ABSTRACT
"Human rights" has become a global agenda. As history teaches, the status of missionaries is always ambivalent, because one can distinguish between the quality of the message and the role of the messenger. The name of Las Casas evokes again the message of "good news." Basically, human rights are meant to be good news for the underprivileged, the downtrodden, and the dispossessed. This chapter focuses on the issue of universality in reference specifically to the challenge or contestation coming from the side of "Asian values." It examines the status of rights and their presumed universality in general terms, and also focuses more particularly on the issue of the universality or nonuniversality of Asian values. The chapter discusses some lessons from this inquiry both for contemporary rights-discourse and global politics. The importance of mutual learning is strongly underscored by Tu Weiming when he exhorts both human-rights proponents and defenders of Confucianism to accept reciprocal challenges.
