It is not only today's Asian leaders who are on opposite sides of the debate. In the past and the present, Asians have argued about democracy and freedom. "What do you say", a Newsweek journalist asked Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, "when leaders in Singapore, Burma, China, Indonesia and other countries say democracy is inappropriate for Asia because of Asian values?"
"Does Sun Yat-sen represent Asia values?" Anwar replied, "Of course he does. He was a democrat and he believed in freedom of the press. And the media played a role in Sun's revolutionary era. The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand they all had similar experiences. The founding fathers always subscribed to moral fervor and traditional values - very Asian at that - but certainly they were great democrats."
In a speech in 1994, Anwar made the important point that "to say that freedom is Western or un-Asian is to offend our own traditions as well as our forefathers who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices." He was talking mainly about the anti-Colonial struggles of the years either side of the last world war. Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Marton Lee and Emily Lau in Hong Kong, freely elected President Kim Dae-jung in South Korea, dissidents Wang Dan and Wei Jingsheng from China, and countlesss others are all part of this Asian tradition, subscribing to Anwar's argument, in the same 1994 speech, that "It is altogether shameful, if ingenious, to cite Asian values as an excuse for autocratic practices and denial of basic rights and civil liberties."
The diversity of Asia can itself be very Asian. Thailand and Malaysia and South Korea are very different from Italy, France and Germany. But then Thailand, Malaysia and Korea are very different form one another, just as Italy, France, and Germany are. The rights that the citizens of those countries enjoy can all be incorporated in the laws of those individual countries, Patten said in his book. "My own government can give me a right to do this or that as a citizen of my own country. But what it cannot do is usurp or deny rightfully, through the laws it passes, the rights to which I am entitled as a human being. As Amartya Sen, the master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and others have argued, there are some rights we should all enjoy as part of our shared humanity. Some rights are universal, whether you live in Tibet or Tianjin or Texas or Turin. You are entitled as a human being not to be tortured or locked up without trial, for instance.
