Click Here for Larger Image >> Female members from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) pray during a women wing meeting in Kota Bahru, Malaysia, June 2, 2005. After a routing in last year's general election, the Islamic opposition party is preparing for a potential leadership shake-up at its annual congress this weekend, which it hopes will widen its appeal to moderate Muslims. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

In addition to threats from neighboring kingdoms, the federation the British created was by its nature fragile and characterized by internal instability and strife. To maintain control, the British implemented repressive legislation, which the current Malaysian government inherited and has yet to close this chapter in its colonial legacy. Following the British example, Malaysian prime ministers have used repressive legislation to maintain control. This legislation is also used to silence political opposition and criticism of the government's policies.

Malaysia has progressed dramatically since independence in ensuring the right to adequate health care, investing substantial financial resources in its public health system, and as a result the country has improved standards of health care for its citizens.  Human rights defenders in Malaysia, however, hold the government responsible for raising the level of respect for all human rights, including the rights of women; the rights of freedom of conscience, association, and expression; the rights of migrants; to due process of law; and other areas where human rights violations have been documented.

U.S. and International Policy

Cooperation on security matters between the United States and Great Britain has helped insulate Malaysia from international criticism on its human rights record. Before security ties between Malaysia and the United States increased following the "war on terror" policy, the United States found Malaysia's laws allowing for preventative and indefinite detention of suspects undemocratic. According to Nazri Abdul Aziz, a senior government minister, "[the United States is] less critical of us now because they probably have found it is necessary to fight terrorism and different countries have their own ways of doing it." (Malaysia Today, Sept. 10, 2006)

Malaysian defender Edmund Bon, who has served as counsel for those held under preventative detention laws has said: "The change in the U.S. stance was really important ... after 9/11, the United States took the foot off the pedal, a lot of momentum was lost. With international pressure reduced, we have to go back to the drawing board."

Other human rights lawyers in Malaysia have echoed this sentiment. There is a real sense that before the post-9/11 paradigm, the Malaysian government was prepared to give in to domestic and international pressure on some areas of due process guarantees for those detained under preventative detention laws.

Another argument that is used by the Malaysian government to justify policies inconsistent with international human rights obligations is the concept of "Asian values."  This perspective of cultural relativism proposes that what the international community understands as universal freedoms is, in reality, a set of norms rooted in a Western, individual rights-based tradition,, and therefore outside of the Asian values paradigm, which emphasizes a community-based approach . While there are merits to this argument in the eyes of some human rights activists working the Asian context, Salbiah Ahmad of Sisters in Islam disagrees. 

She says, "This [Asian values] argument has served to deflect international pressure.  The work has to be on the ground with civil society so that it cannot be seen as coming from the outside."

Thus, defenders on the ground who want to challenge government policies have discovered they must work on evolving an organic formulation of human rights, one that is rooted in their own tradition. In Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country, defenders are working to define a human rights discourse in ways that are at once consistent with international norms and derived from Islamic teachings that articulate similar rights:

"There is a whole diversity of opinions, a diversity of interpretation, a diversity of laws – this rich diversity that is part of the Muslim heritage provides us with an incredibly rich source of information, scholarship, and opinion that we can work with to promote our belief in an Islam that upholds the principles of justice and equality, of freedom and dignity," says Zainah Anwar, member of Sisters in Islam.

Click Here for Larger Image >> Sarawak tribes women among 150 people show "Stop Bakun" placards during a protest rally against the $6 billion Bakun hydroelectric project in Sarawak, 870 kilometers (545 miles) southeast of Kuala Lumpur on Borneo Island, April 7, 1996. The demonstrators demanded the government to stop work on the dam project that they say will inundate large areas of rain forest and force more than 10,000 people to move. (AP Photo/Bernama)

Updated August 2007