A man who infamously trampled upon the rights of others has no right to speak on human rights. He is the least qualified to speak on this subject.
Yet, the former Inspector–General of Police, Abdul Rahim Mohd Noor, emerging as it were from the dead, expressed some startling views on human rights.
He is quoted as having said that the coming of a “human rights wave” would threaten the principles on which this country was founded.
In what way would the “human rights wave” threaten the principles on which this country was founded? The principles on which this country was founded is embodied in the Federal Constitution, which was agreed upon mutually by all the communities that aspired for a free and independent Malaya.
Present wave
The Federal Constitution specifically guarantees the human rights of all the citizens. Indeed, it protects the rights of all Malaysians. If these rights were not guaranteed and protected, there would be no Federal Constitution to begin with and we wouldn’t have attained our independence on 31 August 1957.
The human rights wave, reflected in the Bersih 2.0 ‘Walk for Democracy’ that demanded clean and fair elections, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be termed as a “communist wave”. It is a democratic wave giving expression to the innate desire of the human spirit to be free and treated fairly and with justice.
The present wave – demanding accountability, transparency, good governance, rule of law, the right to information, the right to assemble peacefully, the right to publish and disseminate views – represents the universal rights that are upheld by the United Nations, As Malaysia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, we are duty-bound to respect and protect these universal values.
Thank goodness, majority of Malaysians are not bigots!
Calling upon the Malays to unite against this “human rights wave” is acting foolishly and ignoring today’s political reality. The vast majority of thinking Malaysians are not narrow-minded bigots and will not fall for this call to respond along ethnic lines.
This was clearly established when the “Himpunan Sejuta” was organised to inflame the sentiments of the Malays against the Christians. The fact that only about 5000 turned up – which prompted Ibrahim Ali to confess that he was embarrassed by the turnout – is proof enough that racial politics will be spurned by citizens of goodwill who only wish to live together in peace and harmony for the betterment of the nation.
Though it was touted as having the backing of 3000 Malay NGOs, the fact was they failed even to send two representatives each, which would have boosted the attendance to 6000. The number that turned up was a far cry from the one million that was expected. The ultras and the extremists can claim anything but gutter politics will not hoodwink the majority of peace-loving Malaysians.
Rahim Noor should crawl back into the woodwork and remain there for a long time to come.
P Ramakrishnan is president of Aliran
Malaysian Indian United Party president KS Nallakaruppan is expected to be appointed a Senator by Prime Minister Najib Razak's BN government on Wednesday.
Nalla is better known as the 'tennis partner' of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and came into the limelight following the latter's arrest and jailing on manifestly fabricated sodomy charges pressed by former premier Mahathir Mohamad.
He was also briefly a member of Anwar's Parti Keadilian Rakyat but left on acrimonious terms amid accusations he had sold out to the BN. In 2007, he formed the MIUP.
Weapon against Anwar
Nalla's appointment may presage MIUP's entry into the ruling BN coalition ahead of snap general elections widely expected to be held early next year.
"This shows BN's desperation, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel," PKR vice president Tian Chua toldMalaysia Chronicle.
"But make no mistake, Nall's induction is not for the Indian vote. He has no grass root support to speak of. Nalla will be Najib's weapon against Anwar. So what Malaysians can expect will another round of nonsense but I have a feeling everyone is already expecting that."
Indeed, Nalla has often teamed up in the past with Ummi Hafilda to attack Anwar in a bid to destroy his political credibility. At 64, Anwar - a former deputy prime minister - remains Umno's most feared enemy and regarded as the only leader able to galvanize the opposition and snatch the federal government from BN's long-held control.
Political observers were a bit surprised at the move, commenting that it would be interesting to see the reaction from MIC and PPP, which are already locked in a war for seats to contest in GE-13.
America's politicians, it seems, have had their fill of democracy. Across the country, police, acting under orders from local officials, are breaking up protest encampments set up by supporters of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement - sometimes with shocking and utterly gratuitous violence.
In the worst incident so far, hundreds of police, dressed in riot gear, surrounded Occupy Oakland's encampment and fired rubber bullets (which can be fatal), flash grenades and tear-gas canisters - with some officers taking aim directly at demonstrators. The Occupy Oakland Twitter feed read like a report from Cairo's Tahrir Square: "they are surrounding us"; "hundreds and hundreds of police"; "there are armoured vehicles and Hummers". There were 170 arrests.
My own recent arrest, while obeying the terms of a permit and standing peacefully on a street in lower Manhattan, brought the reality of this crackdown close to home. America is waking up to what was built while it slept: Private companies have hired away its police (JPMorgan Chase gave $4.6m to the New York City Police Foundation); the federal Department of Homeland Security has given small municipal police forces military-grade weapons systems; citizens' rights to freedom of speech and assembly have been stealthily undermined by opaque permit requirements.
Suddenly, the United States looks like the rest of the furious, protesting, not-completely-free world. Indeed, most commentators have not fully grasped that a world war is occurring. But it is unlike any previous war in human history: for the first time, people around the world are not identifying and organising themselves along national or religious lines, but rather in terms of a global consciousness and demands for a peaceful life, a sustainable future, economic justice and basic democracy. Their enemy is a global "corporatocracy" that has purchased governments and legislatures, created its own armed enforcers, engaged in systemic economic fraud, and plundered treasuries and ecosystems.
Around the world, peaceful protesters are being demonised for being disruptive. But democracy is disruptive. Martin Luther King, Jr argued that peaceful disruption of "business as usual" is healthy, because it exposes buried injustice, which can then be addressed. Protesters ideally should dedicate themselves to disciplined, nonviolent disruption in this spirit - especially disruption of traffic. This serves to keep provocateurs at bay, while highlighting the unjust militarisation of the police response.
 |
| Follow our special coverage |
Moreover, protest movements do not succeed in hours or days; they typically involve sitting down or "occupying" areas for the long hauls. That is one reason why protesters should raise their own money and hire their own lawyers. The corporatocracy is terrified that citizens will reclaim the rule of law. In every country, protesters should field an army of attorneys.
Protesters should also make their own media, rather than relying on mainstream outlets to cover them. They should blog, tweet, write editorials and press releases, as well as log and document cases of police abuse (and the abusers).
There are, unfortunately, many documented cases of violent provocateurs infiltrating demonstrations in places like Toronto, Pittsburgh, London and Athens - people whom one Greek described to me as "known unknowns". Provocateurs, too, need to be photographed and logged, which is why it is important not to cover one's face while protesting.
Protesters in democracies should create email lists locally, combine the lists nationally and start registering voters. They should tell their representatives how many voters they have registered in each district - and they should organise to oust politicians who are brutal or repressive. And they should support those - as in Albany, New York, for instance, where police and the local prosecutor refused to crack down on protesters - who respect the rights to free speech and assembly.
Many protesters insist in remaining leaderless, which is a mistake. A leader does not have to sit atop a hierarchy: A leader can be a simple representative. Protesters should elect representatives for a finite "term", just like in any democracy, and train them to talk to the press and to negotiate with politicians.
Protests should model the kind of civil society that their participants want to create. In lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, for example, there is a library and a kitchen; food is donated; kids are invited to sleep over; and teach-ins are organised. Musicians should bring instruments, and the atmosphere should be joyful and positive. Protesters should clean up after themselves. The idea is to build a new city within the corrupt city, and to show that it reflects the majority of society, not a marginal, destructive fringe.
After all, what is most profound about these protest movements is not their demands, but rather the nascent infrastructure of a common humanity. For decades, citizens have been told to keep their heads down - whether in a consumerist fantasy world or in poverty and drudgery - and leave leadership to the elites. Protest is transformative precisely because people emerge, encounter one another face-to-face, and, in re-learning the habits of freedom, build new institutions, relationships and organisations.
None of that cannot happen in an atmosphere of political and police violence against peaceful democratic protesters. As Bertolt Brecht famously asked, following the East German Communists' brutal crackdown on protesting workers in June 1953, "Would it not be easier … for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" Across the United States, and in too many other countries, supposedly democratic leaders seem to be taking Brecht's ironic question all too seriously
No comments:
Post a Comment