Product Description: Human rights are acquiring an increasingly prominent role on the world stage. Interest in, concern about and action on human rights are widespread and rising, albeit in a far from globally even, uniform and untroubled fashion. Human rights have generated a booming global industry while having become, not unconnectedly, highly controversial and deeply contested...read more

Refugees fleeing East Timor. Tiananmen Square in China. The killing fields in Cambodia. Freedom of speech in Singapore. The subject of human rights in Asia is a hotly debated one. In The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia, the authors survey the human rights records and attitudes of each country. The countries covered are: China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Kenneth Christie covers Southeast Asia and Denny Roy covers Northeast Asia. They conclude with a discussion of the Association of East Asian Nation's (ASEAN) role and suggestions for the future. Throughout, they examine the competing meaning of human rights in the Western versus the non-Western context and place the role of human rights within the framework of each country's history and political and economic development. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: Human rights debates can provoke strong reactions, particularly among people of different cultural backgrounds. The debate over Asian values and the use of human rights diplomacy are the most obvious manifestations of divisions between Asia and the West and reflect particular world views and historical legacies...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The "Asian values" argument within the international human rights debate holds that not all Asian states should be expected to protect human rights to the same degree. This position of "cultural relativism," often used by authoritarian governments in Asia to counter charges of human rights violations, has long been dismissed by Western and Asian human rights advocates as a weak excuse...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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