Firstly, a link to Mahathir’s controversial keynote address here.
I found the speech interesting, full of rhetorical fervor and worded in just the right ways that seem to defend wrongs in one’s country by pointing out the ‘log in your eye’. All that’s well and good, but in effect does nothing to mitigate the singular fact: that there were human rights abuses — ignored in his speech — and that these occurred during Mahathir’s reign.
Those are plain, “simple” facts for which expediency was the main reason, expediency and it seems, political survival. While the overriding hypocrisy of a global, ‘concerned’ humanist majority shouldn’t be missed, it shouldn’t overwhelm the “simple” fact that there were instances of repression in our country which do amount to wrongs.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
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