Suhakam Chairman Rahmat Mohamad’s clarification that he is not an opponent of ICERD and Rome Statute is welcome, as I had expected Suhakam to be in troubled waters headed by a Chairman who is anti-human rights
Suhakam Chairman Rahmat Mohamad’s clarification that he is not an opponent of ICERD and Rome Statute is welcome, as I had expected Suhakam to be in troubled waters headed by a Chairman who is anti-human rights.
He said the reason he co-authored a paper objecting to Malaysia’s ratification of the Rome Statute in 2019 was that he felt the necessary preparations were not completed at the time.
He said: “People misunderstood me, (they think) that I am an opposer of the Rome Statute. No, it is not that. I am never against (punishing) those four big crimes.”
When Pakatan Harapan took over the government after the 2018 general election, it wanted to ratify several international treaties, including International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Rome Statute.
Rahmat said it was good that Harapan wanted Malaysia to be known as a human rights-friendly nation, but some processes have to be observed before signing international treaties.
His concern at the time was that the country had not undergone these processes and as such, he deemed it not ready to sign the treaty.
This was also my stand at the time.
I said that Malaysia should not ratify ICERD until the majority of the races and religions in Malaysia support it and understand that it posed no threat to the various races, religions or the Malaysian Constitution but was a step forward to join the world in promoting human rights.
UMNO President, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi and PAS President Hadi Awang were among the Malay political leaders who warned that the Malays will run amok if ICERD was ratified by the Malaysian Government in at the end of 2018.
PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang said it was compulsory for Muslims to oppose ICERD.
The PAS President is the Vice President of the International Union of Muslims Scholars but he was unaware that out of 57-member Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), only Malaysia and Brunei, who constitute only one per cent of the 1.9 billion Muslims in the world, have not ratified ICERD.
Is Hadi suggesting that only one per cent of the 1.9 billion Muslims in the world in Malaysia and Brunei qualify to be called true Muslims?
But this was another example of Hadi’s irrational, extremist and bigoted political and religious views, like his recent statement accusing non-Muslims and non-Bumiputeras of being at the root of corruption in Malaysia.
I was in China on a visit when the ICERD fiasco first blew up at the end of 2018.
On 19th November 2018, the then Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said that the ratification of ICERD would entail an amendment to the Federal Constitution which was “an impossible thing to do” without two-thirds parliamentary majority.
On 24th November 2018, in a speech at the Malaysian Association of Jiansu Annual Gala Dinner in Souchou, China, I said that no Malaysian would want Malaysia to ratify ICERD at the price of another May 13 racial riots in the country as there was no doubt that there were irresponsible elements who were seeking to incite and escalate racial and religious distrust, animosity and hatred to engender the conditions to replicate another May 13 racial riots in Malaysia.
All throughout the ICERD fiasco at the end of 2018, the DAP was completely in the dark, as DAP Ministers and leaders knew nothing about the issue, yet the DAP was accused of being the anti-Malay, ant-Islam and anti-Royalty “dark forces” pushing for the ratification of ICERD.
That is why I had repeatedly challenged the Foreign Minister, Saifuddin Abdullah to explain the origins of the ICERD ratification fiasco at the end of 2018 and that the DAP Ministers and leaders were completely not involved in it.
This is one of the bitter lessons of the 22-month Pakatan Harapan government – the toxic politics of lies, hatred, race and religion, so deftly mobilised during the ICERD fiasco in 2018 resulting in the “Sheraton Move” conspiracy in February 2020 to topple a legitimate and constitutional government and replace it with a backdoor and illegitimate government, creating an enormous “trust deficit” problem which haunt the Malaysian body politics.
The least Rahmat Mohamad can do now as new the Suhakam Chairman is to redeem himself and Suhakam by taking steps for Malaysia to recover from the lessons of the ICERD and Rome Statute fiascos in 2018 and 2019.