Human

Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017

Price: $8 ($5 student concession)

Rights
A publication of the
Australian Human Rights Centre
UNSW Law, UNSW Australia

Defender
DAMS AND ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS WHO BEARS RESPONSIBILITY FOR ‘FOR NATURE, OUR LIFE’: FIGHTING
IN THE MEKONG AIR POLLUTION IN CHINA? SOME TO PROTECT CAMBODIA’S
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ENVIRONMENT

Maureen Harris Lu Feng Fran Lambrick

Environmental justice and

human rights in Asia
Recent events

The Australian Human Rights Centre hosted a workshop, Key challenges in children’s rights, On the 7 February 2017, the AHRCentre hosted
on 2 February 2017 that brought together academics and civil society professionals to discuss a seminar featuring Prof Conor Gearty and
contemporary challenges to the protection and realisation of children’s rights in Australia Prof Andrew Byrnes who discussed the state of
and beyond. The workshop created a unique space for extensive conversations between human rights in the European and Australian
the participants, with only two papers per session. The day concluded with a keynote paper contexts in the lead up to the launch of Conor’s
new book, On Fantasy Island: Britain, Europe
delivered by Professor Aoife Nolan (Nottingham University) titled Child Poverty, Child Rights and Human Rights.
and Development.

AHRCentre
Established in 1986, the Australian Human Rights Centre (AHRCentre) is one of the oldest centres in the Faculty of Law at UNSW Australia. The
AHRCentre aims to increase public awareness of and academic scholarship in domestic and international human rights standards, laws and
procedures through research projects, education programs and publications. Its primary objectives are to:

• undertake and facilitate interdisciplinary human rights research projects;

• develop human rights educational initiatives by hosting workshops, seminars and conferences, co-ordinating interdisciplinary human rights
teaching and internship programs and providing a forum for domestic and international scholarship and debate on contemporary human
rights issues; and
• provide accessible information on significant human rights developments in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and internationally, facilitate
access to online human rights resources via the AHRCentre website and publish the Australian Journal of Human Rights (AJHR) and the Human
Rights Defender (HRD).

AHRCentre Staff
Management: Andrew Byrnes, Chair; Andrea Durbach, Director; Justine Nolan, Deputy Director; Diane Macdonald, Manager
Steering Committee: Andrew Byrnes, Louise Chappell, Andrea Durbach, Kieren Fitzpatrick, Rebecca Gilsenan, Justine Nolan, Padma Raman and
David Sanderson
AHRCentre Project Directors: Andrew Byrnes, Andrea Durbach, Louise Chappell, Bassina Farbenblum, Annie Herro, Jed Horner, Daniel Joyce,
Rosemary Kayess, Kirsten Keith, Lucas Lixinski, Christopher Michaelsen, Justine Nolan, Noam Peleg, Vicki Sentas, Sarah Williams and Pichamon
Yeophantong
AHRCentre Associates: Sara Dehm, Beth Goldblatt, Rosemary Grey, Fleur Johns, Susanne Schmeidl, Carolien van Ham
AJHR Editors-in Chief: Chris Michaelsen, Justine Nolan and Claudia Tazreiter. Managing Editor: Diane Macdonald
AJHR Editorial Board: Christina Binder (University of Vienna), Andrew Byrnes (UNSW Law), Andrea Durbach (UNSW Law), Danielle Celermajer
(University of Sydney), Ben Golder (UNSW Law), Malcolm Langford (University of Oslo), Kelley Loper (Hong Kong University)
HRD Editors: Daniel Joyce (Editor-in-Chief), Claire Higgins, Jed Horner, Noam Peleg, Pichamon Yeophantong and Diane Macdonald (Production &
Photo Editor)

Human Rights Defender Subscribe to the HRD

The Human Rights Defender (HRD) is a human rights magazine published by the 3 issues per year
AHRCentre featuring articles, commentary, art and photographs across a broad
range of contemporary human rights issues. It provides a forum for the expression
to subscribe online visit www.ahrcentre.org or
of critical thinking and discussion of conceptual developments in human rights. email: hrd@unsw.edu.au
To submit to the HRD please follow the style guide
$45 Organisation
(www.ahrcentre.org/publications/hrd) and email your article to:
hrd@unsw.edu.au $20 Individual
$15 Digital
 Human
Image © Jeni Rohwer 2017.

Rights
Defender
Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017

Contents
EDITORIAL
3 P i chamo n Ye o ph an t on g

W H O B E A R S R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y F O R A I R P O L L U T I O N I N C H I N A? S O M E
CRITICAL REFLECTIONS
5 L u Fe ng

‘ W E W I L L F I G H T U N T I L W E D I E , W E W I L L N O T L E AV E ’: D A M S A N D
E N V I R O N M E N TA L R I G H T S I N T H E M E KO N G
8 Mau re e n Harr is

P H O T O E S S AY: T H E H U M A N C O S T O F H Y D R O P O W E R
11 Photos by P i anporn Deet es, Words by Kat e Ross

H U M A N R I G H T S A N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L J U S T I C E I N M YA N M A R : A N
INTERVIEW WITH MIRCO KREIBICH
1 4 Se an B o we s
H O W C H I N E S E B U S I N E S S E S A R E S E E N I N M YA N M A R : A S U R V E Y O F K E Y
S O C I A L , E N V I R O N M E N TA L A N D D E V E L O P M E N T I S S U E S
1 7 Y u an Wang
E C O N O M I C G R O W T H A N D D E V E L O P M E N T I N L A O P D R : W H O PAY S F O R
PROGRESS?
20 K e arri n Si ms

‘ F O R N AT U R E , O U R L I F E ’: F I G H T I N G T O P R O T E C T C A M B O D I A’ S
ENVIRONMENT
22 Fran L amb ri ck

TA I N T E D ( B L U E ) G O L D : T H E P E R I - U R B A N WAT E R C R I S I S I N H A N O I , V I E T N A M
2 4 B l ak e L amb e rt an d M ic h ael Th ai

E N V I R O N M E N TA L A C T I V I S M , T H E I N T E R N E T A N D R I G H T S I N C H I N A
2 7 Mi ng E n Chi n
INTERVIEW WITH SARAH JOSEPH
3 0 E l e ano r Ho l d en
 AHRCentre - UNSW Law
UNSW Australia
Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2052
Email: ahrc@unsw.edu.au
Web: www.ahrcentre.org
Tel: +612 9385 1803
Twitter: @AHRCentreUNSW

MANAGING EDITORS FEATURED ARTISTS

Dr Daniel Joyce is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at UNSW The Human Rights Defender would like to
Australia and the Editor-in-Chief for the HRD. He is the project thank the following people for contributing
director for the digital media and human rights project for the their photographs and art work to this
AHRCentre. He is admitted and practises as a barrister in New edition:
South Wales.
Pianporn Deetes, the Thailand and
Dr Claire Higgins is a Research Associate at the Andrew and Myanmar Campaigns Director of
Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. Claire International Rivers
completed doctoral study in History as a Clarendon Scholar
at Merton College, the University of Oxford, writing on the and
development of Australian refugee policy from 1976 to 1983.
UNSW students Jeni Rohwer and
Dr Jed Horner directs the project on health, sexual orientation Lydia Morgan.
and human rights and recently completed his PhD in public
health and community medicine at UNSW. He has worked on
anti-discrimination law reform and social policy at state and
federal levels.

Dr Noam Peleg is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, UNSW

Australia. He previously was a research fellow at the Minerva
Centre of Human Rights at the Hebrew University and a
Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London, where he
also wrote his PhD.

Dr Pichamon May Yeophantong is a Lecturer in International

Relations and Development in the School of Social Sciences,
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW Australia. She
leads the Centre’s Environmental Justice and Human Rights in
Developing Asia project.

CONSULTANT EDITOR
Andrea Durbach is a Professor at UNSW Law and Director of the
AHRCentre. Born in South Africa, she practised as a political trial
lawyer and human rights advocate, representing victims and
opponents of apartheid laws. Prior to joining UNSW, she was
Director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) in Sydney.

Photo Editor and Production Manager

Diane Macdonald
To submit your photos or artwork for publication,
contact: diane.macdonald@unsw.edu.au

GUEST EDITOR: Dr Pichamon May Yeophantong

MANAGING STUDENT EDITORS: Sean Bowes, Brittney Rigby Cover image © Pianporn Deetes 2016.
CONTACT THE EDITOR: hrd@unsw.edu.au Phongsali, Northern Laos.

©2017 Human Rights Defender. The views expressed herein are those of the authors. The Australian Human Rights Centre accepts no liability for any
comments or errors of fact. Copyright of articles is reserved by the Human Rights Defender. ISSN 1039-2637 CRICOS Provider Code. 00098G
Photo ©Chi Nam 2016. Vietnam. Fair Use Prinicpal applied.
2016 was a landmark year for
environmental progress globally.
It marked the official launch of the
United Nations ambitious Sustainable
Development Goals, which further
advanced its predecessor’s—the
Millennium Development Goals—
emphasis on strengthening the
international community’s commitment
to environmental sustainability.
Considered a milestone in multilateral
environmental cooperation, last year
also saw the Paris Agreement on
climate change come into force, as
global awareness of how environmental
change and the attendant problems
impact human well-being reached a
new peak.
But 2016 was also a year of continued
ecological decline. Especially in Asia,
the region faced an onslaught of
environment-related woes. China
experienced some of the country’s
worst bouts of air pollution on record.
Beijing and twenty-one other cities
choked under a heavy blanket of
smog, leading authorities to issue a
pollution ‘red alert’ (the highest level of
a four-tier warning system).2 Crucially,
this reflects the broader air pollution
crisis facing East Asia—a result of
the transport of ‘dirty air’ and yellow
dust from China, as well as from local
polluting industries. South Korea, for
example, ranks 17 out of 18 on the Yale
University’s Environmental Performance
Index.3
Editorial ¹
In India, a situation of drought-
induced water scarcity has resulted
in ongoing conflict in Karnataka state,
where riots and violence broke out
over the distribution of the Cauvery
River’s water resources.4 2016 will also
be remembered in Vietnam for the
unprecedented ‘marine life disaster’.
Toxic discharges, reportedly containing
traces of cyanide and carbolic acids,
from a Taiwanese-owned steel plant
had caused around seventy tonnes
of dead fish to wash ashore along
Pichamon
Vietnam’s 200-kilometre coastline.
Not only were fishing communities
Yeophantong
and tourism severely affected in four
provinces, the severity of the disaster
was such that rare public protests
demanding social and environmental
accountability were staged across the
country.5
Without a clean and healthy natural
environment, human development
would not be possible. The ability to
breathe non-hazardous air and drink
safe water is a basic human right. This
is particularly true in less industrialised
societies, where livelihoods are closely
tied to the environmental services
that provide food (e.g. fish) and other
necessary resources (e.g. wood).
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 3
It is in this way that environmental
injustice and social inequality prove
inextricable, as the uneven distribution
of environmental harm and degradation
(think pollution) often exacerbates pre-
existing inequality among certain social
and minority groups.
To achieve environmental justice,
however, observing the principles
of distributive justice alone is not
sufficient. Equally important is
adherence to the rule of law, as well
as the consistent and fair enforcement
of standards and regulations. Given
the prevalence of ‘governance
poverty’ in developing Asia, many
countries in the region still suffer
from the lack of such procedural
justice. This is evident from instances
of problematic land acquisition and
forced displacement, especially those
involving foreign investment projects.
A case in point is the controversial,
but government-sanctioned, Boeung
Kak Lake development project in
Cambodia. A foreign venture, it has
widely been criticised for its failure to
respect community rights and acquire
land in a transparent manner.6 In more
serious cases, procedural injustice may
be manifest in alleged acts of (state-
led) environmental violence. Here, the
disappearances of the Cambodian and
Lao activists Chut Wutty and Sombath
Somphone—both of whom are
discussed in this issue—come to mind.
Against the backdrop of Asia’s changing
social and political landscapes,
this issue of the Human Rights
Defender explores the intersection of
environmental justice and human rights
issues. Focusing on cases drawn from
China and Southeast Asia, the featured
contributions examine the various
challenges faced by communities, civil
society and the region’s governments
in achieving economic modernisation
on the one hand, and sustainable
development on the other. They also
share a common purpose: to distill
policy-relevant insights on how current
circumstances might be improved.
The strength of this HRD issue is in its
inclusion of a diversity of voices and
viewpoints. The contributors include
an environmental philosopher (Lu
Feng), a documentary filmmaker (Fran
Lambrick), seasoned practitioners
(Maureen Harris, Pianporn Deetes, Kate
Ross, Yuan Wang), academic experts
(Kearrin Sims and Sarah Joseph), and
the future generation of thinkers
Page 4 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
(Ming Chin En, Blake Lambert, Michael
Thai, and Sean Bowes). The issue also
features a special interview with Mirco
Kreibich, Director of the Heinrich Böll
Stiftung’s Myanmar Program, who
shares his critical insights on the state
of human rights and the environment in
Myanmar before and after the Aung San
Suu Kyi leadership.
Despite the stark realities of ecological
degradation and questionable
human rights practices in Asia, there
remains hope for positive change: the
persistent belief that these problems
are not insurmountable. But for this
change to happen, talk of sustainable
development must be accompanied
by real action to actualise our
environmental and social obligations.
As echoed in the first article of this
issue, the burden of responsibility rests
squarely with all of us—the producers
and consumers of both decline and
progress.
Pichamon Yeophantong is a Lecturer
in International Relations and
Development in the School of Social
Sciences at UNSW Sydney, and
leads the Environmental Justice and
Human Rights Project in Asia at the
AHRCentre. She is the guest editor
for this issue of the Human Rights
Defender.
Photo © Burma Rivers Network 24 March 2017. Protest on International Action for Rivers Day - Stop
damming rivers, courtesy of Burma Rivers Network.
1 This issue of the HRD would not
have been possible without the assistance
of the HRD editorial team and our external
reviewers. Special thanks also go to Sean
Bowes, Diane Macdonald and Daniel Joyce
for their enthusiasm and support.
2 T. Phillips (2016) ‘Beijing smog:
pollution red alert declared in China capital
and 21 other cities’, Guardian, 17 December,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/
dec/17/beijing-smog-pollution-red-alert-
declared-in-china-capital-and-21-other-cities
3 Taken from the Environmental
Performance Index on air quality at: http://
epi.yale.edu/issue-ranking/air-quality
4 M. Safi and V. Doshi (2016)
‘Angry clashes in Karnataka as India’s water
wars run deep’, Guardian, 15 September,
https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2016/sep/15/india-angry-
clashes-karnataka-water-wars-run-deep-
tamil-nadu
5 J. Boudreau, D. Pham & M.N.
Chau (2016) ‘Vietnam says Taiwan’s Formosa
caused millions of fish deaths’, Bloomberg,
30 June, https://www.bloomberg.com/
news/articles/2016-06-30/toxic-discharge-
from-taiwan-s-formosa-caused-vietnam-
fish-deaths
6 C. Sopheap (2014) ‘Boeng Kak
Investor Dismisses Ethics in Name of
Business’, Cambodia Daily, 1 July, https://
www.cambodiadaily.com/opinion/boeng-
kak-investor-dismisses-ethics-in-name-of-
business-62927/
under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Photo © Leo Fung 2010. CHONGQING SHI, CHONGQING, CHINA - great expectations 2010. Re-printed

Since 1978, the Chinese economy has rapid industrialisation and economic
been growing rapidly. In 2012, China’s
GDP became the second highest in the
development since the 1970s. With a
growing number of factories cropping Who bears
world. Television sets, refrigerators,
air conditioners, computers, mobile
up in many Chinese provinces, an
increasing amount of coal is being used. responsibility for
phones, and cars are no longer rare
amenities for the Chinese people. Yet,
Of China’s total energy, 96 per cent is
sourced from coal, as green technology
air pollution in
clean air, clean water, and healthy
food have become increasingly rare.
is still not well-developed.2 China? Some critical
Although China experienced a shortage
of living necessities such as food and But while it is common to hear
reflections
clothing between 1949 and 1977, the complaints about China’s air pollution
country’s natural environment was problem—how it is harming people’s
arguably much ‘cleaner’ than it is now. health and lowering people’s quality
Since 2013, increasing PM2.5—that of life—it is less common to hear
is, atmospheric particles that have a anyone take responsibility. This raises
diametre of less than, or equal to, 2.5 two important questions: who bears
micron—in the air has posed a serious responsibility for heavy air pollution in
threat to people’s health across the
country.
China? And who has the duty to change
it? In this article, I argue that the
Dr Lu Feng
answer is simple: responsibility lies with
the Chinese people.
Most recently in Beijing, the air quality
worsened so severely that people had
to wear facemasks outside on a daily
basis.1 In major cities such as Tianjin,
Between rights and responsibilities
Shijiazhuang, and Shanghai, polluted air
has been linked to a range of illnesses,
including sore throat, trachitis, cerebral
Since the end of the nineteenth century,
haemorrhage, and hypertension, and
China has actively sought to amass
has consequently raised considerable
wealth and power, both domestically
alarm among locals. China’s air
and internationally, with the aim of
pollution today is a product of its past:
enhancing national security. Especially
the result of over three decades of

Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 5

from the early 1980s onwards, China
underwent rapid modernisation—a
process that began as early as the
1940s. In pursuing his ‘reform and
opening up’ policy agenda, former
President Deng Xiaoping noted how
‘Development is absolutely necessary
in China’.3 Since then, ‘development’
has become the central concept in the
ideology of the Chinese Communist
Party.
‘Development’ has largely been defined
in Chinese policy circles as economic
growth, which is in turn understood as
the cultivation of material wealth. This
understanding has persisted until the
present-day. It is commonly believed
that people will become happier as the
economy thrives. Indeed, the Chinese
government continues to defend the
country’s right to develop and, thus,
industrialise at various international
fora. Australia, the United States and
Europe are all advanced economies
boasting comparatively high standards
of living. Why should the Chinese
people not enjoy a similar standard of
living? The rights of the Chinese people
are the same as those of Australians,
Americans and Europeans. As such,
the Chinese people should also have
the right to live in the way of ‘mass
production, mass consumption and
mass emission’, which first originated in
these developed countries.
However, the reverse has been true:
as the economy rapidly grows, the
emerging addiction of the Chinese
population—especially those living in
big cities—to the ‘mass consumption
and mass emission’ lifestyle has now
resulted in losing the ability to breathe
clean air and drink clear water, which,
in turn, underscores the country’s
broader environmental crisis. Severe
air pollution is the consequence of this
national obsession with development.
With China’s transition to a market
economy in the early 1980s, democracy
and the rule of law is developing very
slowly and with difficulty in China.
Although more people are awakening
to a consciousness of human rights,
they have been slower to awaken
to a consciousness that their rights
and duties are complementary and
interdependent. Many people are
enthusiastic to defend their own
rights, but are not so enthusiastic to
respect and defend the rights of other
people. There is, unfortunately, little
Page 6 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
consciousness of a duty to protect Likewise, the CEOs of polluting
common goods, including the health enterprises have both a legal and moral
and integrity of critical ecological obligation to cease business-related
systems. In this light, I would argue activities that cause unnecessary
that many Chinese citizens do not environmental harm and also to pay
entertain a clear conception of justice. for necessary emissions, whereas
Justice is understood here as the scientists and engineers have a duty
proper allocation of rights and duties to innovate efficient green technology.
among different actors (i.e. individuals, And most importantly, every citizen has
organisations and groups). A just a responsibility to live prudently and
institution is one that appropriates a greenly.
proper proportion of rights and duties
to every actor. For this reason, justice
is a virtue of exceeding importance to
modern Chinese society. The just citizen
Between environmental justice and
is one who respects others’ rights and
eco-civilisation
observes their responsibilities to the
law and society. Unfortunately, it would
appear that too few citizens among the
In China today, we need to invest
Chinese population have adopted this
a concerted effort into achieving
virtue.
environmental justice. The term
‘environmental justice’ can be used
to refer to how every individual has a
In order to mitigate heavy air pollution
right to live in a clean environment.
and traffic congestion in cities, the
But in the absence of laws in China
Chinese government has sought
that protect the environmental rights
to progressively limit the number
of citizens, the burden of responsibility
of vehicles on the road. Whether a
rests upon the Chinese people to
particular vehicle can be used or not
fundamentally change our way of
depends upon the classification of the
production and consumption.
vehicle registration numbers. Some
people view this as a violation of their
personal right to use cars and, by
Here, the right to environmental
extension, an infringement upon their
justice and the duty to protect the
freedom of movement and freedom
environment are intertwined. Only
to choose how they live their life.
when every citizen lives ‘green’ can
However, it is necessary to restrict the
we begin to save our badly polluted
number of cars on the road and ban the
environment. In this sense, we can view
use of certain high-polluting vehicles
environmental justice as an expansion
in congested and severely polluted
of the general concept of justice – that
cities like Beijing. Given that carbon
is, the proper allocation of the right to
emissions from vehicles are among the
live in a clean environment and the duty
major sources of PM2.5 in China’s big
to protect the natural environment.
cities, every citizen has a duty to avoid,
or stop, driving for at least one or two
days per week in order to help alleviate
Fortunately, a growing number of
air pollution, except those who have to
Chinese people are beginning to
drive to acquire their necessities to live.
realize that we cannot, and should not,
completely imitate the western model
of growth-led development. China must
It is in this sense that the majority
find its own way to achieve sustainable
of the Chinese people, except those
development. This is epitomised in the
living very simply in undeveloped
idea of ‘eco-civilisation’, which refers to
areas of Tibet and Xinjiang, bear
a society whose modes of production
responsibility for the heavy pollution
and consumption are guided by
seen in China today. That said, it is of
ecological laws. Currently, constructing
course the case that different people
an eco-civilisation in China is recognised
who belong to different professions and
by the Chinese government as part of a
socioeconomic backgrounds should be
long-term national strategy.
ascribed different duties. The leaders
of the Chinese Communist Party and
the central government are obligated
It is not always easy for western
to change the country’s overarching
scholars to understand what eco-
development policy, as well as ensure
civilisation means. As used by
that the country’s political and
anthropologists and historians,
economic institutions encourage clean
‘civilisation’ normally refers to a very
production and green consumption.

general idea, defined in terms of human
ways of life as distinct from that of
nonhuman animals, and the objects
created by human beings such as tools,
instruments, machines, languages,
laws, institutions, and the like. Human
civilisation originated in fishing and
hunting societies, and progressed
through farming. We are now in the
period of industrial civilisation that
originated in Europe. In many respects,
especially with regard to the production
of material wealth, industrial civilisation
has proven to be extraordinarily
successful. The fatal sickness of this
industrial civilisation, however, is that
it is not sustainable. A radical and
systematic change is needed.
Today, there are more people in
China who adopt the concept of eco-
civilisation as a means to safeguard
the sustainability of our civilisation.
From an eco-civilisation perspective,
pollution and environmental damage
is caused by specific elements of
industrial civilisation, including coal-
sourced energy, technology, and global
markets; however, the sources of these
deep-seated problems can also be
found at the level of the institutions
and ideas underpinning a civilisation.
In this way, eco-civilisation becomes an
inevitable consequence of industrial
civilisation itself. To keep the biosphere
healthy and make human civilisation
sustainable, we need to transform
our current industrial civilisation in a
systematic manner. In order to do so,
we need to reduce the use of fossil fuel,
innovate green technology, regulate
the market with ecological principles,
as well as change laws and public
policies to encourage clean production,
a ‘circular’ economy and green
consumption. Most importantly, we
must change the mainstream ideas that
one of Linfen’s main streets. Linfen has been named by some
Photo © Sheila 2007. LINFEN, CHINA – An elevated view of
organizations as the dirtiest city in the world. Re-printed
under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
have supported industrial civilisation Constructing eco-civilisation may well
for the past 300 or so years. Among lead to one of the greatest revolutions
these ideas, scientism and axiological in human history. Yet, constructing eco-
materialism are fundamentally wrong, civilisation will also be one of the most
but are still believed by many, especially difficult endeavours that we, as human
in today’s China. beings, seek to achieve.
Bid farewell to industrial civilisation;
‘Scientism’ presupposes that scientific
only by entering into eco-civilisation can
knowledge is progressing toward a
we truly realise environmental justice.
final theory about the universe we
live in.4 Unlimited scientific progress
supports unlimited technological
innovation. Any problem that arises
from economic development can thus Dr Lu Feng is Professor of Philosophy
be solved by technological innovation. and Executive Director of the Center
In turn, scientific progress can be seen for Ecological Civilization at Tsinghua
to support the unlimited growth of University, China. He can be contacted
material wealth. This feeds into the at lufeng@tsinghua.edu.cn.
concept of ‘axiological materialism’,
which claims that the ultimate
meaning of human life lies with the
creation, possession and consumption
of material wealth. Pursuit of the
common good, therefore, involves the
pursuit of economic growth, which 1 Li Y. (2014) ‘Haze days, wearing
is necessary for the construction of what kind of mask?’, Science and Technology
necessary infrastructure as well as Daily 28(2), 4.
the development of, inter alia, health
2 R. Smith (2015) ‘China’s
and educational services. From this
Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse’,
perspective, mass production, mass Real-World Economics Review 71.
consumption, and mass emission
would appear rational and right. But 3 Deng X. (1998) Deng Xiaoping’s
scientism and axiological materialism Economic Thought (Beijing: Economic
Management Press), 63-66.
are fundamentally wrong, just as
lifestyles based on ‘mass production, 4 S. Weinberg (1993) Dreams of a
mass consumption and mass emission’ Final Theory: The Scientists Search for the
are unsustainable. Ultimate Laws of Nature (New York: Random
House), 242.
Without eco-civilisation, environmental
justice will remain elusive in China—if
not the world. Without eco-civilisation,
we may have more cars, more advanced
smartphones, more intelligent
machines, but we will not possess the
most basic of necessities: clean air,
clean water, and safe and healthy food.
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 7
 Photo © Prachatai 2015. CAMBODIA - Lower Sesan II Dam. Re-printed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

‘We will fight until
we die, we will not
leave’1: Dams and
Hundreds of large dams are currently
planned or underway along the Mekong
River and its tributaries, driven by a
demand for energy and revenue to
boost economic development. Yet
hydropower development not only has
significant environmental costs, but
These issues are not isolated to the
Mekong River Basin. Throughout
Southeast Asia, hydropower
development is accelerating against
a backdrop of natural resource
competition and often at the expense
of marginalized ethnic groups and

environmental rights also human ones. People are forced to

relocate from their homelands; many
in the Mekong lose access to fresh water, productive
land, community forests and fish, an
essential source of protein in local
diets. Resettlement programs often
do not provide adequate farmland
for rural smallholders, as arable land
in the region is increasingly tied up in
Maureen Harris corporate agricultural concessions.
For populations who live downstream,
the exploitation of the Mekong River
by private developers has detrimental
impacts on fish stocks, agricultural
productivity, water quality and seasonal
flow patterns. Diminished access to
food and water security and the loss
of material and cultural livelihoods are
fundamental human rights concerns.
indigenous peoples. Local communities
across the region are struggling to
cope with the rush of dam-building.
For instance, in 2011, the massive
6,000-megawatt (MW) Myitsone
dam, proposed for construction in
the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar,
was postponed by former President
Thein Sein following public outcry
and a grassroots people’s campaign
opposing the project. Following recent
parliamentary elections in which the
new National League for Democracy
(NLD)-led government swept into
power, the project is back on the
table for consideration. The struggle
between governments, developers
and local communities is as much a
struggle for human rights as it is for the
development choices the will shape the
future of the region and its people.

Page 8 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017

The case of the Lower Sesan II dam in
Cambodia
In Stung Treng province in northeastern
Cambodia, indigenous villagers in
Kbal Romeas are preparing to leave
their homes for newly developed
resettlement sites, paving the way for
the 400MW Lower Sesan II dam (LSII),
which will officially displace around
5,000 people.2 The dam is under
rapid construction by a consortium of
Chinese and Cambodian companies.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and
his government promote hydropower
construction as a boon to economic
development and energy generation
in a country where over 75 per cent of
people lack access to electricity.3
Some villagers in Kbal Romeas have
agreed to relocate. Yet villagers assert
that in some cases agreement to move
was obtained under duress, or because
people felt they had little choice.4
Others have vowed to remain, even
to die in their homes, expressing their
deep cultural and historical relationship
to the landscape. Relocation due to
the dam will result in extensive loss of
fisheries, arable land, and community
forest. There is little information
on plans to ensure long term food
security, or support a transition to new
forms of livelihoods. Reports from
the resettlement site have emerged,
describing poor quality housing and
farmland. Resettlement is an extremely
difficult and fraught process, likely
to fail without adequate resources,
community buy-in, and extensive
consultation and planning.5 None of
these factors have been addressed
in the relocation of people from Kbal
Romeas, or the other villages to be
affected by the LSII project. Further,
the indigenous identity and legislated
cultural rights of those displaced have
scarcely registered in the project
resettlement plans.
The human rights footprint of LSII
extends far beyond involuntary
resettlement in the reservoir area.
The dam blocks both the Sesan and
Srepok Rivers, major tributaries forming
essential channels and spawning
grounds for long-distance migratory
fish in the Mekong Basin. A 2012
study, released after the Cambodian
government had already approved
the LSII dam’s environmental impact
assessment (EIA),6 estimated a 9.3 per
cent decrease in fish biomass across the
entire Lower Mekong Basin.7 Hundreds
of thousands of villagers along the
linked ecosystems of the Mekong River
and Tonle Sap Lake face significant
decline in fish catch, which is critical to
the food security and nutrition of local
communities. These impacts have major
implications for the right to food and
livelihood of affected populations. The
project’s EIA alluded to its extensive
impact on fisheries, but did little to
address them. Ecological transformation
and the loss of river-based livelihoods is
akin to being displaced without physical
relocation, yet these communities will
be offered no compensation.
Decision-making on LSII, as for many
dams in the region, has suffered
from a lack of transparency and
public debate. Official statements by
government officials frame hydropower
development as inevitable in a country
and region where a large proportion
of the population lacks access to
electricity. Yet many large dams support
electricity for export or industrial rather
than local or domestic use. Cost-
benefit analyses tend to underestimate
environmental and social costs and
exclude assessments of alternatives.
The Cambodian government has paid
scant attention to renewable and
smaller-scale decentralized energy
technologies, which are increasingly
cost-competitive and relatively effective
in ensuring electricity access in rural
areas where it is lacking, with much
lower human rights and environmental
costs.
Environmental rights: development for
whom?
Questions surround the public interest
value of many large dam projects.
While experiencing a boom in parts
of Southeast Asia, hydropower
development is in decline in other
parts of the world. Globally from 2013
to 2015, new capacity has rapidly
dwindled from 38 gigawatts (GW) to
22GW only two years later.8 Studies
show that hydropower projects are
economically questionable, with cost
overruns averaging 96 per cent.9
Despite justifications of large hydro
as ‘clean energy,’ research has found
that large dams in tropical basins are a
significant source of methane emissions
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
contributing to climate change,10 as
well as to other serious social and
environmental problems.11 This is a
significant concern in the Mekong,
a region facing major impacts from
climate change. Declining water levels,
reduced sediment and rising sea levels
are already causing saline intrusion,
disrupting agricultural productivity in
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Increases in
the occurrence and intensity of extreme
weather events due to climate change,
such as droughts and tropical storms,
may compound the impacts of dams
and the threats to local populations.
Shifts in weather patterns and water
flows also raise questions about the
long-term viability of large dams, and
the justifications for developing them.
The electricity to be generated
by LSII is proposed for domestic
consumption. However, much of the
power is speculated to be routed to
energy-hungry mining and industrial
developments in Stung Treng and
neighboring provinces. Many of the
arguments used by Southeast Asian
governments to promote dams
emphasize their importance to boosting
development and growth for countries
long dogged by poverty and economic
stagnation. The net advantages of dams
are attributed to an abstract ‘nation’.
However, these advantages generally
privilege an elite few, with marginalized
people bearing the brunt of the
impacts.
The international human rights
framework prohibits involuntary
resettlement for large-scale
development projects not justified
by ‘compelling and overriding public
interest’.12 Due to the well-documented
economic and environmental costs of
large-scale hydropower projects, as well
as the inequitable social benefits, there
are clear grounds for scrutinising and
contesting environmentally destructive
dam projects from a human rights
perspective.
Human rights and the environment
In March 2016, the United Nations
Human Rights Council adopted a
resolution on human rights and
the environment, recognizing that
environmental degradation and
unsustainable use of natural resources
Page 9
interferes with the enjoyment of
human rights.13 It built on work of the
Special Rapporteur on human rights
and the environment, who has set out a
framework for governments to protect
against such interference, including:
‘(a) procedural obligations,
including to make environmental
information publicly available,
facilitate public participation in
environmental decision-making
and provide access to legal
remedies;
(b) substantive obligations to
adopt institutional frameworks
to protect against environmental
harm that may infringe on
enjoyment of human rights; and
(c) heightened obligations to
protect those who are most
vulnerable to such harm.’14
Adherence to this framework requires
governments to ensure appropriate
weight is given to human rights in
environmental decision-making, and
that alternatives which minimize
impacts on human rights and vulnerable
populations are favoured where
reasonably available.
These obligations extend to corporate
stakeholders involved in mega-projects.
Governments in the region lack the
technical and financial capacity to
implement projects themselves. Most
Mekong dams are therefore driven
by cross-border investment from
neighbouring countries such as Thailand
and China.
Yet local communities in both home
and host states have struggled to
find effective avenues to seek redress
for the impacts of such projects. For
instance, villagers in northern Thailand
affected by the 1,285MW Xayaburi
Dam in Laos filed a lawsuit in Thailand’s
Administrative Court challenging Thai
state agencies’ approval of a Power
Purchase Agreement for the project.
The approval was given without
adequate community consultation and
in the absence of a transboundary EIA
examining the impacts of the project
on Thai communities. Originally filed
in 2012 and dismissed by the lower
court, the case saw a landmark appeal
Page 10 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
decision by the Supreme Administrative
Court accepting jurisdiction, and
remains ongoing nearly five years
later.15 Another example is seen
in a complaint by Cambodian and
Thai communities and NGOs to the
Malaysian Human Rights Commission
against the Malaysian developer of
the Don Sahong Dam in Laos. The
commission ultimately concluded that
it lacked the mandate to conduct an
extra-territorial investigation into the
project, but issued recommendations
to the developer to ensure respect for
human rights in its overseas operations
and to the Malaysian government to
take further action to regulate the
conduct of companies in outbound
investments.16
International and domestic law is slowly
evolving on transboundary harm and
extraterritorial human rights obligations
(ETOs).17 In one example from the
region, a recent Thai Cabinet resolution
and policy guidelines from the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs on the Dawei Special
Economic Zone (SEZ) in Myanmar
noted the responsibility of the Thai
government and investors to monitor
the human rights impacts of overseas
investments in line with the United
Nations Guiding Principles on Business
and Human Rights.18 Unfortunately,
enforcement and domestic
implementation remain lacking.
Conclusion
The struggle for human rights in the
Mekong is inextricably bound up with
decisions on environmental governance
and the use of natural resources. More
must be demanded of the human rights
framework to secure the voices of all,
especially the most vulnerable, in these
decisions—and in determining the
region’s future.
Maureen Harris is the Southeast Asia
Program Director of International
Rivers.
1 Sign in Khmer in Kbal Romeas village,
Stung Treng Province, Cambodia.
2 International Rivers (n.d.) ‘Lower
Sesan 2 Dam’, www.internationalrivers.org/
campaigns/lower-sesan-2-dam.
3 Council for the Development
of Cambodia (2013) Cambodia Investment
Guidebook 2013 (Phnom Penh: Japanese
International Cooperation Agency).
4 Mekong Watch (n.d.) ‘Field Notes:
Interview at Affected Village in February 2015
Regarding Asset Survey Held on Lower Sesan
2 Dam’, www.mekongwatch.org/PDF/LS2_
FieldNoteRegardingAssetSurvey.pdf
5 T. Scudder (2005) The Future of
Large Dams: Dealing with Social, Environmental,
Institutional and Political Costs (London and
Sterling: Earthscan).
6 Key Consultants (Cambodia) Ltd.
(2008), Environment Impact Assessment for
Feasibility Study of Lower Sesan 2 Hydropower
Project (Phnom Penh).
7 G. Ziv et al. (2012) ‘Trading-off Fish
Biodiversity, Food Security and Hydropower in the
Mekong River Basin’, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 109(15), 5609–5614.
8 International Renewable Energy
Agency (n.d.) 2016 Renewable Capacity Statistics,
www.irena.org/DocumentDownloads/
Publications/IRENA_RE_Capacity_Statistics_2016.
pdf
9 A. Ansar, B. Flyvbjerg, A. Budzier, & D.
Lunn (2014) ‘Should We Build More Large Dams?
The Actual Costs of Hydropower Megaproject
Development’, Energy Policy, 1-14.
10 M. Manibo (2016) ‘Are mega dams
a solution or burden to climate change?’,
Eco-business, 4 May; CNRS (Délégation Paris
Michel-Ange) (2014), ‘Ebullition causes methane
emissions in tropical reservoirs’, ScienceDaily, 13
August.
11 J. Kirchher (2016) ‘Why we urgently
need more research on the social impacts of
dams’, www.water.ox.ac.uk/why-we-urgently-
need-more-research-on-the-social-impacts-of-
dams
12 United Nations (1998) Guiding
Principles on Internal Displacement, UN Doc. E/
CN.4/1998/53/Add.2, Article 6.
13 United Nations General Assembly
(2015) Human Rights Council Resolution 28/11:
Human rights and the environment, UN Doc A/
HRC/RES/28/11.
14 J. Knox (2015) ‘Report of the Special
Rapporteur on the issue of human rights
obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe,
clean, healthy and sustainable environment’,
Human Rights Council 31st session, UN Doc A/
HRC/31/53, at para. 3.
15 Business and Human Rights Resource
Centre (n.d.) ‘Xayaburi dam lawsuit (re Laos &
Thailand)’, http://business-humanrights.org/en/
xayaburi-dam-lawsuit-re-laos-thailand
16 Business and Human Rights Resource
Centre (n.d.) ‘National Human Rights Commission
of Malaysia responds to complaint about adverse
environmental & social impacts of Don Sahong
dam construction’, https://business-humanrights.
org/en/national-human-rights-commission-of-
malaysia-responds-to-complaint-about-adverse-
environmental-social-impacts-of-don-sahong-
dam-construction
17 The Maastricht Principles on Extra-
territorial Human Rights Obligations of States in
the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(2013), were developed by a group of jurists to
provide guidance on the application of the human
rights framework to ETOs.
18 Pianporn Deetes (2016) ‘Visit is a
chance to rethink investments’, Bangkok Post,
23 June, www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/
opinion/1017569/visit-is-chance-to-rethink-
investments
Photo essay: The human cost

Words by Kate Ross

Photos by Pianporn Deetes
of hydropower
Rivers play a central role in the lives of millions of people in Southeast Asia. They are
the lifeblood of the region, providing fish, fresh water, fertile sediment, employment,
transportation, recreation and many other essential benefits. However, these critical
lifelines are increasingly threatened by the construction of cascades of large dams
which will irreversibly alter the ecology of the rivers, block crucial fish migration
routes and re-settle hundreds of thousands of families. The widespread social
and environmental impacts of large dam projects disproportionally affect riparian
communities, many of them ethnic and indigenous peoples who have limited voice in
the decision-making process. The photos presented below illustrate the importance
of three of Southeast Asia’s most iconic rivers, the Nam Ou, Mekong and Salween
Rivers, the way of life that they support and the impacts associated with large-scale
hydropower development on each river.

The Nam Ou River is one of the most important rivers in Laos. Originating along the Lao-China border, the river flows south
into northern Laos and on to meet the mainstream of the Mekong River. Communities of diverse ethnic minorities have relied for
generations on the Nam Ou River and surrounding forest resources for food, income and spiritual well being. These communities
are now significantly affected by the ongoing construction of a cascade of seven dams along the river. Three dams are already
completed, and phase two of the cascade development was announced in April 2016. Affected villagers have been largely kept in
the dark about project plans and resettlement schemes.

2. Downstream of the Nam Ou 6 dam stands an abandoned

village. Villagers were relocated to a site up on the hill, where
three villages were moved together, far from the river. Villagers
still travel back to their old village to look for materials for their
homes, and to visit their abandoned farms in search of food.
The image of beautiful new homes and a better life put forward
by project developers is in stark contrast to the reality which
these villagers now face.
1. The impacts from the first three dams on the Nam Ou
River are already apparent: a lady who lives just downstream
of the Nam Ou 6 dam looks out at the Nam Ou River. The
water level has become uncertain since the dam started
operation. Sometimes, water released from the dam
upstream floods her small shop. Her life has been irreversibly
altered by construction of the dam, yet she has received no
acknowledgement of the impacts or compensation from the
dam developers.

The destructive model of dam development, which externalises the true social and environmental cost of these projects, is being
exported beyond the Nam Ou River. On the lower Mekong River, two dams are under construction, along the river’s mainstream in
Laos, with a third following quickly. Before the Xayaburi Dam moved forward in 2010, the lower Mekong River flowed freely from
Laos through the Vietnam Delta. Now, Mekong communities face a similar uncertainty over their future as villagers along the Nam
Ou River.

Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 11

The Mekong River is recognised globally for its abundant biodiversity and is home to the world’s largest freshwater fishery.
Communities along the length of the river rely on fish as a critical protein source, and for many people Mekong fish are also a
primary means of livelihood. Mekong fisheries face a major threat from hydropower construction due to blocked migration routes,
reservoirs and irreversible ecosystem changes. A significant decrease in fish stocks and shifts in the river’s seasonal flood pulse
are likely to trigger a food security crisis in the region. One of the most vital fish migration pathways along the lower Mekong
mainstream is found in Siphandone, southern Laos. In 2014, construction began on the Don Sahong Dam, blocking the Hou
Sahong Channel, the main pathway in the area allowing for year-round fish migration. The dam is located just two kilometres
upstream of the Laos-Cambodia border; however, project developers have failed to study the dam’s trans-boundary impacts,
leading to widespread concern in Cambodia and throughout the lower Mekong region.

3. A fisherman casts his net on the

Mekong River in Siphandone, Southern
Laos, close to the site of the Don Sahong
dam. Construction of the Xayaburi
and Don Sahong dams moved forward
without meaningful consultation
with affected communities, ignoring
objections from people across the
region and ongoing concerns voiced by
neighboring countries that share the
river downstream.

4. In November 2016, the Lao

government announced plans to move
forward with a third dam on the lower
Mekong mainstream, the Pak Beng dam,
in northern Laos. A fishing boat travels
along the Mekong River in Pak Beng,
which is a popular tourist route for slow
boats coming from Thailand.

With each new dam that moves

forward, the impacts on the Mekong
River and its people are compounded,
and the unique ecosystems and vital
natural resources are pushed to the
brink of collapse.

All photos © Pianporn Deetes

1. Nam Ou River in Phongsali, Northern Laos, 2016
2. Nam Ou in Phongsali, Northern Laos, 2016
3. Fisherman at Don Sahong, Laos - 2016
4. Fisherman Pak Beng, Laos - 2016
5. Salween River, Karen State, Myanmar 2007
6. IDP family, Karen State, Myanmar 2006
7. IDP camp, Karen state, Myanmar 2006
8. IDP camp, Karen state, Myanmar 2006

Page 12 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017

The Mekong’s sister river, the Salween is one of Asia’s longest remaining free-flowing rivers. It holds a unique place in the
identity of the diverse ethnic peoples who live along its length. The Salween River sustains rich fisheries and fertile farmland that
are central to the lives of communities living along its banks. The history and significance of the river runs deeply through these
communities. Due to decades of armed conflict, it is also a highly sensitive and contentious area. Salween communities have
experienced decades of violence and displacement in Myanmar’s longstanding civil war. A cascade of seven dams planned along
the Salween River represent yet another installment in a long series of devastating events.

5. A boat navigates rapids along the

Salween River near the location of the
proposed Hat Gyi dam in Karen State,
Myanmar, and the site of recent active
armed conflict.

6. Most dam-affected people in Karen and Shan State, Myanmar, are either internally
displaced people (IDPs), or refugees who were forced to flee to Thailand during
Myanmar’s military junta and decades of conflict. Planned dams along the Salween
River, including the Hat Gyi and Mon Ton dams, threaten to drown the hopes of
thousands of refugees of ever returning home. The proposed dams face widespread
opposition from local communities.

8. A medic treats a woman at an IDP

camp along the Salween River.

7. An IDP family at a camp along the

Salween River close to the site of the
proposed Hat Gyi dam.

Dams planned, under construction and in operation on these three rivers will have profound and irreversible social and
environmental impacts. The people who stand to lose the most are riparian communities who have little voice in decision-making
processes. There is an urgent need for governments in Southeast Asia to recognise the importance of these iconic rivers and the
benefits that they provide beyond electricity generation. Healthy rivers are the lifelines of our planet and this is nowhere more
evident than in the Nam Ou, the Mekong and the Salween Rivers.

Pianporn Deetes is the Thailand and Myanmar Campaigns Director of International Rivers. Kate Ross is the Mekong Program
Coordinator of International Rivers.

Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 13

 Human rights and
environmental
justice in Myanmar:
An interview with
Mirco Kreibich
Sean Bowes
Myanmar is undergoing a democratic
transition. Just last year, its first
democratically elected government
came to power after decades of military
rule. Although Nobel Peace Prize
laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK), was
constitutionally barred from becoming
President due to the British nationality
of her husband and children, she is the
State Counsellor and de facto head of
Myanmar’s government.
Despite these changes, the situation
in Myanmar remains fraught. Amnesty
International reports that the change of
government ‘did not lead to significant
improvements in the human rights
situation’.1 Violence and discrimination
against the Rohingya minority has
intensified,2 fighting between ethnic
armed groups and the Myanmar Army
persists,3 political repression continues,4
land grabs deprive farmers of their
homes and livelihoods,5 and foreign
direct investment increasingly drives
the management of natural resources.6
To find out more, I spoke with
Mirco Kreibich, Director of the
Myanmar Program of the Heinrich
Böll Foundation (HBF). HBF is a German-
based political foundation with offices
in 34 different countries. Its work
focuses on democracy, human rights,
environmental degradation, social
participation, non-violent conflict
resolution and individual rights.
What challenges does HBF face
working in Myanmar?
I think there are two main challenges.
Page 14 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
One challenge is that for local and
international NGOs [non-governmental
organisations] in the country, it’s still
quite cumbersome to work. We have to
deal with a lot of bureaucracy. It takes
a lot of time to get a memorandum of
understanding with the government.
You need this to register yourself. Most
organisations that I know have taken
more than two years to register.
A huge challenge that we face is the
weak capacities on the ground. It’s
a typical transition or post-conflict
context where you have a lot of INGOs
and a lot of international donors—
Myanmar has become a donor darling.
There is a lot of money coming into
the country, but at the same time,
there is basically one or more than
one generation that has not had a
proper education. So there is a lot of
competition for a very tight labour
market. This is one of the challenges
for us.
The other is that civil society is still
not really regarded as a key player in
political decision-making. The whole
question of the participation of people,
of civil society, has not yet taken root.
This also hasn’t really changed with the
change of government. On the contrary,
some of our partners would even say
that it has gotten worse.
What difficulties have you personally
faced working in Myanmar?
For me personally, there are
cumbersome issues – for example, legal
status. Unless you are a member of
[the] UN or diplomatic staff, when you
Photo © Stephan Röhl.
come from civil society, it’s difficult to
get long-term visas. You have to leave
the country every 70 days. Almost all of
us are on multiple-entry business visas.
That’s the only way for international
staff to stay on longer-terms.
I’ve never had any problem with my
work. We are free to work on difficult
topics. But there are some topics
that are very, very ‘hot potatoes’—
for example, the Rohingya issue. It’s
difficult for organisations working on
this issue. You expose yourself as an
organisation not only to nationalist
Buddhists, but also to public opinion.
But while these are challenges,
they exist more at the logistical and
bureaucratic levels, rather than at the
political level.
In your article, ‘Burma’s Rocky Path
to Democracy—The Role of Natural
Resources’,7 you wrote about Myanmar
being treated like a pawn in a game
of geopolitical chess between China
and India. What are China and India’s
impact on Myanmar?
You have to differentiate between China
and India. Myanmar’s ties to India are
rather weak, which was something
that surprised me given the common
history. Myanmar was part of India
when India was a British colony. These
ties have been broken and culturally,
there is hardly any exchange between
the regions bordering the northeast of
India. The border has been closed for
the past decades. People don’t really
look towards India when they look
towards their future.
India has been very cautious when
it comes to direct investments in
Myanmar. This is very different to China.
China has, in the past decades, been
the ‘big brother’. There’s even a saying
that China and Myanmar are ‘brotherly
countries’. China has, in the past three
decades, hugely invested in Myanmar.
It’s by far the largest foreign investor
in Myanmar and politically, it has also
invested a lot.
For China, Myanmar has been a crucial
cornerstone in their ‘One Belt, One
Road’ policy. Myanmar gives China and
especially its southwestern parts—
Yunnan province, for example—direct
access to the Indian Ocean. This is
China’s major interest in Myanmar:
to build these trade routes through
Myanmar to the Indian Ocean. They
are building a special economic zone in
Kyaukpyu, which is in Rakhine State. A
deep-sea port will be built. They already
have oil and gas pipelines. They are
about to build roads. There is a lot of
talk about a rail link as well. They want
to build a major trade route through the
north of Myanmar that will bring their
goods to the west. For them, that’s a
big issue.
The other big issue is energy. I think
the interest in energy may have waned
a bit because China now has fewer
energy needs. In Yunnan, there is
actually energy excess at the moment
because of lower growth rates. So at
the moment, there is not so much
demand. But China is always planning
ahead for the longer term. I think they
have identified the whole Southeast
Asian region as crucial to securing their
energy future through hydropower. You
see this in Laos, Cambodia, and also
Myanmar. China has, together with
the old military government, identified
sites for dozens of hydropower projects.
Some of them would be among the
largest dams in the world.
When it comes to how the Myanmar
people regard China, that’s a bit trickier.
On the one hand, there is a big Chinese
minority in the country—about three
percent of the population. There are
also ethnic armed organisations with
very close ties to China. The largest one,
the Wa State Army, is estimated to have
20,000 to 30,000 soldiers. In the border
regions, some people have closer ties to
China than to Myanmar proper. But at
the same time, the majority of people
regard China’s economic activities in the
country negatively. They believe that
China is only stealing and plundering
their resources, and is basically bullying
Myanmar. So it’s kind of a schizophrenic
situation. On the one hand, it’s clear
that Myanmar cannot really go ahead
without taking into account what China
thinks. On the other hand, people
dislike China to a certain degree.
In your article, you also spoke about
land grabs being carried out either
by the government directly or under
laws that had been passed by the
government. How widespread is the
problem of land grabbing? What effect
is it having?
Although we at HBF are not the chief
experts on land issues, it is well known
that the problem of land grabbing is
very widespread. According to the
Central Committee of Confiscated
Farmlands and Other Lands, at least
2 million acres or 800,000 hectares
have been grabbed, primarily by the
government and the military in the past
decades. Every month, you will see two
or three articles in the Myanmar Times
on issues where farmers even go to jail
for protesting against land grabs.
The problem here is that legally and
traditionally, land titles are not issued
in Myanmar. This is the case in most
countries in the region: farmers had
user rights rather than official land
titles. Only now is this changing. There
is now a move towards officialising
ownership rights.
Under the Myanmar Constitution, the
ultimate owner of land is the union
government— that is, the central state.
This obviously opens, and has opened,
a lot of room for expropriation. In
many cases, you don’t even have to
expropriate because legally or officially
traditional land users don’t even
have a land title. Legal titles do exist,
but they are rare. So what basically
happens is that the government, the
army or companies affiliated with the
military claim that they need some land
for whatever purpose — for building
army barracks or for building some
kind of industry plantation — and
they simply send people away. Proper
compensation in line with the market
price has hardly ever been paid to the
people who have been evicted. You
read quite often in the Myanmar Times
about how farmers protest against this,
but when they go back on their land,
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
this is considered trespassing and so
many of them are jailed. This problem
is widespread and is a major cause for
conflict at the local level.
When you say cause for conflict on
the local level, do you mean between
farmers and the authorities?
Yes. According to the new government,
the 800,000 hectares of grabbed land
can, to a large part, be attributed to the
army. The army in Myanmar is not like
what you see in western countries. It is
also an economic complex. There are a
lot of companies that are owned by the
army or by people close to the army.
Often what happens is that local
governments give concessions to either
the army-affiliated companies or to
private people. The legality of these
concessions is always very questionable.
What are the impacts of systematic
land grabbing?
The rural population is the most
vulnerable population in Myanmar.
Given that the land is actually owned
by the government, the question of
whether the rural population has any
legal rights is extremely tricky. Land
grabbing creates instability at the local
level. A lot of people feel alienated by
business interests and by the army.
Land is one issue; the other is mining.
The struggle around natural resources
fuels resistance. Natural resources are
by far the most productive factor in
Myanmar’s economy, especially in the
ethnic regions. Ethnic people for the
past decades have had the impression
that they have no authority over what
they perceive as their own resources.
However, the constitution says that all
of the resources belong to the national
government.
In 1947, when the first Panglong
Conference took place, ASSK’s father,
General Aung San, was discussing with
ethnic group leaders about the union
and the federal state. He promised
them a high degree of autonomy and
a federal state. On the basis of this
promise, the ethnic groups did not ask
for independent states, which they may
have done, especially the larger ones;
they were talked into this union. This
never materialised, however, so they
never had autonomy or a federal state.
This is why there are strong feelings
Page 15
of being cheated – they could have
had their own countries and their own
states, and with that, ownership of and
control over resources in the region.
They feel that the central government
is stealing their resources and
undermining their economic wellbeing.
The topics that we’ve been discussing
paint quite a bleak picture of the
situation in Myanmar. Do you think
there are any positives?
The positive thing about Myanmar
is that the country is on a path to
democracy. Compared to 2010 and the
years before, Myanmar is much more
open now. In 2013, the price of SIM
cards went down from $250 to $2.50,
with the effect that Myanmar is now
one of the fastest-growing markets
for mobile telephones in the world. At
least in all the urban areas, you have a
mobile telephone network and I think
that about two-thirds of the people
potentially have access to the Internet
because they own smartphones. So the
country has become much more open,
and I think it will be difficult to roll back
the improvements that have happened.
People are also becoming more
courageous, in part due to the
elections. I would say that ASSK, to a
certain extent, has a rather top-down
approach. But through the fact that
the army is, at least officially, not in
charge anymore, people have become
more outspoken, and they are better
organised. I would also say that capacity
is increasing. There is more discussion
and debate in the public domain, as
well as more media coverage through
print and television media like the
Democratic Voice of Burma. So all
of this is happening. The question is
how much impact civil society and
public discourses will have on political
decision-making.
ASSK was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1991. However, she has
attracted fierce criticism in recent
years in her role as Myanmar’s de
facto political leader. What is ASSK’s
legacy in terms of human rights and
environmental justice?
It’s a double-edged sword. You expect
a person who has won a Nobel Peace
Prize to be much more serious about
human rights issues. And to a certain
extent, you can see this. I don’t think
that she would put people in prison for
Page 16 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
political reasons. But it still happens.
And then, of course, the question is
whether she has the ability to prevent
these transgressions from happening.
When it comes to environmental
justice, I have the impression that the
environment is not so high on her
agenda. I think that the peace process
and economic development are what
interest her the most. I’ve never really
heard her say anything concrete about
environmental justice. What she is
struggling with are things like the
Myitsone Dam, where she knows she is
squeezed between different interests,
and that her own people would not
want the dam project to proceed. But
she has to balance all of these different
interests and see what is best for her
government. It’s very tricky for her.
Basically, people are a bit disappointed.
They thought that ASSK would be
much more proactive when it came to
improving human rights. But we have
seen, for example, that the number
of people imprisoned under article
66D of the Telecommunications Law
has increased since the NLD [National
League for Democracy] came to
power. Article 66D is basically an
online defamation article, but a very
vague one. It lacks a clear definition
of what defamation means, so anyone
can accuse someone else of having
defamed them, the leadership, the
army, or whomever on the internet.
Now the question to me is whether the
NLD is supporting this. Are they okay
with the fact that people are being
jailed for criticising ASSK, the army
leadership, the president, or whomever
on Facebook? Or is it that the NLD
simply has limited ability to act against
this? At the same time, we have also
seen a lot of discussion on amending
or even abandoning this article, yet the
NLD has not been proactive. They’ve
been quite lukewarm on this issue.
Our impression is that civil society
isn’t being regarded as an important
actor in decision-making processes.
The government is still not very
transparent. There is hardly any contact
with the media. ASSK herself has
been giving very few interviews and
press conferences. There is very little
interaction between the government,
the ministries and civil society. We
would like to see an open debate on
issues, and we would like to see strong
participation of local populations, of
civil society organisations, and so on.
What do you think the future holds for
Myanmar?
What I fear is that Myanmar will simply
follow the path of its neighbours. In
my opinion, the example set by its
neighbours is not the best. The Asian
tiger countries – Vietnam, Thailand,
Cambodia – they have pushed
economic growth and economic
development over everything else.
These countries have achieved
economic growth and development;
to a certain extent, they have achieved
welfare. However, these achievements
have come at the expense of the
environment and natural resources.
I wonder how long this can continue.
I hope that Myanmar can implement
a different development paradigm.
We have some partners with whom
we want to promote and foster
dialogue on this issue. But I fear that
economic development issues will
remain dominant. We have seen a loss
of natural resources on a major scale
already, and I fear that there is much
more of this to come.
Sean Bowes was the Human Rights
Defender Student Editor for the
summer semester 2016/17.
Mirco Kreibich is the Director of the
Myanmar Program for the Heinrich
Böll Foundation.
1 Amnesty International (2017) Myanmar
2016/2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-
and-the-pacific/myanmar/report-myanmar/
2 E. Albert (2017), ‘The Rohingya migrant
crisis’, 12 January, Council on Foreign Relations, http://
www.cfr.org/burmamyanmar/rohingya-migrant-crisis/
p36651
3 A. Kronholm (2016) ‘In Burma’s north,
thousands protest continuing low-grade war’, 9 October,
Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/
world/asia_pacific/in-burmas-north-thousands-protest-
continuing-low-grade-war/2016/10/09/e3632e12-8bdc-
11e6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_
term=.648a7d9feae8
4 Human Rights Watch (2016) Burma:
Dismantle infrastructure of repression, 29 June, https://
www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/29/burma-dismantle-
infrastructure-repression
5 Human Rights Watch (2016) Burma:
Farmers targets of land grabs, 3 November, https://www.
hrw.org/news/2016/11/03/burma-farmers-targets-land-
grabs
6 B. Santa Maria and I. Pietropaoli (2015)
Burma’s human rights abuses highlight alarming
corporate failure, 21 February, Guardian, https://www.
theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/feb/20/
burmas-human-rights-abuses-highlight-alarming-
corporate-corruption
7 M. Kreibich (2016) ‘Burma’s rocky path
to democracy—the role of natural resources’, 1 April,
Heinrich Boll Stiftung Myanmar, https://mm.boell.
org/2016/04/01/burmas-rocky-path-democracy-role-
natural-resources
Photo © Prachatai 2014. Re-printed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Between 2005 and 2010, Chinese
foreign direct investment in Myanmar
increased dramatically from a
negligible amount to almost US$900
million.1 Since 2011, however, the
Myanmar government has taken a
more distant attitude towards China
in a bid to reduce the country’s
economic dependence on their
powerful neighbor. This comes at
a time when serious human rights
and environmental concerns have
been raised over Chinese investment
projects, especially those involving
resource exploitation supposedly at
the sacrifice of Myanmar people. The
Myitsone dam and the Letpadaung
copper mine are cases in point, having
spurred criticism of environmental
damage, problematic land acquisitions
and unfair compensation. But while
Chinese investment dropped drastically
to $217.8 million in 2011 from
$875.6 million in the previous year,
China remains the largest investor in
Myanmar. 2
In May 2016, sponsored by the United
Nations Development Program’s (UNDP)
China country office and supported
by the China Foundation for Poverty
Alleviation (CFPA), I conducted field
research (with assistance from a CFPA
coordinator) over the course of ten days
in three cities in Myanmar: Yangon,
Kyaukpyu and Monywa.3 This article is
based on the interviews and meetings
conducted during this field research How Chinese
trip with Myanmar government
officials, international non-government
businesses are seen
organisations, civil society organisations
(CSOs), village chiefs, local residents,
in Myanmar: a
as well as Chinese businesses.4 Here, survey of key social,
I provide an overview of the social,
environmental and development issues environmental and
that have been raised by Myanmar
civil society against Chinese businesses development issues
operating within the country. In so
doing, I seek to offer insights into
how Chinese businesses might better
contribute to environmental and social
justice in Myanmar.
Yuan Wang
The challenges of doing business in
Myanmar
As Myanmar opens up and restrictions
on the freedom of speech, association
and media are relaxed, human rights
and environmental activists in the
country have become increasingly
emboldened. It is in this context that
the country’s growing number of
human rights groups and environmental
activists have voiced concerns over the
repercussions of China’s hydropower
dams, oil and gas pipelines and other
infrastructure projects, which have
displaced thousands of communities,
negatively impacted farming and fishing
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 17
livelihoods as well as local biodiversity.5
Given the popular belief that Chinese
investment projects benefit China
more than Myanmar, Chinese investors
have grown increasingly wary of the
country-wide, unfavourable public
opinion towards Chinese companies in
the country. To mitigate this negative
perception, Chinese businesses need
to tackle the concerns that have arisen
in relation to the transparency, human
rights implications and environmental
consequences of their infrastructure
projects in Myanmar.
Lack of transparency in business
dealings
The lack of transparency in business
operations is a commonly heard
complaint against Chinese companies
in Myanmar. The majority of Chinese
investment projects are of the
government-to-government variety.
Myanmar’s restrictive military rule
in the previous decades has led the
Myanmar people to lose trust in
their government—an impression
that has, in turn, contributed to the
negative perception within Myanmar
of the opaque dealings of Chinese
multinational corporations (MNCs)
which do business with the Myanmar
government.6
Local CSOs frequently criticise such
practices for encouraging corruption
and ignoring the suffering of the local
people. Indeed, Chinese projects tend
to be accused of poor information
disclosure to the communities affected
by major infrastructure schemes.
During my interview at the site of
Project A7, which is a project jointly run
by a Chinese MNC and a consortium of
foreign companies, the farmers who
were directly affected by the project did
not have access to basic information
about the project, nor did they even
know the full names of the companies
involved and their responsibilities. As a
result, the farmers could not anticipate
the project’s level of environmental
impact, and could not prepare for the
subsequent social changes that would
affect their livelihoods such as the loss
of farmlands.
During an interview session with local
communities in Kyaukpyu regarding
Page 18 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
another Chinese-run project (Project
B), a civil society representative
complained how: ‘[the] community
has no clue of how the project [will]
look like; we have to know whether
it is a tiger or an elephant so as to
decide our reaction towards it.’ CSOs
similarly complain about the lack of
an effective communication channel
with Chinese businesses. ‘They seldom
consult the local community when
doing projects in this country, we don’t
know what is going on behind those
closed doors,’ a representative from an
intergovernmental organisation (IGO)
explained during another interview.
Some other CSOs have also pointed out
how they would like to communicate
with and even work with Chinese
companies, but that no dialogue
channel exists. The CSOs interviewed
report that when they approach a
Chinese company, they are normally
met with a ‘closed-door’ attitude. All
of this is assuming that they are lucky
enough to find the company’s office
location in the first place.
Problematic human and labour rights
track record
Much criticism has come to light over
the questionable Chinese business
practices that reportedly infringe on
human and labour rights, particularly
vis-à-vis poor working conditions
and land-grabbing behaviour. Labour
management laws in Myanmar remain
largely incomplete, and as such,
this significantly complicates efforts
to monitor and enforce social and
labour safeguards in Chinese project
development. Labour and human
rights-focused CSOs have expressed
concern over, for example, the long
working hours, failure to respect
minimum wages, the verbal and
sometimes physical abuse of local
employees, along with the failure to
provide basic facilities such as drinking
water and toilets, in Chinese projects.
According to one labour rights CSO
practitioner, ‘these problems are not
only [unique to] Chinese companies
of course; Korean, Japanese and Thai
companies also have the same problem.
But usually Chinese firms [are] worse.’
Related to this is the question of
whether Chinese MNCs are creating
genuine employment opportunities
for local Myanmar people. A complaint
commonly raised in the interviews
conducted is that Chinese companies
are accused of bringing workers
over from China instead of hiring
and training a local workforce. This
highlights a major obstacle facing
Chinese MNCs. As noted by one Chinese
manager, ‘it is quite challenging to
find someone who can speak English
well to do marketing or administrative
work.’ For Chinese companies seeking
a competitive edge, investing in the
training of new unskilled employees
continues to be seen as compromising
efficiency. However, failing to do so will
lead them to be further denounced for
poor social engagement.
Moreover, Chinese hydropower,
mining and infrastructure projects
that involve the displacement of local
communities have also served as
clear targets of popular resentment.
Although the Myanmar government is
contractually responsible for relocation
and land compensation processes,
critics often place blame squarely
on Chinese companies for turning a
blind eye to the opaque relocation
and compensation mechanisms put in
place by the Myanmar government. In
fact, Chinese businesses have already
begun to express serious concerns over
the Myanmar government and local
officials’ ineffectiveness in dealing with
land acquisitions and compensation
issues, poor basic infrastructure, the
frequent eruption of regional conflicts,
and the legal system and industrial
policy that require updating.
Crucially, this problem then converges
with the previous one: when farmers’
lands are taken away from them,
the impact of losing their traditional
livelihood is further exacerbated, should
these affected farmers not be given
work by the company involved. Even
when employment opportunities are
created, Myanmar workers are usually
hired as temporary daily workers only
during the construction period, and are
laid off after construction is completed.
As explained by interviewees, they
are also mostly employed as manual
labourers, responsible for tasks
such as digging soil, carrying sand,
stones, and cement, working as night
watchmen, cleaners, cooks, and so on.
The interviewees also revealed how
jobs that require more professional,
specialised skills (e.g. driving and
maintaining machines, and engineering)
are often filled by Chinese nationals.
Environmental degradation and
injustice
The majority of the Myanmar
government’s revenue comes from
natural resource exploitation, especially
gas and hydropower. Natural resource
exports account for 70 per cent of
national exports, or around 11 per
cent of the country’s gross domestic
product (GDP) in 2012-13.8 Investment
largely originates from countries within
the region—most notably, resource-
and energy-hungry China, India
and Thailand. Hydropower projects
constitute an instructive example. An
estimated 48 hydropower projects are
currently being planned, constructed
or already exist in Myanmar on major
rivers and their tributaries; up to
90 per cent of the output from the
hydropower dams is expected to be
exported to neighbouring countries.9
With respect to investment projects
involving resource exploitation, Chinese
companies continue to be faced with
problems concerning biodiversity
conservation, waste management
and proper impact assessment.
The Myitsone dam, planned at the
confluence of the Irrawaddy River,
is a case in point. The dam stands
to submerge around 766 square
kilometres of old-growth rainforest
situated in the Mizoram-Manipur-
Kachin rainforest region, one of the
world’s richest biodiversity hotspots.
At the construction site of the
aforementioned Project A, the Chinese
company in charge was widely criticised
by local residents for irresponsibly
dumping bottles that contained highly
toxic chemicals which could have
extremely damaging long-term impacts
on surrounding waterways and aquatic
life. After the project’s completion,
construction-related waste such as
stones, cement bags and pieces of
metal used for welding remained,
having been scattered across the
farmlands adjacent to the pipelines’
route.
Similar complaints have also been
leveled against another Chinese-
financed project (Project C), which
has been accused of contaminating
groundwater and creating significant
health risks for local residents.
Environmental impact assessments
(EIAs) are usually conducted before
these projects commence, yet the
majority of the EIAs are conducted by
the Chinese companies themselves
rather than through independent
assessors. Currently, with the recent
implementation of a new EIA policy by
Myanmar’s Ministry of Environmental
Conservation and Forestry in December
2015, an independent EIA is now legally
required for all investment projects. Yet,
ongoing regulatory oversights mean
that Chinese businesses continue to be
perceived negatively by the Myanmar
public, as they are charged with the
unfair appropriation of the (economic)
benefits and environmental costs of
their investment projects.
Lessons for the future?
The key concerns voiced by Myanmar
communities and CSOs about
Chinese businesses stem from their
vulnerability and insecurity towards the
consequences that obscure Chinese
investment projects are expected
to have on their livelihoods. Given
how Myanmar is still in the process
of undergoing a transition of political
system, Chinese companies often
find themselves entrenched in the
complicated political situation, including
mistrust between the previous military
government (with whom many
existing contracts are signed) and the
Myanmar people, as well as the power
competition between national, district
and state governments.
While much of the responsibility in
regulating investment lies with the
Myanmar and Chinese governments,
obtaining a social license to operate
(SLO) remains crucial to the success
of Chinese companies in Myanmar—
now more so than ever before.
The SLO concept first emerged in
the mining sector as a means to
encourage businesses to engage with
local communities and for mining
investment to generate good social
outcomes. To obtain SLO in Myanmar,
Chinese companies need to work in the
following three areas.10 First, they must
work on fostering multi-stakeholder
dialogue and engagement, as trust
provides a solid base of social capital
when developing a specific project
or dealing with a crisis. Second, they
need to commit to the full disclosure
of their social and environmental
performance over time, especially
against standardised reporting criteria,
as this will also help to build trust
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
with external stakeholders. Finally,
Chinese companies need to adopt best
practice principles vis-a-vis corporate
governance in order to cultivate greater
transparency in their operations.
Yuan Wang is currently completing
a MSc in Politics Research at Oxford
University, and has worked at the
China country office of the United
Nations Development Programme and
the Nairobi office of the Sino-Africa
Centre of Excellence Foundation.
1 Data taken from the Global
Environmental Institute (GEI) (2016) ‘Chinese
Investment in Myanmar: A scoping study’,
GEI China Going Global Series, https://
myanmarbiodiversity.org/wp-content/
uploads/2016/06/Myanmar-Scoping-Study-Draft-
Report.pdf
2 GEI (2016) ‘Chinese Investment in
Myanmar: A scoping study’.
3 Kyaukpyu and Monywa each host a
mega-Chinese investment project. The CITIC Con-
struction Group is planning to construct a special
economic zone and a deep sea port project in
Kyaukpyu, while the Wanbao Letpadaung Cooper
Mine Project is located in Monywa town.
4 A questionnaire-based survey was
administered to six Chinese enterprises and CSOs
in Myanmar. Following completion of the survey,
a series of open-ended questions were given to
the informants. Each interview lasted between 1
and 1.5 hours on average. Two focus groups were
also included: one comprised of five CSOs, and
the other with two households in Kyaukpyu.
5 Many policy reports have been
produced by CSOs active in Myanmar. See
Transnational Institute (2016) ‘China’s Engage-
ment in Myanmar: From Malacca Dilemma to
Transition Dilemma’, Myanmar Policy Briefing
19; Burma Environmental Working Group (2011)
Burma’s Environment: People, Problems, Policies
(Chiang Mai: Wanida Press); Myanmar China
Pipeline Watch Committee (2016) In Search for
Social Justice Along the Myanmar-China Oil and
Gas Pipeline; Lawyer’s Network and Justice Trust
(2013) Report of Evidence Regarding Controver-
sies at Letpadaung Hill Copper Mine Project.
6 See P. Yeophantong (2016) ‘China’s
Hydropower Expansion and Influence Over
Environmental Governance in Mainland Southeast
Asia’ in E. Goh (ed.), Rising China’s Influence in
Developing Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
7 The Chinese investment projects,
companies and interviewees cited in this article
will remain anonymous in light of the sensitivity
of this topic. Instead, a coding system has been
used.
8 International Monetary Fund (2015)
‘Myanmar: Selected Issues’, IMF Country Report
No. 15/268, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/
ft/scr/2015/cr15268.pdf
9 See P. Yeophantong (2016) ‘China’s
Dam Diplomacy in the Mekong Region: Three
Game Changers’ in D.J.H. Blake and L. Robins, Wa-
ter Governance Dynamics in the Mekong Region
(Selangor: Strategic Information and Research
Development Centre), 126-127.
10 These three points are adapted
from B.F. Yates and C.L. Horvath (2013) ‘Social
License to Operate: How to get it and how to
keep it’, 2013 Pacific Energy Summit Working
Papers, http://www.nbr.org/downloads/pdfs/eta/
PES_2013_summitpaper_Yates_Horvath.pdf
Page 19

Economic growth
and development in
Lao PDR:
Who pays for
progress?
Kearrin Sims
In many respects, the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) is a
development success story. Since 2006,
the country’s average economic growth
rate of 7.9 per cent has made it one
of the ten fastest growing economies
in the world – and seen its income
categorisation rise from a low-income
to a lower-middle income economy.1
During the past decade, foreign direct
investment has grown dramatically,
gross national income has doubled and
the official poverty rate has declined
from 33.5 per cent to around 23 per
cent.2 Economic growth has been
accompanied by progress on many
of the country’s former Millennium
Development Goal (MDG) targets,
and in 2010, the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP)
labelled Lao PDR as the sixth most
successful country for improved human
development in the past 40 years.
Unfortunately, however, Lao PDR is
also governed by an authoritarian
regime with a shameful human rights
record – the Lao People’s Revolutionary
Party (LPRP). Ranked by Freedom
House (2016) as one of the world’s
most politically repressive societies
and by Transparency International
(2015) as among the world’s thirty most
corrupt countries, the LPRP maintains
its leadership through a pervasive
culture of fear that is reinforced
through unlawful arrest, enforced
disappearances, strict media controls
and the repression of civil society.
As such, economic growth and socio-
economic advancement have come
with heavy costs to both the natural
environment and basic political
freedoms.
Page 20 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
From green hills to dollar bills
Since the early 2000s, the Government
of Lao PDR (GoL) and many of its
development partners have welcomed
foreign direct investment as a means
to transform ‘untapped natural
resources’ into productive assets.3
Unsurprisingly, this policy of ‘turning
land into capital’ has seen land access
become increasingly competitive and,
by 2010, around 3.5 million hectares, or
more than 20 percent of the country’s
total land area, had already been
allocated to foreign investors in the
form of land concessions.4 Hydropower
and mining projects, legal and illegal
logging, agribusiness plantations, and
new built environments have all seen
the appropriation of arable land from
private citizens and, according to the
GoL’s National Land Management
Authority, more than 50 percent of the
2,000+ land concessions in the country
have resulted in ‘detrimental effects’ to
the environment and local residents.5
Such detrimental effects include,
but are not limited to, insufficient
compensation for lost land and other
assets; the imprisonment of those that
have opposed forced resettlements;
rapid depletion of non-forest timber
products; illegal logging; pollution
of rivers and water sources through
extractive industries; and the large-
scale plantation of environmentally
deleterious monoculture plantations
such as rubber.6
Concerns over land access are more
than environmental and livelihood
debates. Rather, following the
Internal Land Coalition’s May 2011
Tirana Declaration—and its call for
land governance to better meet the
needs of marginalised land users—
‘land grabs’ and their associated
forced displacements are now
widely considered by poverty and
environmentally focused civil society
organisations as potential catalysts
for human rights violations.7 This is
particularly so in agrarian-dependent
economies such as Lao PDR, where
around two-thirds of the population
remain dependent on farming for their
subsistence, and access to arable land
is crucial to both livelihoods and food
security. In such a context, the granting
of large-scale land concessions may
constitute a direct violation of people’s
most basic rights to ‘life, liberty and
security of person’, as stipulated in
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.8
Indeed, the relationship between
human rights violations and
environmental degradation in Lao PDR
is not limited to land access. Rather,
the intersection of natural resource
management and human rights is also
a pertinent issue within the country’s
hydropower sector. As numerous
studies have now demonstrated, the
ongoing construction of hydropower
dams on the Mekong mainstream river
is likely to severely affect fisheries and
reduce agricultural irrigation both in the
Lao PDR and within the downstream
Mekong countries of Cambodia and
Vietnam.9 With millions of people
dependent on the Mekong River
for their incomes and subsistence,
protecting the life, liberty and security
of vulnerable persons from the impact
of mainstream dams remains a serious
ongoing challenge.
While some may question the
invocation of human rights discourses
in regards to the livelihood implications
of land grabbing and hydropower
development in Lao PDR, such ‘indirect’
consequences of environmental justice
issues have also been accompanied
by numerous, targeted, human rights
violations.
You talk, you disappear
One of the most violent mechanisms
by which the LPRP has suppressed
political debate on land concessions,
environmental justice and other
contentious issues has been through
the harassment, imprisonment,
eviction and enforced disappearance
of ‘regime dissidents’. Media and
research constraints make it difficult
to obtain detailed information on such
human rights violations; however, some
notable cases have managed to reach
an international audience.
The first prominent case of an
environmental justice-related enforced
disappearance in Lao PDR is that of
Somphone Khantisouk – the co-owner
of an ecotourism guesthouse and
outspoken critic of Chinese-funded
agribusiness plantations in the country’s
north. According to statements released
by Human Rights Watch, Somphone
was abducted on 23 January 2007 when
four men in police uniforms stopped his
motorbike on the side of the road and
loaded him into a sport utility vehicle.10
Prior to his abduction, Somphone
had been well regarded by many local
communities, who he had assisted
in establishing grassroots tourism
programs. He has not been seen since.
In similar circumstances to Somphone
Khantisouk’s abduction, at around 6pm
on 15 December 2012, the Ramon
Magsaysay award-winning, community
development worker Sombath
Somphone was widely believed to have
been abducted by police, having been
stopped at a police post in Vientiane
and not been seen since.
While the motives behind Sombath
Somphone’s abduction cannot be
confirmed, there is considerable
speculation amongst those working in
the field of development in Lao PDR
that his disappearance is linked to his
involvement with the 2012 Asia-Europe
People’s Forum (AEPF), which took
place two months prior as part of the
9th Asia-Europe Meeting—a biennial
intergovernmental process established
to foster dialogue and cooperation
between Asia and Europe.
Held in Vientiane, the ninth AEPF
brought together civil society
organizations (CSOs) from across Asia
and Europe to build collaborative
partnerships and discuss common
issues, including land grabbing.
Unfortunately, however, reports
from attending CSOs suggest that the
LPRP did not respond well to critical
comments made regarding land
concessions. Lao participants at the
event were photographed by individuals
believed to be LPRP members,
and attending CSOs have offered a
confidential written report to this
author detailing how one rural farmer
who spoke on issues relating to land
concessions received threatening text
messages and intimidating visits from
the police following the event.
Returning to Sombath Somphone, those
closest to him believe his attempts
to ensure the safety of those who
presented at AEPF—and his role in
facilitating the forum – was the cause
for his abduction. Again, such beliefs
are impossible to confirm and the GoL
has, of course, denied any involvement
in Sombath’s disappearance. However,
given the circumstances that surround
his case, the failure by relevant
authorities to offer information on
the progress of investigations, and a
complete lack of media reporting on
the abduction within Lao PDR, as such
denials are unconvincing.11
Finally, although not strictly an enforced
disappearance, a third case which
powerfully highlights the severity with
which the GoL has responded to public
opposition against land concessions and
environmental degradation is that of
Mr Ounkeo Souksavanh. Ounkeo was
the host of a highly popular call-in radio
program that facilitated discussion on
a range of ‘sensitive’ topics including
land grabbing. He arrived at work in
January 2012, only to be informed that
his program had been cancelled by the
Ministry of Information, Culture and
Tourism – effective immediately and
without explanation.12 Shortly after the
program’s cancellation, Ounkeo also
received phone calls from concerned
(politically-connected) friends warning
that his life may be in danger and,
consequently, he has since fled to the
United States.
While the international community
could certainly do much more to
address such violent and explicit human
rights abuses in Lao PDR, one notable
consequence of recent violations has
been the United Nations 2015 refusal to
grant the country a seat on its Human
Rights Council.13
Conclusion
Lao PDR has made considerable and
commendable progress on many
development indicators. Economic
growth and poverty alleviation are
genuine objectives of the GoL and
central determinants of the LPRP’s
ability to maintain single-party rule.
However, in order to maintain the
march of progress, the LPRP has also
encouraged large-scale investment into
land and the rapid extraction of natural
resources. This has resulted in both
widespread environmental degradation
and severe human rights abuses against
those who have attempted to challenge
such an unsustainable path to growth.
While it is important to acknowledge
that the GoL has made attempts to
reduce large-scale land acquisitions—
most notably in May 2007 and June
2009 through moratoriums on land
concessions—it is also crucial to stress
that these ineffective bans have been
accompanied by continued (state-
sanctioned) concessions and the
silencing of public opposition to forced
resettlement.
As such, those paying the greatest price
for Lao PDR’s ‘successful’ development
are often those confronted by state and
private sector land acquisitions, those
who seek to protect the vulnerable
from forced resettlement, and the
future generations who will suffer
the consequences of the current
government’s privileging of economic
growth over sustainable resource
management.
Kearrin Sims is a lecturer in
development studies at James Cook
University. For more of his work on
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
human rights in Lao PDR, see Sims,
K. (forthcoming), ‘More Growth Less
Freedom? Charting Development
Pathways in Lao PDR’ in B. Howe (ed),
Statecentricity in East Asia: Structural
Impediments to Good Governance
(Palgrave Macmillan).
1 World Bank (2011) Lao PDR Now a Lower-
Middle Income Economy, https://www.worldbank.org/
en/news/press-release/2011/08/17/lao-pdr-now-lower-
middle-income-economy; Central Intelligence Agency
(2016) Laos, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/
the-world-factbook/geos/la.html
2 World Bank (2016) Lao PDR, http://data.
worldbank.org/country/lao-pdr
3 O. Schönweger & P. Messerli (2015) ‘Land
Acquisition, Investment, and Development in the Lao
Coffee Sector: Successes and Failures’, Critical Asian
Studies 47(1), 97.
4 M. Dwyer (2011) Building the Politics
Machine: Tools for Resolving the Global Land (Land Deal
Politics Initiative), 311.
5 ‘Laos losing out to land concessions’ (2011)
Vientiane Times, 27 April, 2.
6 I.G. Baird (2014) ‘Degraded Forest,
Degraded Land and the Development of Industrial
Tree Plantations in Laos’, Singapore Journal of Tropical
Geography 35(3), 328-44; K. Sims (2015) ‘The Asian
Development Bank and the Production of Poverty:
Neoliberalism, Technocratic Modernization and Land
Dispossession in the Greater Mekong Subregion’,
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 36(1), 112-
126; C. Friis et al (2016) ‘Changing Local Land Systems:
Implications of a Chinese Rubber Plantation in Nambak
District, Lao PDR’, Singapore Journal of Tropical
Geography 37(1), 25-42; M. Kenney-Lazar (2016) Linking
Food and Land Tenure Security in the Lao PDR (Land
Issues Working Group, Global Association for People and
the Environment and Village Focus International).
7 Schönweger & Messerli, ‘Land Acquisition,
Investment, and Development’, 94. The International
Land Coalition (ILC) is a coalition of 206 organisations
from 64 countries that work together to promote secure
and equitable access to land for rural people, mainly
through capacity building, knowledge sharing and
advocacy. The ILC’s Tirana Declaration was signed by 150
representatives of civil society organisations from 45
countries at the 2011 ‘Securing Land Access for the Poor
in Times of Intensified Natural Resource Competition’
conference in Tirana, Albania.
8 Schönweger & Messerli, ‘Land Acquisition,
Investment, and Development’, 94-122; United Nations
General Assembly (1948) Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-
human-rights/
9 I. G. Baird (2011) ‘The Don Sahong
Dam: Potential Impacts on Regional Fish Migrations,
Livelihoods, and Human Health’, Critical Asian Studies
43(2), 11-35; R. Cronin (2009) ‘Mekong Dams and the
Perils of Peace’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy
51(6), 147-60; S. Katus, D. Suhardiman & S. Senaratna
Sellamutu (2016) ‘When Local Power Meets Hydropower:
Reconceptualizing Resettlement Along the Nam
Gnouang River in Laos’, Geoforum 72, 6-15; M. Smits
(2012) ‘Hydropower and the Green Economy in Laos:
Sustainable development?’ in A. Hezri and W. Hofmeister
(eds), Towards a Green Economy: In Search of Sustainable
Energy Policies for the Future (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung).
10 Human Rights Watch (2015) Human
Rights Watch Concerns on Laos, https://www.hrw.org/
news/2015/11/05/human-rights-watch-concerns-laos
11 K. Sims (forthcoming), ‘More Growth Less
Freedom? Charting Development Pathways in Lao PDR’
in B. Howe (ed), Statecentricity in East Asia: Structural
Impediments to Good Governance (Palgrave Macmillan).
12 Human Rights Watch (2015) Human
Rights Watch Concerns on Laos, https://www.hrw.org/
news/2015/11/05/human-rights-watch-concerns-laos
13 ‘Lao Court Jails Polish Activist Following
Online Criticism of Government’ (2015) Radio Free
Asia, 1 October, http://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/
activist-10012015134330.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring=
human+rights
Page 21
 Photo © Shelmac 2011. CAMBODIA - Mangrove forest.
In Koh Sralav, a small island in the
southwest of Cambodia, mangroves
‘For Nature, Our dip long black roots into the salty
water. When you are quiet, there is
Life’: Fighting to silence, except for the occasional pop
of seedpods exploding, and the calls of
protect Cambodia’s birds. Tiny crabs appear and disappear
in the pale sand. Small fish dart
environment between the protective, interlocking
roots, and people have lived here
for decades—fishing, crabbing, and
catching lobsters and shellfish.
For the last eight years, companies such
as the local Cambodian firm, Direct
Access, have dredged these waterways
for sand—a literal land grab, enriching a
Fran Lambrick few company owners, while causing the
mangroves to collapse, destroying the
spawning grounds for fish and crabs,
and the communities’ livelihoods. A
study by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature showed that
fish catches in the Tatai river and the
estuaries around Koh Sralav declined
by 70 to 90 per cent due to dredging.1
Millions of tons of sand are exported
every year, mainly sold to Singapore
to be used in construction, creating
concrete, and literally building out
Singapore’s landmass, which has
expanded 25 per cent since the 1950s.
Page 22 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
In 2015, three activists in their twenties
were leading a campaign to defend
the mangroves. Sun Mala, Try Sovikea,
and Sim Somnang protested the sand
dredging, and were thrown in jail. Ten
months later, they were finally released,
but convicted of threatening to destroy
the property of Direct Access. This is
a claim that the activists deny. The
three were ordered to pay US$25,000
compensation in damages—to the
company that they fought to stop2—
despite the fact that there was no
damage to the dredging boats.
Members of Mother Nature Cambodia
and Not1More, two activist campaign
groups, went to the appeals court to
demonstrate against Mala, Sovikea
and Somnang’s conviction the day the
verdict was released. I was nervous
because the previous day, the Council
of Ministers spokesperson, Phay Siphan,
was quoted as saying in the Phnom
Penh Post, ‘No matter [whether you’re]
Cambodian, as well as foreigners, tell all
your friends, if you support the colour
revolution, prepare your own coffin.’3
The ‘colour revolution’ is the ruling
Cambodian People’s Party’s term for
peaceful assembly.
Since the arrest of several human rights
defenders in April last year, Cambodian
civil society has responded with a
weekly protest, wearing black every
Monday to represent the bleak state of
human rights in Cambodia. Ingrained in
our minds, the murders of political and
environmental activist, Kem Ley, and
forest defender, Chut Wutty, make such
a statement hard to dismiss.
So we took large photographs of the
mangroves, printed on board, that we
had shown in an art exhibit in Phnom
Penh in early 2017. We intended for our
demonstration to be informative, rather
than overtly confrontational, with the
idea that we would talk to people about
Mala, Sovikea and Somnang’s work to
protect the environment. We wanted to
simply show the mangrove forest, the
molluscs on the sand: the land that is
being taken.
When we arrived outside the appeals
court, police already outnumbered
activists. I handed out the photos. The
media were there filming, and I was
next to Mother Nature activist, Ratha.
Ratha has been at the forefront of the
campaign—speaking in a video, viewed
over 700,000 times on Facebook that
probed the government on the sand
missing from official records, worth
hundreds of millions of dollars. I
could tell he was anxious, police were
surrounding us, but he continued
speaking and his voice didn’t falter;
there were just tiny goose bumps
across his skin. He said Mala, Sovikea
and Somnang love their country. He
said that families depend on the sand
for fishing and crabbing. He said, ‘This
is not justice.’ Then, the police started
grabbing the photographs. I let mine go
as we were pushed. They jostled with
us for a minute, and then retreated.
We were just a handful of people, a
murmur of dissent, there to support
these three young men who have
been criminalised because they tried
to protect the natural heritage of
their country. The police grabbed the
photos of the green leaves and dark,
interweaving roots, of the shellfish
and fishing nets, as if the beauty and
integrity of what is left would remain a
free and living ‘colour revolution’ long
after all us protestors are in our coffins.
Alongside us were women from Boeng
Kak Lake, demonstrating for the appeal
trial of Tep Vanny—a land rights
activist. They were wearing black. They
had their children—five and six year
olds—running through the gate of the
courthouse, joining the chants and
holding banners. One girl with a toothy
grin was punching her fist in the air; a
mirror image of her mother who stood
behind her, also punching her fist in the
air with a smile. Luckily, we are nature
too—like the forests that regenerate,
even as we’re cut down. We are not so
individual as capitalism makes us think,
or as the assassins wish.
After the police grabbed our photos,
Ratha turned to the cameras and said,
‘Actually, we’re glad they took them.
Maybe they will look at them in the
police station, and slowly learn to love
the forests and the estuaries that we
are fighting for. Perhaps the images will
stir memories in the heavy set police
officer of quiet mornings on the river,
fishing with his father.’
Watching Ratha speak, I thought, ‘they
could shoot him.’ Not in that moment.
But some morning, like Kem Ley
drinking his coffee. I had an urge to stop
him talking, to turn away the cameras.
I remembered Wutty in his car, driving
out of the forest after the soldiers
attacked him in Prey Lang. He said that
he was worried about his car. It often
broke down. The next morning in the
guesthouse I asked, ‘Why do you keep
doing this work?’
‘If I don’t do it, no one would. People
are too afraid.’  S. Chuerattanakul, N. Prohorsarith & O.
Five months later, Wutty was shot
through the door of his car after
it didn’t start, as he tried to evade
the military police on a road in the
Cardamom Mountains. The way Ratha
spoke reminded me of Wutty—strength
and conviction overriding fear. It’s
bitter, this courage, it leaves you like
a promontory, a lonely spine of sand
thrust out into the sea, withstanding
pounding waves. People don’t want to
be seen with you, let alone give you
money for a new vehicle.
On the one hand, support is scarce
and hard to gather. On the other,
the ruling regime, built on the sands
and timber of the country, keeps a
tight grip on resistance. If you speak
out, you’ll be made to pay. Kim Sok,
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
a political commentator, is currently
being sued for $500,000 for saying
on Facebook that the ruling party
is behind the murder of Kem Ley.
Sam Rainsy, longtime leader of the
opposition Cambodia National Rescue
Party, said the same thing and another
court case was added to his collection.
The Cambodian government recently
passed a law that will make it possible
to dissolve a political party if the leaders
have court charges.
The cost of speaking your mind is your
freedom, your life, or democracy.
Activists are isolated, challenging the
sale of the country’s land and forests.
And the stakes are getting higher. Yet
at this moment, when allies are most
needed, the international community
still holds an undignified silence. It is
not enough to honour people after they
are dead.
Fran Lambrick is the director of
the documentary I Am Chut Wutty
(https://vimeo.com/ondemand/
iamchutwutty), and co-founder of the
campaign Not1More (www.Not1More.
org), which seeks to fight against the
ongoing murder of environmental
defenders.
1 B. Kastl, K. Kimsreng, S. Kong,
Ran (2012) Coastal Mangrove Forest
Devastation and Channel Sedimentation in
Koh Kong Province, Cambodia, International
Union for Conservation of Nature, https://
cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/mangrove_
devastation_koh_kong_report.pdf
2 C. Channyda (2016) ‘Koh Kong
dredging activists found guilty for “threats”’,
1 July, Phnom Penh Post, http://www.
phnompenhpost.com/national/koh-kong-
dredging-activists-found-guilty-threats
3 T. Sokha and L. Kijewski (2017)
‘PM files lawsuit against analyst’, 14
February, Phnom Penh Post, http://www.
phnompenhpost.com/national/pm-files-
lawsuit-against-analyst
Page 23
 Photo © Gavin White 2011. HANOI, VIETNAM - Urban pressure, rural Hanoi. Re-printed under a Creative
The collision of rural and urban
Tainted (blue) gold: spaces—a growing phenomenon in the
mega-cities of Southeast Asia—creates
The peri-urban a fusion of once divided activities.
Crop lands and corporate hubs, fields
water crisis in Hanoi, and factories now share common
space, with connected water systems
Vietnam in new ‘peri-urban’ areas forming on
the outskirts of major cities. ‘Peri-
urbanism’ refers to interweaving rural
and urban neighborhoods, activities
and interactions. Large populations,
continuous processes of change, vast
unevenness and inequality, define peri-
urban cities. Governing these cities is,
by any measure, a formidable task.
Blake Lambert and
Michael Thai This fusion of traditionally divided
worlds has resulted in a complex array
of social, political and environmental
problems, all of which are represented
by the criss-crossing waterways of
peri-urban Hanoi in Vietnam. Since
1960, Vietnam’s population has tripled
from 30 million to well over 90 million.
Over the same time period, the urban
share of the total population has
increased from 15 per cent to 34 per
cent.1 Sweeping market reforms, which
privatised markets previously controlled
by the state (e.g. the housing market),
have drastically changed how people
interact with each other in Hanoi.2
Although the executive committee of
Hanoi (i.e. the city’s local government)
Page 24 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
Commons Attribution License.
has made some progress in managing
this rapid change—for example, by
attracting investment in clean water
extraction and supply—they are still
failing to meet the increasing demand
for safe water on the part of the city’s
residents.
In this article, we provide an overview
of the water crisis in Hanoi, detailing
the impacts of industrialisation on
Hanoi’s water supply and quality.
Three ways through which a more
environmentally-equitable water
service can be provided to Hanoi’s peri-
urban residents are also outlined. We
posit that although increases in water
infrastructure investments are vital,
local participation in the policy-making
process remains integral to the delivery
of just and equitable water supply
outcomes.
Environmental injustice in peri-urban
Hanoi
In 1986, Vietnam began its pursuit
of Doi Moi modernisation. Aimed
at stimulating an economy beset
by stagnant growth and crippling
inflation, the Vietnamese government
implemented a series of reforms that
opened up the economy to market
privatisation.3 Since then, Vietnam
has undergone a sustained period of
economic growth, boasting an average
GDP per capita growth rate of over
6.4 per cent throughout the 2000s.4
However, while this rapid growth has
led to increased economic activity,
it has also resulted in heightened
population pressures in some of
Vietnam’s largest cities, leading to
intense resource competition in new,
hybrid rural-urban environments. This
competition for resources, especially
in the form of access to clean water
and land, brings to light issues of
environmental injustice—understood
here as the situation where the poor
and marginalised are disproportionately
burdened by pollution and
environmental degradation.5
A problematic legacy of Vietnam’s
reform period stems from rapid
land-use transformation—that is, the
repurposing of large swathes of land
in the country’s peri-urban areas,
such as those on the fringes of Hanoi,
for industry and urban development.
Repurposing land for industrial use
has had long-term effects on the city’s
landscape: aside from raising demand
for clean and usable water, it has also
resulted in an increase in instances of
water pollution, as untreated industrial
residue and urban sewerage continue
to be deposited into local canals. In
peri-urban Hanoi, local villagers are
unfairly affected by this pollution as
they are located further down the water
access chain, usually relying directly on
natural water sources that constitute
the final destination of polluted
wastewater from urban and industrial
users. Villagers relying on clean water
for daily use and subsistence farming on
the most peripheral of these peri-urban
areas consequently see diminished
access to clean water, with the use of
polluted and potentially hazardous
water concomitantly increasing health
and food security risks.
Environmental justice outcomes are
further eroded by the inability of local
populations to meaningfully participate
in policy and decision-making
processes.6 Within peri-urban Hanoi,
unequal power relations between
policymakers and those affected have
perpetuated rigid state control over
water resources. The consequences
of such participatory exclusion are
revealed in the lax enforcement of
environmental regulations against
urban and industrial polluters,
inequitable distribution policies that
propagate insecure access to usable
water, and the social marginalisation of
the peri-urban poor.7
Yet, the importance of local
participation in the policy-making
process is clearly highlighted in the case
of peri-urban Hanoi’s Soc Son district,
where the government had sought to
put in place a water distribution system
using household meters. This project
imposed on each household, an initial
investment cost of VND600,000 for
the meter, in addition to the cost for
pipes to carry water from the meter
into the home. However, despite
this considerable investment, many
residents have refused to use the water
due to the smell and the monthly
minimum charge, preferring instead
to use traditional water sources. The
result: under-utilisation of expensive
water distribution infrastructure.8 This
is an outcome that could have been
avoided through active community
engagement and, more specifically, by
addressing local concerns over the cost,
quality, design, and implementation of
the new water management system.9
Addressing Vietnam’s water
management: three necessities
Vietnam’s water management system
is implemented in a top-down,
bureaucratic and largely inefficient
manner, especially with respect to its
ability to achieve equitable outcomes
for residents of peri-urban areas.
To address this structural problem,
three key policy measures need to be
adopted in order to improve the quality
and quantity of Hanoi’s water supply.
First, the Hanoi executive committee
and related agencies, including the
(provincial) Department of Construction
and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development, must put in place
better communication mechanisms to
facilitate more effective coordination
between government agencies, as
well as improved policy design and
implementation among the city’s four
main water supply companies—the
private firms, Vinaconex and Acuatico,
and state-owned enterprises, HAWACO
and HAWATER—for meeting future
water demands.10
Second, Vietnam needs to transition
from groundwater to surface water
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
extraction. Currently, 80 per cent of
the water in Hanoi is exploited from
underground water sources. Such a
transition is necessary for improving
water quality, as it will help to prevent
the problems associated with degraded
drilling wells, polluted water sources, as
well as the collapse and settlement of
soil ground and ammonium pollution,
which in the south of Hanoi is estimated
to be five to ten times the regulation
standard.11
Furthermore, according to the
Vietnamese government’s Capital
Water Supply Scheme up to 2030 and
Vision to 2050, water demands across
the country are expected to double
within thirty years from 1,560,000
cubic metres per day in 2020 to
3,150,000 cubic metres per day in
2050.12 Increased investment in surface
water extraction from the Da, Red
and Duong Rivers—all of which hold
sufficient quantities of water to meet
these demand projections—is thus
crucial. Currently, the government is
working to attract local and foreign
investment in surface water extraction
by offering companies tax breaks
and fee exemptions to extract from
these three rivers. Even so, whether
such an initiative will lead to greater
environmental justice and social equity
will depend considerably on whether
the subsequent increase in water
supply is proportionately channelled
to meet the water needs of poorer
communities.
Third, waste management systems
that treat waste deposits before they
re-enter the local canal system are
essential to reducing the effects of
contaminated water on downstream
canal users. The Vietnamese
government must, therefore, continue
to encourage investment in wastewater
treatment to meet the current
investment shortfall in treatment plants.
In particular, a focus on developing
wastewater plants with large daily
treatment capacities is critical to
mitigating water pollution, as it stands
to address the problem of untreated
sewage overflow, where sewage stored
in septic tanks ends up contaminating
groundwater sources.13 Careful and
systematic treatment of wastewater
will enable poorer agricultural users on
the peri-urban periphery to gain access
to water of the same quality as those
supplied to industrial and urban users in
the (geographic) centre.
Page 25
Conclusion
Environmental injustice has persisted
in the newly emerged peri-urban areas
of Hanoi, where poor and marginalised
communities are subject to water policy
outcomes that often fail to meet their
needs. Better coordination between
government agencies, a transition to
cleaner surface water extraction, and
improved waste treatment remain
the key to producing more equitable
water outcomes for Hanoi’s peri-
urban residents. Nevertheless, such
technocratic solutions can only work
when combined with an appropriate
level of local engagement.14
Civic activism and social movements in
Vietnam have, however, focused less on
water access and more on addressing
other pressing environmental
issues, such as the management and
protection of forests.15 Moreover, due
to national legislation that effectively
restricts civic engagement and an
independent media (e.g. the 2016
amended Press Law), attempts by non-
governmental organisations to close
the gap between civil society and the
government have thus far met with
limited success.16 In the absence of an
urban planning vision that better aligns
the needs of stakeholders in Hanoi’s
peri-urban areas, the Vietnamese
government runs the risk of developing
solutions to the country’s water woes
which, while potentially marking an
improvement in water management
and extraction technology, will
ultimately fail those with the greatest
need for clean water access. Bridging
the gap between the public and the
public sector ironically remains the
foremost challenge to equitable water
distribution—and by extension, to social
equity and environmental justice—in
peri-urban Hanoi.
Blake Lambert is completing a Bachelor
of Commerce (International Business)/
Bachelor of Arts (Development Studies)
degree at UNSW Sydney.
Michael Thai is a fourth-year student
in the Bachelor of International
Studies (Development Studies) degree
programme at UNSW Sydney, and has
completed an exchange programme at
the University of Oslo.
1 World Bank (2016) Data: Vietnam,
http://data.worldbank.org/country/vietnam
2 H.-A. Tran & N.-M. Yip (2008)
‘Caught between Plan and Market:
Vietnam’s Housing Reform in the Transition
to a Market Economy’, Urban Policy and
Research 26(3), 309-323.
3 L. E. Grinter (2006) ‘Vietnam’s
Thrust into Globalization: Doi Moi’s Long
Road, Asian Affairs’, An American Review
33(3), 151-166.
4 World Bank, Data: Vietnam.
5 M. Toffolon-Weiss & T.
Roberts (2005) ‘Who Wins, Who Loses?
Understanding Outcomes of Environmental
Justice Struggles’ in D.N. Pellow & R.J.
Brulle, Power, Justice, and the Environment:
A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental
Justice Movement (London: MIT Press).
6 G. Walker (2012) Environmental
Justice: Concepts, Evidences, and Politics
(New York: Routledge).
7 E. E. Sajor & R. Ongsakul (2007)
‘Mixed Land Use and Equity in Water
Governance in Peri-Urban Bangkok’,
International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 31(4), 782-801.
8 A. Daniere, L. Drummond,
A. NaRanong, & V.A. Thi Tran (2016)
‘Sustainable Flows: Water Management and
Municipal Flexibility in Bangkok and Hanoi’,
Journal of Environment & Development
25(1), 47-72.
9 Daniere et al., ‘Sustainable Flows’.
10 Stoxplus (2013) Vietnam Water
Supply Sector Report (Hanoi: Stoxplus
Corporation).
11 L. Van Duc (2012) Statement
at East Asian and Middle-South American
Conference on Environmental Industry, 2.
12 Van Duc, Statement.
13 H.R. Bohm et al. (2011) ‘The
semicentralized approach to integrated
water supply and treatment of solid waste
and wastewater—a flexible infrastructure
strategy for rapidly growing urban
regions: the case of Hanoi/Vietnam’, Clean
Technologies & Environmental Policy 13(4),
617.
14 S. Unsworth (2009) ‘What’s
politics got to do with it?: Why donors find it
so hard to come to terms with politics, and
why this matters’, Journal of International
Development 21, 883-894.
15 N. KimDung, S.R. Bush & A.P.J.
Moi (2016) ‘NGOs as Bridging Organizations
in Managing Nature Protection in Vietnam’,
Sage Journals 25(2), 191-218.
16 KimDung et al., ‘NGOs as Bridging
Organizations’.

The AHRCentre Annual Lecture 2017

will be delivered by

Professor Philip Alston

UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

Thursday, 10 August 2017

6.30pm
UNSW Law

see www.ahrcentre.org for more details

co-hosted by AHRCentre, UNSW Law and

UNSW’s Grand Challenge on Inequality

Page 26 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017

Image © Lydia Morgan 2017.
China is known for having a restrictive
political regime. Between July
and September 2015, the Chinese
government reportedly detained 280
human rights activists and lawyers.1
It put in place a suite of laws aimed
at tightening state security and
counter-terrorism efforts, but which
also threatened to limit freedom of
speech and religion within the country.2
Such developments speak to China’s
questionable human rights track
record, as well as the sizable constraints
that remain in terms of the Chinese
public’s ability to participate in official
policymaking. Indeed, the Chinese
government continues to resist the
notion of universal human rights, with
some even labelling such an idea as
amounting to ‘foreign infiltration’.3
There are promising signs of change,
however. As the basis of government
legitimacy gradually shifts from
communist ideology to good
governance, Chinese officials are now
appealing to traditional Confucian
ideals, such as communitarianism and a
strong sense of duty, in a bid to create
and maintain a ‘harmonious society’.4
Crucially, growing social concern and
popular unrest over deteriorating
environmental conditions in the
Environmental
country have contributed to opening
up new channels of public participation
activism, the
in policy-making, as the Chinese
leadership seeks to mitigate eroding
internet and rights
public confidence in the government.5 in China
In this way, environmental activists in
China have been successful in securing
concessions from the government in
terms of their ability to mobilise, stage
public displays of resistance, and effect
policy change. This effectively raises the
question: can environmental activism
preface the institutionalisation of Ming En Chin
broader rights and freedoms in China?
As discussed in this article, empowered
by growing media coverage of
controversial environmental planning
decisions, the relative success of
Chinese civil society activists and
their unique brand of digital activism
in pushing for greater environmental
rights gives hope for similar action over
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 27
human rights.6
The state of environmental governance
in China
China’s environmental protests should
not, however, be interpreted simply as a
struggle for individual rights, as usually
seen in Western societies. Rather, the
Chinese public often engages in a form
of ‘embedded activism’, masterfully
exercising their limited political rights
to achieve community-based outcomes
that align with, but also subvert,
government policies.7
This pragmatic approach is partly a
by-product of the Chinese system of
environmental governance. China’s
environmental protection agencies
form a decentralised, top-down system
established at four administrative
levels. The national-level Ministry of
Environmental Protection (MEP) directs
the environmental protection bureaus
(EPBs) of the three lower administrative
levels. Overwhelming pressure on local
officials to meet economic objectives
has, however, often left EPBs and the
MEP with little discretionary power
and inadequate funds to enforce the
law.8 As a result, the incorporation of
public participation measures in existing
policies tends to be a ‘box-ticking
exercise’.9
Public participation is also hindered
by a pervasive lack of environmental
awareness. In principle, new revisions
to the Environmental Protection
Law give the public right of access to
environmental information and public
interest litigation.10 Citizens can also
file complaints with the MEP, which
possesses better law enforcement
capabilities than ever before. Journalists
also have greater freedom in reporting
on environmental issues than on
any other issue.11 Yet in practice, the
Chinese public still suffers from limited
awareness of environmental problems,
as they remain largely dependent on
information from the government.12
Here, the Chinese media assumes an
especially pivotal role in promoting
environmental awareness and, in
certain cases, instigating civil society
Page 28 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
activism. For example, in April 2016, the
government news broadcaster Chinese
Central Television (CCTV) reported
that nearly 500 students at Changzhou
Foreign Languages School displayed
health abnormalities, linking the illness
to elevated concentrations of toxic
chemicals, including chlorobenzene,
in a neighbouring site.13 The CCTV
report highlighted the clear breaches of
government environmental standards
and mistakes made in environmental
planning. Crucially, construction of
the school commenced seven months
before environmental evaluation
of the site was complete, with site
rehabilitation occurring just 50 metres
from the school rather than the legal
minimum of 300 metres. Prominent
Chinese environmentalist Ma Jun
compared the situation to the infamous
1978 Love Canal disaster in the US,
where an elementary school and
housing was built on land harbouring
toxic waste.14 In response, Chinese
authorities published reports that
suggested there were only around 100
health abnormalities.15 To demonstrate
their commitment to preventing
pollution, they also alluded to the
prospective implementation of national
soil pollution laws.16
The promise of digital environmental
activism
Digital activism, largely staged by
Chinese youth ‘netizens’, is particularly
noteworthy in terms of its effectiveness
in galvanising public support for an
environmental cause. The most vocal
youth critics, Fen Qing or Angry Youths,
have used the Internet to criticise
everything from foreign views of
China to domestic policy. They follow
in the footsteps of major youth-led
movements, such as the 1919 May
Fourth Movement and the 1980s
Democracy Wall Movement, both of
which had progressively challenged the
prevailing political climate.17 In 2016,
as China recorded a historic 710 million
Internet users and 242 million Weibo
(China’s Twitter equivalent) users,18
the Fen Qing along with other digital
activists arguably have the broadest
reach of any of these movements.
While many netizens complain that
circumventing strict government
censors remains a tedious exercise,
digital activists such as the Fen Qing
have managed to challenge government
authority by utilising innovative
methods and relying on the anonymity
afforded by digital media. For instance,
they often evade government censors
by employing egao, a form of spoofing
that utilises humorous homonyms
to facilitate discussion on politically
sensitive topics.19 One such example
is a playful reference to the Chinese
government’s harmonious society
policy, where youths would refer to
the censoring of online posts as ‘being
harmonised’. Back in 2008, a group
of Fen Qing had also successfully
organised street protests against French
supermarket chain Carrefour under
the cover of Internet anonymity and by
using instant messaging services.20
Evolving socioeconomic and political
circumstances have further facilitated
a changing climate for popular protests
in China. Whereas protests in the
pre-1990 period were rare events
unless sanctioned by the government,
today these are seen to offer not only
an opportunity to expand the human
rights space in the country, but also
as providing the Chinese government
with a means to gauge public opinion.
The anti-PX protests are a case in point.
In 2007, environmental activists in
Xiamen first made use of mobile text-
messaging services to organise large
street protests against the construction
of paraxylene (PX) factories in their city.
Protestors came from different walks
of life: from students to police officers.
To evade Internet censors, they used
egao tactics, whereupon the peaceful
protests were euphemistically termed
as ‘strolls’.21 While the first anti-PX
protest campaign in Xiamen employed
relatively low-reach text messaging,
more recent anti-PX protests in
Shanghai—involving around 50,000
people—have been mobilised via
popular Chinese social media tools like
Weibo.22
In these recent campaigns, activists
drew extensively from the experiences
of previous protests as well as on their
social networks to raise awareness
and plan rallies. Extensive media
reporting on these displays of digital
environmental activism have also
served to further legitimise and
publicise these protests, encouraging
even more people to take part.
Significantly, protestors in Xiamen,
Dalian and Ningbo, among other cities,
have enjoyed unprecedented success in
pressuring the Chinese authorities and
petrochemical companies involved to
relocate planned PX factories and even
to cease operations.23
Conclusion
Cases of successful environmental
activism should, nevertheless, be
treated with caution. Although the
recurring anti-PX protests and similar
campaigns against incinerators in
Beijing and Guangzhou may seem to
demonstrate weakening government
control, this is simply not the case.
Indeed, although the Chinese
government has displayed greater
tolerance of environmental activism,
supposedly in a bid to appear more
accountable to the Chinese public, it
can still work swiftly to mute political
opposition.24
There are also concerns about the
over-representation of highly educated,
urban youth in digital activism and the
ability of the media to distort public
opinion. Rural Chinese account for only
26.9% of the country’s Internet users,25
but are at greater risk than their urban
counterparts from environment-related
problems such as pesticide pollution.26
As urban Chinese youths gain greater
access to and mastery of digital
media, they may inadvertently direct
government attention away from the
needs of rural Chinese people.
Even so, the development
of environmental activism in
China remains a positive trend.
Environmental activists—and in
particular, those utilising new digital
media platforms—are not only bringing
to light the environmental costs of
unchecked economic growth, but are
also contributing to the expansion
of a ‘green public sphere’ in China
by engaging in ‘not-in-my-backyard’
protests.27 As the quality of public
education and media coverage of rights-
related issues improves in China, there
is hope that the country’s younger
generation may be able to engineer
novel responses to environmental
problems and also to broader human
rights issues. There is yet hope for even
more change.
Ming En Chin is completing a Bachelor
of Engineering/Bachelor of Arts
(Development Studies) degree at
UNSW Sydney. He has also worked
with Thirst, an international NGO that
engages Chinese youths on water
issues.
1 Human Rights Watch (2016) Human
Rights Watch: World Report 2016, 175.
2 Human Rights Watch, Human Rights
Watch: World Report 2016.
3 Human Rights Watch, Human Rights
Watch: World Report 2016.
4 H. Wen and W. K. Akina (2012)
‘Human rights ideology as endemic in Chinese
philosophy: classical Confucian and Maoist
perspectives’, Asian Philosophy 22(4), 403.
5 N. W. M. Wong (2016) ‘Environmental
Protests and Nimby Activism: Local Politics and
Waste Management in Beijing and Guangzhou’,
China Information 30(2), 154-55.
6 Some examples of successful civil
society action aided by digital activism include
the relocation of incinerators in Beijing and
Guangzhou, and the suspension of the Nu River
dam cascade. See W. X. Kang (2014) ‘Hydropower
Development in China: History and Narratives’
[unpublished manuscript]; P. Yeophantong,
‘River activism, policy entrepreneurship and
transboundary water disputes in Asia’, Water
International 42(2), 163-186.
7 P. Ho and R. L. Edmonds (2007)
‘Perspectives of Time and Change: Rethinking
Embedded Activism in China’, China Information
21(2), 334.
8 E. Economy (2014) ‘Environmental
Governance in China: State Control to Crisis
Management’, Daedalus 143(2), 189.
Johnson (2014) ‘Good Governance for
Environmental Protection in China:
Instrumentation, Strategic Interactions
and Unintended Consequences’, Journal of
Contemporary Asia 44(2), 246.
10 National’s People’s Congress Standing
Committee (China) (2014) Environmental
Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China
[in Chinese], arts. 53, 57-58.
11 L. Xie (2009) Environmental Activism
in China (Milton Park: Routledge), 32.
12 L. Xie (2016) ‘Environmental
governance and public participation in rural
China’, China Information 30(2), 193.
13 X.P. Jiang and B. Li (2016) ‘Nearly
500 students found with health abnormalities in
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
Changzhou: pollutants in school surrounds 100000
times above standards’ [in Chinese], CNTV,
17 April, http://m.news.cntv.cn/2016/04/17/
ARTIZ0gYOw8r5xHrBVl1Fy9S160417.shtml
Concentrations of chlorobenzene were more than
90,000 times the allowable national limit.
14 T. Phillips (2016) ‘China’s toxic
school: officials struggle to contain uproar over
sick students’, Guardian, 19 April, http://www.
theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/19/chinas-
toxic-school-officials-struggle-to-hold-back-
uproar-over-sick-students; K. Logan (2016) ‘What
Can China Learn from Love Canal?’, The Diplomat,
26 April, http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/what-
can-china-learn-from-love-canal/
15 ‘China school: Officials deny soil
and water contamination’ (2016), BBC, 19
April, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
china-36079492
16 C. Zhang (2016) ‘Changzhou pollution
scandal highlights holes in China’s environmental
enforcement’, China Dialogue, https://www.
chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/8892-
Changzhou-pollution-scandal-highlights-holes-in-
China-s-environmental-enforcement
17 L. J. Yang and Y. N. Zheng (2012) ‘Fen
qings (angry youth) in contemporary China’,
Journal of Contemporary China 21(76), 653.
18 China Internet Network Information
Center (2016) 38th statistical report on internet
development in China 1, 36. Weibo is a popular
Chinese social media platform.
19 A. Nordin and L. Richaud (2014)
‘Subverting official language and discourse
in China? Type river crab for harmony’, China
Information 28(1), 49
20 Yang and Zheng, ‘Fen qings’, 650.
21 Yang and Zheng, ‘Fen qings’, 650.
22 L. Qin (2015) ‘Shanghai residents
throng streets in ‘unprecedented’ anti-PX protest’,
China Dialogue, https://www.chinadialogue.net/
article/show/single/en/8009-Shanghai-residents-
throng-streets-in-unprecedented-anti-PX-protest
23 K. Lee and M. Ho (2014) ‘The
Maoming anti-PX protest of 2014: An
environmental movement in contemporary
China’, China Perspectives (3), 35.
24 J. Liu (2016) ‘Digital media, cycle of
contention, and sustainability of environmental
activism: the case of anti-PX protests in China’,
Mass Communication and Society 19(5), 620.
25 China Internet Network Information
Center, 38th Statistical Report, 1.
26 H. Li, E. Y. Zeng and J. You (2014)
‘Mitigating pesticide pollution in China
requires law enforcement, farmer training
and technological innovation’, Environmental
Toxicology and Chemistry 33(5), 963-971.
27 G. B. Yang and C. Calhoun (2008)
‘Media, Civil Society, and the Rise of a Green
Public Sphere in China’ in P. Ho and R. L. Edmonds
(eds), China’s Embedded Activism: Opportunities
and Constraints of a Social Movement (Milton
Park: Routledge), 71.
Page 29
 Sarah
Joseph
Can you tell us a bit about how you
initially came to work in the human
rights field, and a bit about your main
areas of work over the years?
I fell into academia, and therefore
human rights, quite by accident in a
way. When I was in law school I had no
intention of becoming an academic, and
human rights wasn’t really a subject
Eleanor Holden
at Sydney University, where I went in
the 1980s. It really started when I did
interview
my masters degree at Cambridge in
1991, and one of the subjects I did was
Human Rights. Having said that, I was
quite used to black letter subjects from
my undergraduate degree at Sydney
University, so I found it difficult and it
wasn’t surprising that was my worst
mark. Nevertheless, after the Masters,
I wanted to stay in the UK and do
some travelling, so I needed money.
I wasn’t really qualified for anything
apart from academia so I ended up
Page 30 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
getting a research job in the University
of Nottingham. I started in late 1992
as a research fellow doing research
on an edited collection on the UK and
the International Covenant of Human
Rights.
There was a gap between applying
for the job and getting it, because
the position was dependent on a
grant that didn’t come through until
September. So, while I was waiting
for that job, I went with some friends
in the entourage of a busking band
to Eastern Europe, which was pretty
exciting in 1992 with the wall having
just come down. From there, I went
to Poland and visited Auschwitz. It is a
very profound experience for anyone to
go to Auschwitz, and while I was there,
it dawned on me that I really did want
the research job and to be involved in
human rights, rather than simply using
it as a means to the end of getting
money to travel.
What have you found to be the biggest
changes to human rights law since you
have been involved with it?
Given I started in the UK, one massive
change has been the Human Rights Act
in the UK. The domestication of the
European Convention on Human Rights
in Britain is [also] huge. I come from
the state of Victoria and now there’s [a]
Human Rights Act there. Human rights,
if anything, has really become more
prominent and sophisticated. There are
very sophisticated cases over in Europe,
and more coming out of the UN.
And there has been an absolute
explosion of human rights law within
academia. One thing I have noticed
recently is that the more junior
academics seem more specialised, less
on general human rights and more on
specific aspects such as Indigenous
rights or refugee law. I wonder if this is
partly because a PhD is now an entry-
level requirement, so people enter
academe with a more specialised focus.
Human rights has become much more
ubiquitous. Arguably, in some ways, it
has become a little bit too ubiquitous.
I’m not sure that I’m a huge fan of
the way human rights seeks to inject
itself into almost all debates—the
‘human rights approach to climate
change’, the ‘human rights approach
to development’ and so on. I’m not
antagonistic to those ideas, but the
‘human rights approach to’ can tend to
obfuscate [the broader issue].
You have written about the interplay
of social media and human rights –
do you think it is a good platform to
address human rights on?
Social media is a very important
form of modern media; it’s a tool. So
obviously, it is going to be a tool for
conveying human rights ideas, and, in
fact, conveying ideas of all sorts. I don’t
think whether social media, on balance,
is good or bad for human rights can be
empirically proven. It of itself is neutral.
It can be used by people who are pro-
human rights. It is a great platform, and
obviously an even better platform if
you have a lot of followers. And it can
also be used to promote ideas that are
antagonistic to human rights.
It has a very, very important role to
play in regards to witnessing, [which]
is providing evidence of human rights
abuses. An obvious example of that is
the footage that has come out around
the shooting deaths of black people
in America by police. We have seen
how much video matters in regards
to people caring about human rights
abuse. When it comes to Don Dale, we
all care because Four Corners showed
it on television, which isn’t strictly
social media, but all the evidence of
Don Dale was already out there and
nothing had really happened. Basically,
anybody who is around with a mobile
phone can record what is going on. The
other classic example of social media
being good for human rights is that it
is a great way for organising protests
or demonstrations, with the classic
example being the Arab Spring.
But at the same time, let’s not glorify
social media as some new, amazing
representation of free speech. I am
constantly surprised that in the age of
social media, we arguably have more
restraints on free speech. One reason
being that every time you put out a
tweet, or even something on a private
Facebook account, there is evidence
of what you said. Therefore, you can
be held more to account for what you
have said, and there are sometimes
disproportionate consequences.
The Castan Centre developed the ‘Have
You Got That Right’ video series—how
have you found using this format and
who are the videos mainly aimed at?
The series is called ‘Have you got that
right’ (www.haveyougotthatright.com)
and it is supposed to be a bit of a play
on words—whether you actually have
the right to do something, or whether
you have the correct information on
that right. The idea behind that series
is to educate the public on some basic
human rights questions, and address
these [questions] in an engaging way.
The creation of the videos, although
they might look quite simple, has
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
probably been the hardest project I
have ever worked on. Although we
received funding for three series, the
amount of pro bono help is enormous.
We are very grateful to the many
people, including industry professionals
and actors, who have made their
expertise available to us. With so many
people involved, we had to make sure
that the right hand knew what the left
hand was doing and everything was
proceeding in order. It has been a very
complex project.
We are aiming them at anyone who
wanted to have a look at them on
YouTube. But to be more strategic,
at high schools, anyone who wants
to use them in their lectures—I have
used them a bit in my lectures. They
have been played at the Human Rights
Arts and Film Festival in Melbourne.
Obviously you can promote them on
social media as well. They are there
to educate people about human
rights. Hopefully, people find them
engaging and watch a few, and are
then motivated to find out about more
human rights.
What do you believe to be the biggest
challenges to protecting human rights
in Australia?
There are a lot of human rights
challenges in Australia. But to start
with, it is important not to exaggerate—
Australia is, for most people, a nice
place to live and generally people’s
human rights aren’t routinely abused in
this country. I’m not trying to shoot for
a low bar there, but there are countries
that have routine, horrendous abuses
and we shouldn’t forget that. I think
you start to lose your credibility talking
about human rights in Australia if you
make it out that it is the worst, as I
don’t think that is the case.
However, Australia does have some very
serious human rights challenges. The
most prominent one at the moment is
the treatment of refugees. I have to say
that I was utterly astonished—I thought
we had reached a low point [when I
first heard] Peter Dutton’s response
to The Guardian’s cache of leaked
material. He gave the impression of
someone who really did not care about
the possibility that there are really
serious human rights abuses going on.
Page 31
For him to reference the fact that these
people have paid people smugglers…
If your human rights are being abused,
if you are being subjected to assault
and sexual assault, then the fact that
you paid people smugglers is entirely
irrelevant. I really do think that this
is getting into real ‘dark soul’ area for
Australia. I know that people do care
about what is being done in our name,
but the broader Australian public is
seemingly content not to worry too
much about this, which is appalling.
We obviously have other longstanding
human rights issues such as the
treatment of Indigenous people. I am
not an expert in Indigenous issues, so
I am not certain if the gap is closing at
all, but it certainly is not closed. We
also have the revelations about the Don
Dale youth centre and it was pleasing
to see the response to that [when the
revelations first surfaced]. Although, I
go back to the question of whether we
really need to see pictures before we
respond.
Upcoming seminar
The never
ending struggle
for LGBTIQ
human rights
in the United
Nations
with
The Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG
Page 32 Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017
Another shocking issue is that of
violence against women. In Australia’s
first universal periodic review, it was
an issue that came up a lot. I was
wondering whether it was so bad in
Australia, and it turns out that it is. We
are now hearing the statistic often that
one woman a week dies, which is an
appalling statistic and not something
that got a lot of press a few years ago.
That is clearly something that needs to
be addressed.
Another big issue is, apart from the
ACT and Victoria, the lack of remedies
for human rights abuses. Even the
remedies in the ACT and Victoria are
quite weak, especially compared to
the UK and its Human Rights Act. The
lack of legal remedy has facilitated a
real problem in Australia, which is the
lack of human rights consciousness.
Human rights [do] not seem to have
the caché in this country that they do
in other countries. It is too easy for
opponents of human rights, or skeptics,
to paint them as rights which are only
of relevance to criminals and rights
which have been promoted by an elite,
unaccountable human rights industry.
There seems to be an undue cynicism
about human rights in this country,
which I think is really unfortunate and in
turn, slows down any real reform with
regard to human rights. It can also help
to facilitate to gross abuses, the kind of
which we are seeing with the treatment
of refugees.
Eleanor Holden is a fifth year Art
Theory and Law student, and was the
Human Rights Defender Student Editor
in semester two, 2016.
Professor Sarah Joseph is the Director
for the Castan Centre for Human Rights
Law at Monash University.
Monday, 6pm
31st July 2017
Photo © Sasha Hadden
UNSW Law
visit www.ahrcentre.org
for more details
 More than a hot week
In February 2017, Australia experienced
one of its most extreme heatwaves
on record. New South Wales, Victoria,
Queensland, South Australia and the
Australian Capital Territory were all
affected by the extreme weather event.
New South Wales experienced its two
hottest days on record, with the Rural
Fire Service Commissioner warning that
the fire danger in NSW was ‘without
precedent’.1 ‘Catastrophic’ fire warnings
had only been issued once before in
NSW. NSW’s maximum temperatures for
February have been four degrees above
average.
A single heatwave doesn’t prove
anything about climate change, just as
a single snowstorm doesn’t. However,
the important thing isn’t this week’s
or last week’s weather, but rather the
long-term trend: the earth is going to
get much warmer. Since the mid-1970s,
global warming has accelerated due
to human activities. Sixteen of the 17
hottest years on record have occurred
since 2000, with 2016 being the hottest.
Heatwaves in Australia have also
become hotter and more common. But
a heatwave is more than a hot week. It
is an issue of environmental justice.
An environmental justice perspective
recognises that the benefits and burden
of the physical environment are rarely
distributed evenly. This is true of
many environmental issues, from coal
seam gas mining to the construction
of roads. It is also true of Australia’s
increasingly ferocious heatwaves.
subscribe
to the HRD
3 issues per year
visit www.ahrcentre.org to subscribe online
$45 Organisation
and have the Human Rights Defender delivered to your door
the back page
Heatwaves impose significant burdens
on affected areas. They cause power
blackouts, disrupt public transport and
cost local economies billions in lost
productivity. They also pose health risks,
placing strain on health and emergency
services. Heat-related illness can cause
irreversible damage and even death.
In fact, heatwaves are ‘responsible for
more human deaths [in Australia] than
any other natural hazard, including
bushfires, storms, tropical cyclones and
floods’.2 The 2009 heatwave in Victoria
and South Australia killed 374 people
in Victoria alone. It is expected that the
number of heatwave-related deaths will
increase rapidly in the next 33 years.3
Heatwaves burden almost everyone in
affected areas, but they do not affect Sean Bowes was the Human Rights
everyone equally. Very young, senior Defender Student Editor for the
and pregnant individuals and individuals summer semester 2016/2017. He is
with a medical condition are especially in his final semester of a combined
vulnerable to heat-related illness. People Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Law at
who have a lower socioeconomic status UNSW Sydney.
also face particular challenges during
a heatwave: switching on a fan might
seem like a sensible response, but for a
family on a tight budget, the electricity
costs can be prohibitive.
1 M. Evans, L. Hall and M. O’Sullivan
(2017) ‘Sydney weather: Fire threat upgraded as
NSW braces for unprecedented conditions’, 12
February, Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.
Some people have no choice but to smh.com.au/environment/weather/sydney-
suffer through the debilitating heat, weather-fire-threat-upgraded-as-nsw-braces-for-
whereas others can mostly keep unprecedented-conditions-20170211-guavcp.html
themselves cool. This might explain 2 AdaptNSW, ‘Heatwaves’, NSW
why some people find it funny, whereas Environment & Heritage, http://climatechange.
environment.nsw.gov.au/Impacts-of-climate-
others are outraged, when government change/Heat/Heatwaves
ministers toss around a piece of coal in 3 Australian Government Department
the Parliament. We all have a lot to lose of Infrastructure and Transport (2013) State of
from climate change, but some people Australian Cities 2013, https://infrastructure.
gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/files/2013_00_
will lose more and lose sooner. infra1782_mcu_soac_full_web_fa.pdf
$20 Individual $15 Digital
Human Rights Defender • Volume 26 • Issue 1 • April 2017 Page 33
 Image © Gustavo M 2008 CHENGDE, CHINA.

Human Rights Defender

Highlighting critical human rights issues