Determinants of physical integrity abuses in Southeast Asia: Under the context of anti-narcotics campaign

• Main Author: Zerrudo, Jazelle Dyana Lizz G.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: Human rights—Southeast Asia; Offenses against the person—Southeast Asia; Drug abuse—Southeast Asia—Prevention; Human Rights Law; Inequality and Stratification; Political Science
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6519; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=13529&context=etd_masteral
• Institution: De La Salle University

Physical integrity is the freedom of the people from state-imposed deprivations of life. Physical integrity rights are considered as the most important civil rights because without it no person can live without fearing for his life and security. Because violation of these rights is seen as an abhorrent and egregious act, we expect that governments will in turn respect those rights, yet, as observed, governments continuously violate human rights, often the physical integrity rights. Southeast Asia present varying levels of physical integrity rights violation, where most of the states show dismal record for human rights protection. This is attributed to the growing attitude of the Southeast Asian states to promote nationalistic ideologies which contributes to marginalization of different clusters that do not share their ideologies and state leaders branding of local complications as a national threat. This study is quantitative examination of what accounts for the physical integrity rights violations of Southeast Asian states under the context of anti-narcotics campaign present in the region. The results indicate that (a) the irregular trend of Southeast Asian countries’ human rights violations was attributed to the existence of crisis. Therefore, crisis, real or imagined, drive states to violate human rights of their people; (b) the prevalence of corruption and the existence of domestic conflicts are political factors of Southeast Asia’s physical integrity rights violations; (c) in the region, findings show that economic condition affect government’s respect on human rights and (d) physical integrity rights violations of Southeast Asian countries are often “deliberate violations” which cannot be disentangled from the issues of the political field where it was performed. These findings also revealed the limitations of using PST as proxy variable for physical integrity abuses, as indices cannot reveal the ‘within” dynamics of abuses in the region.