Page 45 - The Ethics of ASEAN

Building ASEAN’s Ethical Dialogue

In real-world ethics, it is often not obvious what the right thing to do or say really
is, or when to take action. This is why at AHDO we all agreed that we needed an ethics
committee.

Dr Marzuki Darusman: ASEAN needs a forum for ethics

I suggested that we invite Marzuki Darusman as our
advisor in setting up the ethics committee. He was well-
known in Indonesia for his role as Attorney General in
the Suharto corruption cases at the end of that regime.
He was internationally appreciated for his role at the UN
Human Rights Council for his investigations and reports
on human rights violations in Sri Lanka, the assassination
of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, and human rights violations
in North Korea. He was also Chair of the Independent
International Fact-Finding Mission on the Myanmar
Rohingya human rights violations in 2019. Figure 10: Marzuki Darusman at the
United Nations
Pak Marzuki was not only well-versed in all the
aspects of ASEAN ethics, but represented ethical leadership for his courage and energy.
When investigating highly political issues at Indonesia’s Attorney General, he had been one
of the most heavily guarded persons in the country. He knew ASEAN well, having been the
first Chairman of Human Rights Resource Centre for ASEAN in 2010.
In July 2020 I organised a video meeting with Marzuki Darusman to discuss our
invitation to be an advisor. Present at the meeting were Pambudi Sunarsihanto, AHDO
Chair for Indonesia and Le Hong Phuc, AHDO Chair for Vietnam, as well as our regional
Executive Director Eddie Lee.
During that meeting, Pak Marzuki shared with us his vision for a broader scope of
ethical dialogue in ASEAN. Concerning human development, he said that AHDO had an
important role to play in rebalancing the predominant notion that ASEAN countries should
focus on economic development first, and only when that was achieved to consider “higher
level” issues like expanding individual freedom and human rights. Our organisation was
built on the ethical foundational that considered them interdependent from the start.
Marzuki went further. Ethics, he said, was not limited to human rights issues but
extends into politics, business and society. He pointed out that in ASEAN there was no
organisation devoted to the entire spectrum of ethical dialogue and proposed that we
create it together.
After some discussion, we concluded the conversation by promising to contribute to
the larger ethical project proposed by Marzuki. For AHDO, this had the advantage of not
limiting ethics to workplace issues only. But then came the question: who can represent
the other ethical dimensions?

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