Opinion: Score One for Dr. M on Sedition

By admin-s On Dec 10, 2014

US is in no position to lecture Malaysia or anybody else

John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel

It is not often, if ever, that one finds it possible to agree with Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the irascible former prime minister of Malaysia and frequent critic of the US (despite sending his children to school there, ostensibly to pick up the principles of democracy, etc). But his current outburst against Vice President Joe Biden for criticizing Malaysia’s retention of the sedition act is right on.

This is not to defend Malaysia’s use of the sedition act, which in recent months has been employed primarily to silence opposition critics, is so vague as to be misused by the majority against the minority and is of little use in any case. If the United Malays National Organization thinks a silly law will stop the man (or woman) in the street from seeing the corruption and cronyism that characterize the party, they are living in a dream world.

But Mahathir asks where Biden gets off criticizing Malaysia for its sedition laws when the United States has kept prisoners in Guantanamo Bay for more than a decade without recourse to habeas corpus and a fair trial, where CIA officers employed waterboarding and other methods of torture against suspects, where American citizens have been executed from the sky by drone without benefit of trial, and where US local police appear to have often used unjustified force against ethnic African American citizens, killing three in controversial incidents in the past few months.

The superpatriots in the United States greet these acts with a hearty Right On! But America has no idea what this looks like from the prism of another shore. It looks like a right-wing country out of control and veering towards fascism. How the US thinks it can command the moral leadership of the world while these injustices are taking place as a result of government action is hard to figure out

As Mahathir said in his blog, “Just don’t go around telling people how to behave and what they should not do. Tell it to your own people, about how Americans prospered through slavery, through discrimination against blacks and Hispanics, about spying on your own people, about your controlled media etc. That is what Joe Biden should do.”