Malaysia, 1993

Before I begin my

statement, I should like to extend, on behalf of the

Government and people of Malaysia, our deepest

condolences to India for the devastating earthquake that

resulted in the loss of thousands of lives and massive

destruction of property.

I would like to join other speakers in extending my

congratulations to Mr. Insanally on his election as President

of the General Assembly at its forty-eighth session. His

election to that important office is an honour to his country,

with which Malaysia enjoys warm and friendly relations.

With his experience and ability, I am confident that he will

discharge his responsibilities well and lead this Assembly to

a successful conclusion of its work.

I would also like to express my appreciation of his

predecessor, Mr. Stoyan Ganev, who discharged his duties

with dedication and earnestness and successfully guided the

efforts to revitalize the work of the General Assembly.

I also take this opportunity to welcome, on behalf of

Malaysia, the six countries which have joined the United

Nations since last fall: Andorra, the Czech Republic,

Eritrea, Monaco, the Slovak Republic and The Former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Their membership will

help to strengthen the United Nations in the execution of its

increasingly complex role in the maintenance of international

peace and security and the promotion of international

economic cooperation.

Malaysia is a developing third world country. We

should, according to the stereotypical Western concept of a

third world country, be politically unstable, administratively

incompetent and economically depressed. But we are not

quite typical. We have actually made progress. We are

16 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

quite stable despite a multiracial time bomb we inherited

from our colonial past. We are fairly competent in the

running of our affairs. Such is our progress that we actually

contemplate building buildings which should be the

preserves of our betters. And we dare to speak our minds.

These are unforgivable sins and we are for ever being

reminded that we should not be too ambitious. We are told

that our achievements are temporary, that next year we will

go the way of their preconception of third world countries.

Of course, last year and the years before we were told the

same. But so far we have not obliged. We are, however,

humbly aware that nothing is permanent. Our detractors

may yet prove right.

That we do well and are not in dire need of their

development aid is apparently not praiseworthy. Yet, when

other developing countries perform badly they are chastised

and told to do better or they will get no more aid or loans.

But we will soldier on. We really should not care about

what is said of us. Unfortunately, these negative remarks

make life that much more difficult for us.

We need foreign investments and to get them we need

a reputation for stability, competence and predictability. But

when investors are told repeatedly that we are about to

explode in racial violence, and so on, they are likely to

invest elsewhere. Of course, what is said about us is

untrue - lies. But these people apparently subscribe to the

dictum that a lie repeated often enough will be believed.

We care for the well-being of our people. We want to

develop so as to give them a reasonable standard of living.

But we cannot be cowed into not speaking our minds. If the

powerful nations do wrong, we will speak out against them

even if they say we are unduly suspicious, that we have an

exaggerated sense of our own importance, and so on. We

can be belittled but we will continue to speak the truth.

Here at the United Nations we will say what we feel we

should say. Of course, the controlled "free" Western media

will not publish it. But the few here will hear us. In any

case, it is what we achieve that counts with us. We can do

without Western approval.

Four or five years ago the world was celebrating the

impending collapse of the "evil empire". The Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics was still intact then, but all

indications were that it had given up the fight; that it was

coming to terms with its main adversaries, the countries of

the Western so-called free world; and that the cold war was

drawing to a close.

Peace was breaking out all over the world and there

was much talk of peace dividends. The arms race would

end, there would be nuclear disarmament and, as the saying

goes, swords would be turned into ploughshares. A brave

new world would emerge: equitable, just and prosperous.

There would be no oppression, no terror and no poverty or

starvation. Everyone would embrace democracy and the

market economy, moving from authoritarian rule and

command economies without a hitch. And a global

policeman would see to it that every country stayed in line

or faced the consequences. There was no end to the good

things that would make up the peace dividends.

It would be wrong to say that there were no peace

dividends at all - the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet occupation of

Afghanistan, the war in Cambodia, some of the Central

American wars, and now the violent Palestinian-Israeli

confrontation and South Africa’s apartheid were all resolved,

partially or completely. But the world has not become a

safer or a better place for a great many.

The Soviet Union did not just become a democratic

practitioner of free trade, working with the good guys for a

better world. It broke up into a number of republics and

Russia has become dangerously unstable and ungovernable.

The respected great reformer of perestroika and glasnost

fame was ousted and disgraced and has been replaced by

another, who seems to fare no better. The "evil empire" is

no more. But the price in human lives and the displacement

of people has been very high. And the price is still being

paid.

In Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and

Tajikistan, much destruction and many killings have taken

place and are still taking place. The old economic structure

has been destroyed but the new one is far from being in

place. Chaos, bloody chaos, prevails in many places.

Far from achieving universal peace, the world is treated

to a spectacle of unparalleled brutality by the Serbs in

Bosnia and Herzegovina. In many countries of Europe,

fascism has once again reared its ugly head. Houses are

torched and people burned to death. And the voters actually

approve.

During the cold-war days the protagonists constantly

tried to provoke uprisings against Governments of the

countries they were opposed to. They would provide

financial and material help and would promise that they

would protect the rebels or provide them with asylum.

Forty-eighth session - 1 October l993 17

With the collapse of the Communist bloc, the people

there expected help when they overthrew their Communist

Governments and established democratic, free-market

societies, or they sought independence for their countries.

In some instances they found their expectations justified.

The Slovenes and the Croats enjoyed the full support of the

Europeans and were able to mould new nations. But the

Iraqi Kurds and the Bosnians learned that they thought

wrong. It is only coincidental that both are Muslim

communities.

The most tragic case is that of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The crime of the Muslims is that they wish for a nonMuslim, religiously heterogenous State. They were viciously

attacked by the Serbs, who openly declared that they were

doing so - and they are still doing so - to ensure that Europe

remains Christian. And they are not being prevented from

proceeding in this way by the Europeans.

The cruelties committed by the Serbs defy the

imagination. In one case, which caused officials in one of

the powerful countries of the West to resign in protest over

their Government’s passivity, a six-year-old child was

repeatedly raped in front of her mother, who not only had to

watch but was prevented from giving any help, and the little

child died after two days of exposure. That is not an

isolated incident. Muslim women, old and young, and little

girls have been raped, brutalized and killed by the tens of

thousands at the hands of the Serbs, and now the Croats.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have died and are dying,

and some 2 million have been forced to flee from their

burning towns and villages.

And what do the erstwhile champions of freedom and

democracy do? They actually prevent the victims from

defending themselves. Instead, they try to force the victims

to accept the partitioning and surrender of their territories,

which have been ethnically cleansed by the Serbs and the

Croats. Thus are the rapists and murderers to be rewarded.

Only the most gullible will still believe that the vociferous

champions of freedom and democracy will risk their necks

for other people’s freedom and democracy.

Malaysia would like to record its satisfaction over the

acceptance of Malaysian troops to serve in the United

Nations forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We regret,

however, the exclusion of certain Muslim countries from

participating in the United Nations Protection Force

(UNPROFOR). Apparently, the distrust of Muslims is quite

widespread. Malaysians are prepared to serve under

whoever is appointed by the United Nations in Bosnia and

Herzegovina. We hope that our troops will be well

supported. We will not protest if the United Nations decides

to increase pressure on the Serbs, even through the mounting

of a military offensive, provided due preparations are made.

When we add things up, the peace dividends accruing

from the ending of the cold war have not been really

substantial. If there has been any change, the debit side is

much bigger than the credit side. The most glaring example

is the reneging on the much-needed development assistance

to poor developing countries.

Still, when drawing up the balance sheet since the end

of the cold war one cannot but highlight two significant

items on the credit side. The recent signing of the peace

agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization

(PLO) and the Israelis and that between blacks and whites

in South Africa must be regarded as the biggest

achievements of the post-cold-war period. Admittedly, there

is still a great deal to be negotiated before justice can be

rendered to all sides and before true peace becomes

permanent. But the most crucial obstacles have been

cleared. I should like to congratulate all the parties

concerned for their good sense and their boldness. The

extremists on both sides will not be happy. There will be

more violence. But I am sure that those who are for peace

and good sense will be as brave in peace as they have been

in war.

I commend these accords to the good people of

Northern Ireland. It is brave not to surrender even one inch,

but it takes real bravery to compromise.

One may well ask why, in the face of the muchpublicized failure of the United States-sponsored peace talks

between the PLO and Israel, there should be this sudden

breakthrough. The answer is to be found in the press

statements. Good sense cannot prevail when the media

demands that statements be made by each and everyone

before and after each negotiating session. The negotiators

are forced to take public stands, to demonstrate how tough

they are and that they will not give even an inch. Having

taken those stands, they were no longer able to accommodate

good sense.

At the peace talks in Norway, there was no press, and

good sense was able to prevail. There is this great

democratic principle of "the need to know." But do we all

really need to know every detail of every negotiation? Does

every Israeli settler or Gaza Strip Arab, or, for that matter,

every Tom, Dick and Harry in every part of the world, need

to know everything about the negotiations? Must

18 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

Palestinians continue to be killed and be made homeless

because everybody needs to know what was said by whom?

This need for transparency, this right to information, is

an invention of those who want to make money from the

information industry. We should know about the bestiality

of the Serbs in Bosnia so that we may react, but that

knowledge is largely denied us. On the other hand, day in

and day out we are shown this parade of negotiators to a

peace conference. Can the average man do anything

worthwhile as a result of seeing the daily TV report?

We live in the information age. There has been and

there will continue to be an unending explosion in the field

of information technology. Today, we can sit in our homes

and watch and hear a war as it is being fought, witness with

eyes and ears a beauty contest as it is being judged, and look

through a microscope at a bug as it swims, all via the TV

screen. We see all these things as they are, where they are,

without a second’s delay. We can watch murder as it is

being committed, in all the gory details, and we can be

shocked by it. But, then, we can also watch

Michael Jackson doing his moon walk at the very moment

mass murder and massacres of the most brutal kinds are

being committed.

What we see and hear and witness is what the media

decide we should see and hear and witness. If the media

wants us to be shocked by a massacre, it can broadcast lurid

details of that massacre. But if it chooses to broadcast

Michael Jackson at the time the massacre was taking place,

we will be stomping our feet in total enjoyment.

Clearly, the people who decide what we should see and

hear hold terrible power. They can have us dancing in the

streets or they can have us rioting in the streets with

firebrands in our hands, burning, looting and killing. Can

we doubt that such people are powerful? Make no mistake:

the people who control the media control our minds, and

probably control the world. They can make or break

presidents, and they have done so. Countries can be isolated

or accepted despite violations of human rights, depending on

how the media present them.

And who controls the powerful world media? Not the

national governments of tiny developing nations; not even

the governments of powerful nations. A very few people in

the West control all the international media. Some are

journalists, but quite a few are not. Collectively they are

Big Brothers.

Now they have an even more effective weapon in the

form of the worldwide television network. Today they

broadcast slanted news. Tomorrow they will broadcast raw

pornography to corrupt our children and destroy our culture.

They are already doing that in Europe.

Today we can still control the reception. The day is

fast approaching when only a coat-hanger will be needed to

receive television broadcasts from across the world. We will

have nowhere to retreat. Already the small nations are being

accused of being undemocratic and limiting freedom because

we do not allow reception of international television

networks. We hope this is because our accusers believe in

the freedom of the press, but we suspect it is because they

monopolize the world media and stand to profit substantially

from the freedom they insist every nation should have.

Malaysia believes in press freedom. But that freedom,

as with other freedoms and rights, must be accompanied by

responsibility. We will continue to expect the Malaysian

media to be responsible. We will not forgo the need to

enforce that responsibility. But as to the international press,

we can only hope and pray that they will realize the damage

they are doing. We will not interfere with them. They are

free to report and to write any number of lies but we hope

that occasionally they will cover the truth as well. Power

corrupts, but power without responsibility is the most

corrupting influence of all.

We have heard often enough of the need for

restructuring the United Nations. We need this because the

world has changed. It is not the world of the immediate

post-Second-World-War period that we have today. The

people who plunged the world into a horrendous war are

now the good guys, telling the world how to be humane.

The rapacious invaders of the past are now the good

Samaritans, distributing aid to the needy. Will there always

be no room for the reformed?

We talk of democracy as the only acceptable system of

government. It is so good that we cannot wait for the

democratic process to bring about its own acceptance by

every country. It must be forced upon everyone, whether

welcome or not. Yet when it comes to the United Nations,

we eschew democracy. And the most undemocratic aspect

of the United Nations is the veto power of the five

permanent members of the Security Council. We can accept

some weighting in their favour, but for each of them alone

to be more powerful than the whole membership of the

United Nations is not acceptable; it was not before, it is not

now, and will not be in the future.

Forty-eighth session - 1 October l993 19

For the time being, there can be some permanent

members. But the veto must go. A formula must be found

for new permanent members of the Security Council.

Whatever the other qualifications may be, they must include

a genuine and sincere interest in international welfare.

At the ministerial-level World Conference on Human

Rights held at Vienna this year, a more comprehensive

definition of human rights was presented. Many countries

like Malaysia were smeared in Vienna for allegedly refusing

to accept the universality of human rights. We subscribe to

the universality of human rights, but not to the irresponsible

variety propounded by the West. Human rights is not a

licence to do anything without regard to the rights of others.

The rights of the majority are just as valid as the rights of

the minority or the individual. A society has a right to

protect itself from the unbridled exercise of rights by

individuals or a minority, which in the West has contributed

to the collapse of morality and of the structure of human

society.

If individual and minority rights are so totally

inviolable, then you must allow the resurgence of nazism

and its violently racist activities in Europe and elsewhere.

But it is apparent that the West at least still thinks that racist

violence is wrong. We hope they will also accept that

freedom from poverty and the wish to develop are essential

elements of human rights.

Finally, countries like Malaysia must take exception to

preaching on human rights from people who willingly

condone, and to a certain degree aid, "ethnic cleansing" in

Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until they redeem themselves

there, all their talk of human rights will sound hollow.

This litany of the woes of the developing countries and

the world may seem endless. Actually, the list is far from

complete. Trade and protectionism, aid and debts, the

United Nations Conference on Environment and

Development and pressures on environmental issues,

Antarctica and many more have not been touched upon.

The world of the post-cold-war period is not a

thoroughly bad place, but for the developing countries,

including Malaysia, there is really very little to crow about.

A statement in the General Assembly is not going to

change the world. But there is really nowhere else that the

woes of the third world can be aired. Not to air them is to

encourage supercilious arrogance on the part of those who

are most responsible yet who still presume to extol their own

virtues and to preach to others. Even if the benefit is

minimal, the truth must be told sometimes.