I had the pleasure of being present at a study group recently, organised by the Civil Rights Committee of the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. The loud voices, boisterous laughter, bright minds and energetic spirits of the young participants were no doubt enjoyable, as we discussed and debated on the important issues of international law and civil liberty, as well as state obligation in this regard.

At one point, I cautioned against the pervasive delusion that democracies were always more ready than others when it came to honouring international conventions/covenants.

For one, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change is now ratified by 169 countries, including all member states of the democratic European Union, but also totalitarian regimes such as China and Cuba. The notable exceptions are, rather surprisingly, the United States and Australia, the two major democracies.

Among the Asean countries, only Cambodia and the Philippines have ratified all the six major international conventions, i e the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

Malaysia, which regards itself as democratically "more mature and stable" than others in the regional grouping, has only ratified the CRC and Cedaw. It has refused to ratify ICERD for obvious reasons.

Of course, when its national interests are perceived to be at stake while the world remains "idle", even a country with a strong and longstanding democracy will not hesitate to flex its muscles in defiance of international law or consensus. On this, the illegality of the Iraq War comes to mind, when Washington and London refused to budge, and prosecuted the war in a rousing chorus of "Bring It On" by the neocons and their apologists worldwide. The result? The US military is now pinned down in a foolhardy military adventure that is nothing but destructive and demoralizing to Iraqi civilians as well as the American soldiers stationed there

Human rights issues

It is now 62 years since the end of the Pacific War, and Japan, the perpetrator, has successfully transformed itself into a functioning democracy. This can be seen from the fact that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has just lost control of the Upper House of the Diet in recent weeks, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is now under enormous pressure either to resign or to dissolve the Lower House for a new mandate from the wider electorate.

Still, there are human rights issues that Japan, for all its democratic credentials, cannot come to terms with. During Japanese occupation, as many as 200,000 women, aged as young as 13, were systematically raped in bordellos set up by the Imperial Army across Asia, including the then British Malaya and Borneo. The Tokyo Tribunal, which could have heard testimonies from the sex slaves, chose to overlook this heinous crime in order not to implicate the Americans that had requested assistance from the Japanese in setting up post-war official brother system.

Japan continued to bury its head in the sand on the issue until 1993 - some 45 years after the country had held its first democratic elections - when Tokyo began acknowledging the facts of sex slavery during the war. Be so as it may, none of the successive Japanese governments has been forthright in dealing with the former sex slaves. As recent as March this year, Abe denied forced prostitution by Japan's military, contradicting Tokyo's longstanding official position. The prime minister later retracted his controversial remarks amidst strong protests from neighbouring countries and the US.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has offered to help Japan by recommending several measures for solving the sex slavery issue, including acknowledgement on the part of the Japanese government that the Imperial Army did violate international law, issuing public and unequivocal apologies, making compensations, and changing school curricula to reflect the true facts of history. So far, Tokyo has remained silent.

On 30 July 2007, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Japan to officially apologize to women who were forced to become sex slaves during WWII. Although non-binding, the resolution nevertheless flies in the face of the recalcitrant position of the Japanese leaders, and signifies a moral defeat for a major democracy in the world.

But there is still a silver lining. Yoshiaki Yashimi, a professor of history at Chuo University, has bravely published several documents that he discovered from the National Institute for Defense Studies in an attempt to prove to the world that the Japanese military was indeed involved in the establishment and running of brothels.

Similarly, other human rights activists in Japan are now more firm than ever to launch a campaign to demand from the government apologies and compensation for former sex slaves. All these conscientious Japanese would need all the support and help that the world can offer.

Despite the failure by several important democracies in honouring international norms and conventions, the civil society continues to shine like a beacon in the darkest night, and acts as a bulwark against abuse and a voice of conscience, the beauty of democracy indeed.