline Smith
On 20 and 21 June 1994, a Conference on the Rights of Children in Armed Conflict was
held in the City Hall of Amsterdam. This conference was organized by the International
Dialogues Foundation, DCI-The Netherlands and the Netherlands Committee for
UNICEF. Experts and practitioners in the fields of humanitarian relief assistance,
development cooperation, UN peacekeeping, the rights of the child or international
humanitarian law, from various parts of the world, were gathered to discuss a draft
document on the rights of children in armed conflict. The aim of the conference was to
improve the chances for a future for so many children that are forced to experience from
a very early age, extreme forms of hate and violence. This improvement should not only
exist in writing, but do deserve the actual care of the international community, through
legal, operational, therapeutic, and educational measures. In a situation ofarmed conflict,
Far Eastern Economic Review, 16 June, 1994, p. 18.
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