By Natalie Shobana Ambrose
theSun, Malaysia
May 26, 2010
Off the tram and straight into a protest in front of a giant three-legged chair was my first introduction to the Palais des Nations in Geneva earlier this year. No, I was not there to protest. I was just walking through the protest to get to the United Nations building.
Why the protest and what’s with the chair I wondered as guards checked every inch of my bag and being. Iran was due to present its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and there were some who were not impressed by Iran’s human rights record.
The UPR was set in place as a check and balance in an attempt to make all 192 UN member countries accountable in upholding the rights of every human being within their sovereign boundary. Every country had its turn at the podium. Malaysia’s was last year and the report was made public on the website of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
As I sat marvelling at the stalactites that Miquel Barcelo the artist who used 100 tons of paint from all over the world and Spain’s €20 million donation to decorate the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilisation Room, I thought about the comfort the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) brought and how honoured I felt to be automatically given these rights because I was, yes, you guessed it human – I was young and idealistic to say the least. I found out later that Malaysia is party to the declaration but only if it’s consistent with the Federal Constitution.
For some reason as I sat observing, I remembered an incident a few months earlier when in the Masjid Jamek area on a Sunday afternoon looking for textiles when a group of official volunteers were in full force. I wondered what happened to the migrants that were humiliated in front of my eyes and taken away in large trucks. I wondered how Malaysia would answer in the very room that represented the exact opposite of what I witnessed when asked about such human rights violations.
Where was our spirit of brotherhood as members of the human family? Could we not be more humane? My heart broke. Sadly, we are not all born free and equal and don’t do enough to rectify this.
In her book The Mighty and the Almighty, Madeleine Albright makes the familiar connection that we are all created in the image of God and by default, we have a responsibility to our neighbours. Perhaps we need to take this familiar belief more seriously and literally.
As I read Malaysia’s Human Rights report at last year’s Periodical Review, I see on paper many positive mechanisms and institutions in place that should translate as positive efforts towards being aligned with principles of being a UN member. However what we say we have in place fails when other mechanisms such as the ISA, capital punishment, the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers go against the good work presented in the report.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the UPR “has great potential to promote and protect human rights in the darkest corners of the world”. Sometimes, human rights violations don’t just happen in the darkest corners in the world, they happen in bright tropical countries too.
Natalie wonders if being included in the UNHRC means that we scored an A+ on our human rights report card.
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