ABSTRACT
In December 1994, JUST World Trust held an international conference in Kuala Lumpur on “Rethinking Human Rights.” Attended by delegates from over 60 countries, the meeting examined critically the impact of Western global dominance on human rights. Concerned with the often neglected human rights violations inherent in a radically unbalanced international system, it analysed both Western theories and practices of human rights with a view toward rethinking conventional wisdom. Presentations by distinguished scholars and activists such as Alejandro Bendana, Mustafa Ceric, the late Erskine Childers, Richard Falk, Adel Hussein, Ali Mazrui, and Vandana Shiva engaged participants in a fresh debate on human rights not often heard in the mainstream media or in the West. A selection of papers from the conference has since been published by JUST World Trust as Human Wrongs: Reflections on Western Global Dominance and its Impact Upon Human Rights (1996).
The invitation to Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to deliver the keynote address also generated a debate of its own: why had the Prime Minister of Malaysia been invited to speak at a conference on human rights? And what alternative visions of human rights did the conference offer? Those two questions were discussed in a number of national newspapers and periodicals. They were also part of a debate between myself and two dear friends, Muto Ichiyo and Douglas Lummis, in AMPO: the Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, in 1995 and 1996. Muto Ichiyo is a leading Japanese human rights activist who is president of Pacific Asia Research Centre (PARC), while Douglas Lummis is an American intellectual living in Japan who has been actively involved in human rights work. The following five articles are part of that exchange. (Muto Ichiyo, Vol. 26, No. 2; Douglas Lummis, Vol. 26, No. 2; Chandra Muzaffar, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1995; Douglas Lummis, Vol. 26, No. 4; Chandra Muzaffar, Vol. 27, No. 2, 1996).
