KUALA LUMPUR: PKR supreme council member Zaid Ibrahim today described Malaysia’s human rights as disgraceful, citing how elections in Malaysia are unfair, newspapers are controlled and how the citizens of this country are living in fear. “I don’t even know why we got into the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in the first place,” said Zaid. "We have an atrocious record."
He among several panelists at a forum held in conjunction with the 15th Malaysian Law Conference.Former Bar Council president, Ambiga Sreenevasan who was the moderator, pressed several panelists on issues related to human rights in a BBC Hardtalk style.“On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst, 10 being the best), how would you rate the human rights in Malaysia,” Ambiga asked the panelists.Zaid gave it a scathing 2 alongside director of Sisters in Islam, Zainah Anwar. Former MCA president Ong Tee Keat and Editor of The Sun, R Nadeswaran rated it a 5. Suhakam Commissioner, James Nayagam, gave it a 3.
“Does Malaysia actually deserve to be on the United Nations Human Rights Commission?” asked Ambiga. “No,” replied Zaid and Zainah without hesitation.“Why not give them a try,” said Nayagam. “Yes,” said Ong.
“Yes, it’s better than them continuously sending a representative to the UN headquarters and lobbying for a position. It's a waste of tax payers money,” said Nadeswaran.
Press freedom comes with responsibility
Zaid came out in full support of a free press to report whatever they deemed right. "In a country that talks about being a first world country, we have to first give opportunity for papers to be published before actually talking about responsibility,” he said.Zaid then advocated Pakatan Rakyat, saying: “If you want freedom of debate and expression, you have to vote for PR. You’re not going to have BN relinquishing any power and in the future they’re just going to be more autocratic.”
Ambiga, however, quickly drew a counter-example in the Pakatan government where Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng did not allow Utusan Malaysia for an interview to be conducted and questioned whether that is actually promoting freedom of the press.Zaid said: “I would have done it differently if I were Lim, but we have to understand that for us being attacked everyday by them (Utusan), it’s hard to not be emotionally affected.”Nadeswaran, however, described how the freedom given should come with responsibility.
“We have managed to write about so many wrongdoings and reports without getting locked up. But if you abuse that freedom and have no facts and figures to back up your report, then you get into trouble. We, Malaysians need to learn to exercise freedom,” he said.
He then went on to quote how The Sun received 27 warning letters between 2004-2008, none of which were connected with what they wrote, but instead were due to issues relating to articles written on sensitive topics and why the Opposition party were given so much space in the paper .He said he was shocked at how Utusan Malaysia gets away with their style of reporting and wondered why they have yet to be charged under the Sedition Act.Meanwhile, on the question of whether Malaysia was ready to do away with licensing laws for print media, Ong, the former transport minister said: “While we are still have licensing practices, we must make our standard operating procedures transparent. It cannot be based on whims and fancies of certain individuals within the establishment.”
Role of Suhakam
Touching on the role of Malaysia’ human rights commission (Suhakam), Ambiga dropped a bombshell, describing its role as diminished. She questioned Nayagam as to what Suhakam is doing to ensure Parliament actually reads the well-researched reports on human rights cases.“We will be meeting with the Ministry of Home Affairs very soon to address a lot of these issues. One of the pledges Malaysia made to enter the Human Rights Council is that they will act on what Suhakam recommends and I hope they (the government) will keep to their word,” said Nayagam.Zainah, who was formerly a Suhakam commissioner herself, said that the reason she left was because the government does not adhere to Suhakam's recommendations, making it difficult to bring about change.
“I didn’t have the time and energy to wait for the government to act on it. The government only responds to public outrage but they know that the public’s attention span is very short.“Perhaps the whole commission ought to make it a point to resign should the government not take into account the recommendations put forward,” she said.
MACC a far cry from intended version
Ambiga also questioned Zaid on the reforms he brought about when he was the de facto Law Minister under the BN government.Whilst pointing out his initiative to compensate the judges involved in the 1988 judicial crisis and trying to revamp the Judicial Appointments Committee (JAC), he said the current model of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) was a far cry from the first draft he sent in.
“The MACC model is really a far cry from the initial model proposed. My contribution was at a stage when we were deciding how much freedom to give to MACC to prosecute,” said Zaid.On whether MACC was practicing selective prosecution, Ong who is also MP for Pandan denied it and cited a case where he, despite being a government MP was called upon by the MACC to be investigated.Ong, however, refused to support the MACC’s initiative and instead suggested that the MACC follow Hong Kong’s Independent Commision against Corruption (ICAC).
Moral policing
Ambiga also touched on the topic of moral policing and questioned Zainah whether moral policing in this country was justified.“We shouldn’t use Islam to justify the need to control everyone’s lives down to every detail, whether it be what clothes they wear or what books they read,” said Zainah.“This is a clear sign of pervasive intrusion into the private lives of citizens and is a violation of constitutional guarantees, even against Islam."Zainah also described how moral policing is often an unenforceable law whereby everyone ‘sins’ every day because of the fatwa’s (judgements) passed on daily activities.
“To turn every sin into a crime against the state makes it unenforceable and this is a problem. It is not possible to enforce moral policing in this country unlike Iran where they place a moral police at every corner of the street.“This results in selective enforcing where it is those who are disempowered, especially women, factory girls and the lesbian, gay, bisexual transsexual who are most affected,” she added.
Source : http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/fmt-english/news/general/8586-forum-roundly-condemns-malaysias-human-rights-record
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