Malaysia rated 'average' for human rights

KUALA LUMPUR: The Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) rated Malaysia only as "average" when it came to human rights.
Its chairman, Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, said there is room for improvement, but can only be done gradually or risk harming the human rights system the country is currently practicing.
"At the moment we are very average, maybe slightly above average. A lot of room to improve. But when talking about human rights, we can only give those rights incrementally. If we do it suddenly, the system (will) suffer a shock. It has to be reasonable," he told theSun after the handing over of the AICHR chairmanship to Lao PDR, at Le Meridien Hotel, here on Sunday.
Shafee said the whole community and every individual need to be responsible to make human rights improvement a reality, adding that France's absolute freedom of speech is a road that the country should not go down to.
"In France, they say freedom of speech is absolute, that's nonsense. How can you have absolute freedom of speech? The fact that there is law of defamation shows that you cannot simply speak, that it's not absolute," he added.
On how Malaysia can improve its "average" human rights rating, Shafee said, it would be hard to improve in every area.
He said gay rights and same sex marriage, for instance, is a far cry for Malaysia to recognise, but right to livelihood, clean environment, and removing mandatory death sentence by making it discretionary for judges is more relevant and applicable.
"Then you can be more flexible on freedom of speech, but with some reservation and condition, because otherwise people will start talking nonsense," he added.