Misleading Reuters report on walkout by diplomats

A Reuters report today titled “British envoy walks out on Mahathir rights speech” gives a very misleading impression of the NGO boycott of Mahathir’s presence at Suhakam’s human rights day conference.

The report said: “The US embassy had decided on Thursday not to send its delegate to listen to Mahathir's speech, in line with some human rights groups who also boycotted the speech.”

Obviously, diplomats from countries belonging to the "coalition of the willing" were upset or wary of Mahathir’s criticism of the murderous Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

But Reuters attempt to link the Iraq issue with the NGO boycott of the Suhakam conference is mischievous.

Let us make it clear that the NGOs did not boycott the conference because of Mahathir’s justified criticism of the imperialist American-led adventure in Iraq.

Many NGOs, including Aliran, have been critical of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, which has killed more than 100,000 Iraqis (according to a research study published in the British medical journal Lancet). It was an invasion that the US and the UK tried to justify with lies about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Earlier, hundreds of thousands of people perished as a result of the sanctions on Iraq. We note that Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, key UN officials overseeing humanitarian aid in Iraq, both resigned in disgust at what they perceived to be the genocidical effects of the sanctions. (The Reuters report did not attempt to discuss whether Mahathir's comments on Iraq were justified or true.)

The NGOs boycotted the conference because of Mahathir’s dismal domestic human rights record - not because of his position on Iraq.

To suggest that the diplomats’ fury over Mahathir's position on Iraq as well as the US embassy's reported decision to stay away from the conference (although US diplomats were reported to be present later) were somehow "in line with" the NGO boycott is downright misleading.

Let us draw another distinction: unlike Mahathir and the US/UK diplomats, we have criticised detention without trial/torture and other human rights violations in BOTH Malaysia AND Iraq/Afghanistan/Guantanamo Bay.