by NGOs
Aliran Monthly Vol 25 (2005): Issue 8

	The Mahathir-led government, in power from 1981 to 2003, has inflicted some very serious damage to human rights in Malaysia and whose effects we have not recovered from. NGOs

We, the undersigned, protest at Suhakam�s invitation extended to the former prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad to address the human rights conference organisd by Suhakam on 9 September 2005.

Given that Malaysia has now been independent for 48 years, the government of the day must bear full responsibility for every human rights violation perpetrated by the State.

The Mahathir-led government, in power from 1981 to 2003, has inflicted some very serious damage to human rights in Malaysia and whose effects we have not recovered from.

The following list of violations, by no means exhaustive, is a good reminder of what the Mahathir-led administration has not been made accountable for:

1. Operation Lalang, 1987 - This �White Terror� operation was essential to silence all dissidents and to implement the assault on the judiciary the following year. The Internal Security Act (ISA) was used to arrest and detain without trial more than a hundred innocent peace-loving Malay-sians and the allegations of torture have never been investigated.



2. The Assault on the Judiciary, 1988 - This was a Machiavellian move to frustrate the efforts by UMNO Team B to challenge Mahathir�s faction. The Attorney-General during the time and accessory to this assault on the judiciary happens to be the present Suhakam chairman, Abu Talib Othman. In both these positions, Abu Talib was personally appointed by Mahathir. The Malaysian judiciary has not recovered to this present day.



3. Displacement of 10,000 indigenous peoples from Bakun, 1998 - The Bakun Dam project was another of Mahathir�s white elephants. It was conceived to supply 2400MW of electricity for a state whose total demand at the time was 200MW! The worst part of it was the government went ahead with displacing 10,000 indigenous people even when the project had been shelved during the financial crisis of 1997. Mahathir must bear responsibility for the certain ethnocide, which is the result of the displacement to the Sg Asap Resettlement Scheme.



4. The political fixing of the former Deputy Prime Minister, 1998 - Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister, has recently been vindicated when the Malaysian courts cleared his name from his convictions. Since his incarceration, he has maintained that he was a victim of a political conspiracy. As the head of the government, Mahathir must bear responsibility for these false convictions and the six years of imprisonment Anwar suffered. To the present day, Mahathir has not apologised to the former deputy prime minister - even after the courts cleared the latter�s name and ordered the former Inspector-General of Police to apologise for nearly killing the former deputy prime minister in 1998.