OPINION

A higher principle

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon is quoted as saying "It's (Myanmar's) internal affair."

This is not the first time that the principle of national sovereignty has been invoked to justify a government's oppression of its own people. We get it all the time from China whenever people criticise it for persecuting the Uighurs, or the Tibetans, or the Hong Kongers, or Falun Gong. "This is the internal affair of China," snarls the Chinese foreign ministry. "China strongly opposes and resolutely rebuffs any attempt to infringe upon its sovereignty."

Now we're getting the same codswallop from Myanmar.

Should the principle of national sovereignty be paramount in international affairs? There's a higher principle that ought to prevail. That is the idea that we are our brother's keeper, that what affects one is the business of all, that the human species is one great extended family, and that as human beings we have a duty to take care of one another. The principle of universal human responsibility ought to supersede the more parochial principle of national sovereignty so beloved by oppressive regimes.

"Mind your own business," growl those regimes. "We're human beings," we ought to reply. "You're oppressing other human beings. This is our business." "Our business" applies to the Myanmar coup, the Chinese persecution of the Uighurs and Tibetans, the Russian persecution of Alexei Navalny and the American persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

There would be an improvement in the moral condition of the world if nations would embrace this principle instead of cowering and retreating into banal assertions every time a deviant nation oppresses its own people.

The military coup d'etat in Myanmar on Feb 1, the first since 1962 when the military first seized power, follows closely, almost within a span of one month's time, two other cataclysmic scourges on democracy: the march on the US Capitol, cheered on by the outgoing US President Donald J Trump, on Jan 6 and the march on the Indian political capital, New Delhi, by farmers protesting the current Narendra Modi government's anti-farmer policies on India's 72nd Republic Day anniversary.

In Europe, specifically Poland, and France there have been marches against their governments' handling of social issues. All this suggests that when Francis Fukuyama in 1992 questioned the efficacy of democracy in these times, he was prophetically declaring the end of history as one possibility.

Democracy is a human system at its centre, and even as it struggles to persist in these troubling times, it clearly reveals the need for a Confucian variant of democratic order, combining meritocracy and democracy to sustain societies and the futures of countries. Why not try it?

One man's ego to preside over his country (by illegitimate force) brings an enormous cost to its people and its neighbour Thailand. It was just starting to catch up with the rest of the world; this will be another huge setback.