Human Rights, Culture, and the Singapore Example | Asia Pacific Dispute Resolution

ID:	HRHR-002
Title:	Human Rights, Culture, and the Singapore Example
Source:	McGill Law Journal/Revue de droit de McGill 1996 Vol. 41
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	1996
Pages:	38
Author(s):	Simon S. C. Tay
Keywords:	asian values, colonial, constitution, constitutional legal theory, culture, development, human rights, legal, multi-culturalism, multi-racialism, Singapore
Abstract:	Culture haunts the search for a system of human rights that can truly be universal. Today, when we value cultural diversity, religious and regional factors have increasingly emerged as reasons for differences in human rights. In Asia, the main proponents for this cultural argument are governments representing polyglot, largely multi-ethnic, modern capitalist societies. Singaporean representatives, dubbed “the Singapore school”, have been prominent among them. These proponents say that Asian views and practices of human rights necessarily from those in the West because Asian culture differs. A closer look at the Singapore example demonstrates the reasons for which these characterizations may be rejected. The roots of Singaporean society are not originally and wholly “Asian”. Rather, they are a hybrid of colonial influences, including laws relating to fundamental civil and political liberties. The Singapore example shows that culture is plastic, moulded by politics. There is, as such, no pure or original Asian culture that precedes and predetermines human rights. The Asian emphasis on cultural difference is, instead, a will to differ. Accordingly, culture should not assert a priority over other human rights. Cultural difference may still, however, enter the human-rights equation. As Asia develops, Asians do not want to be homogenized with the West nor to give into the dominant, predominantly Western interpretation of human rights. This Asian will to differ can be welcome insofar as it adds to the cultural richness and true universality of human rights. But how can this claim to culture be mediated with other human rights? Beyond the rhetoric of the Singapore school, a survey of Singapore’s actual record shows no gross human-rights transgressions. Instead, there has been a reinforcing cycle between socio-economic and civil and political rights to create a core of human rights. The Singapore example may stand as a minimum standard for other developing nations.
Secured:	False
Download Article:	41.Tay.pdf