Asserting our homegrown values

One impediment to advancing democracy across Asia is the erroneous, but unfortunately, widespread notion that “Asian values” are somehow opposed to democratic principles. Elections, human rights and freedom of speech are deemed to be “Western concepts” that should be modified to our Asian context.

Naturally, political authoritarians employ this argument because it is politically useful – when combined with the identity politics of race or religion, it allows them to argue that “we” are under threat by these “foreign” ideas and thus “we” must band together to resist “them”.