104 COUNTRIES ASKED MALAYSIA TO BUCK UP ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS FRONT. HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT IGNORE THAT? [EXCERPT] At the 2nd Universal Periodic Review of Malaysia, which was carried out at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland on 24 October 2013, 104 countries participated in the interactive session with Malaysia by making comments, asking questions and raising recommendations. Noting the low rate of accession by Malaysia, many countries encouraged the Malaysian government to accede to the six other core international human rights conventions that we have yet to sign and introduce and implement domestic legislation, apart from the three that we have already signed. Even with respect to the three international human rights conventions that Malaysia had signed, recommendations were for Malaysia to remove the various reservations that had been made. Malaysia was also asked to be specific and stipulate a definite timeline for these accessions. Additionally, Malaysia was asked to sign up to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It should be noted that Malaysia announced in April 2011 that it would sign the Rome Statute, but until now no progress has been publicly made known. In our view it will not be easy for the government to ignore these recommendations, as they did not come just from Western countries, but also from other countries in Asia, from Africa and Latin America. Muslim countries such as Egypt, Maldives, Tunisia and Turkey also made this call, obviously seeing no threat to Islam in doing so, in contrast to views from certain Malaysian Muslim NGOs.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 02:16:59 +0000