Malaysian PM visits Australia
(Radio Australia) – The Australian and Malaysian Prime Ministers have been praising each other for a long bilateral relationship built on past and present mutual security interests, trade and education. But as Najib Razak was being feted at ceremonies, Malaysian civil liberties activist Raja Petra Kamarudin was also meeting politicians in Canberra, urging them to speak out about human rights and state-sponsored racism in Malaysia. Raja Petra has also called on Australia to push to send monitors to Malaysia’s elections. There was no mention of such issues though as Australia’s Julia Gillard hosted her Malaysian counterpart.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Julia Gillard, Australia’s Prime Minister; Najib Razak, Malaysia’s Prime Minister; Raja Petra Kamarudin, head, Malaysian Civil Liberties Union
MOTTRAM: Raja Petra Kamarudin. Meanwhile Prime Minister Najib will receive an
onorary doctorate of laws from Monash University while in Australia .. an award that has excited some strong criticism on blog sites that discuss Malaysian politics.
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GILLARD: Your excellency, Prime Minister Najib, thank you for joining us here today, you do us a very great honour.
MOTTRAM: Julia Gillard, presiding over the official lunch in Australia’s Federal Parliament honour of Malaysia’s Najib Razak, who was fulsome in reply.
NAJIB: A sense of warmth, of friendship, of wanting to work together, of a sense that although we are quite far apart in distance we have an inextricable links between our two countries.
MOTTRAM: And when the two leaders appeared for a limited media opportunity, all talk was of the positive .. trade, with an agreement to sign a free trade deal in one year; education and a memorandum on expanding co-operation; and investment, with Malaysia looking for ways out of what the country’s own recent analysis called the middle income trap .. an economy that’s neither low-wage producer on the one hand nor highly skilled innovator on the other.
Prime Minister Najib also acknowledged Australia’s particular preoccupation: people smuggling and asylum seekers arriving by boat.
NAJIB: I appreciate the importance of that issue to the Australian people and we will do our level best to support you in whatever way. We certainly do not want Malaysia to be a transit point for those people indulging in people smuggling. We have increased the punishment. We have improved our interdiction.
MOTTRAM: But he didn’t specifically back Julia Gillard’s much-criticised plan to build a regional asylum seeker processing centre in East Timor .. saying its a regional issue to be considered possibly later this month by the Bali Process.
Nor was there any specific mention of human rights issues, civil liberties constraints in Malaysia, religious intolerance or corruption. Indeed Ms Gillard praised Najib Razak on some of these issues.
GILLARD: You are an exemplar in the fight against extremism and upholding the true values of Islam and I salute your leadership of the global movement of moderates.
MOTTRAM: That’s despite concern about rising religious intolerance and continuing discrimination for Malays over other ethnic groups.
Blogger and head of the Malaysian Civil Liberties Union, Raja Petra Kamarudin, says Australia should say more .. and publicly.
RPK: I’m also here at Parliament House to meet Australian leaders, both sides of the political divide. We want to emphasise the point that as much as the world is moving more towards giving priority or focussing on trade relations and all that, I think the issue of human rights, civil liberties, the issue of religious intolerance, the issue of I would say even more serious problem is state-sanctioned racism which happens and is continuing to happen in Malaysia. I think Australia must also stress that while we do maintain good bilateral relations, we do have a good trade between the two countries, but Australia still expresses concern about the state of affairs in Malaysia and would like to see an improvement in the situation, especially when it comes to issues like racism and religion, which our view is being pushed to the brink of a very dangerous situation.
MOTTRAM: Why is it Australia’s responsibility to raise those sorts of issues, because its an internal Malaysian matter surely?
RPK: I don’t think issues of human rights can be regarded as the internal issue of any country. We live now in a borderless, global village. Don’t forget Australia has a very large Malaysian population, its to the benefit of Australia no doubt that a lot of very qualified, highly educated, some wealthy Malaysians all come to make their home here. But the question is why are these people leaving the country of their birth and coming to this adopted country and making it their new home. Something must be terribly wrong in Malaysia.
MOTTRAM: These issues haven’t been raised publicly by the leaders in their statements so far. Maybe they’ve been talked about in private. Is that good enough?
RPK: No. Whatever is said behind closed doors remain behind closed doors. We need some public statements made. And maybe Australia can officially request to the Malaysian government to send a team of observers to monitor the general elections or the Sarawak state elections which are due. Thus far Malaysian government has rejected any requests for foreign observers.
