skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Britain issued a rebuke last night to the veteran Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, after he threatened to expel gay British ministers if they visited his country with their partners.
In a terse statement, the Foreign Office said: "Jack Straw strongly considers that people's private lives are private." His remarks were seen as support for Ben Bradshaw, the openly gay Foreign Office minister, whose portfolio includes Malaysia. The diplomatic spat flared up after Dr Mohamad threatened to throw out gay British ministers if they "come here bringing their boyfriend". In an interview with Radio 4's Today programme Dr Mohamad, who had his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, jailed on charges of sodomy and corruption, said that homosexuality was unacceptable in his predominantly Muslim country. "The British people accept homosexual ministers but if they ever come here bringing their boyfriend along, we will throw them out," he said. In Malaysia, a consenting sexual gay relationship is punishable by up to 20 years jail plus flogging and this is probably one of the harshest penalties for gay relations anywhere in the world.
Anyone who thought Malaysia's jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had been consigned to the history books only needed to hear the speech by the prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, to his party's annual congress this morning to appreciate how significant a political player he is, even behind bars.
Although he did not mention by name the man once trumpeted as his anointed heir and tried to disguise his vitriol as a swipe at Indonesia, Mahathir could not have been clearer if he had spelt Anwar's name out on the large screen behind him.
The 75-year-old autocrat spent the first section of his 90-minute oration lambasting "reformasi", the reform movement established following Anwar's dismissal in September 1998, subsequent humiliation and extremely dubious conviction for corruption and sodomy.
"Why do we need reform in our democratic system of administration?" he asked.
"Why do we need street demonstrations which only serve to cause traders to lose, in particular small-business people whose daily survival depends on their daily income?"
Mahathir, who celebrates 20 years in office next month, seemed to have forgotten that these same traders are suffering enormously as a result of his own policies as Malaysia's growth rate is expected to slump from more than 8% last year to nearer 2% this year.
He described the masses who backed Anwar as "idiots" who have been duped. "While the little people gained nothing, those who made use of them gained a lot by faking sympathy towards their idol," he said. "Until when are they going to be idiots?"
And if anyone had forgotten what he did to Anwar and, earlier this year, to 10 reformasi activists, Mahathir warned, in English for emphasis: "Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword."
The 10 Anwar supporters, who were responsible for mobilising thousands of people across the country in the last two years, were detained without charge in solitary confinement for up to 60 days in an unknown location earlier this year, with no access to lawyers and no family visits for the first month. Six have had their detention extend indefinitely, albeit in a regular detention centre.
Analysts believe the amount of time Mahathir spent attacking Anwar highlights how worried the ageing leader is. "He would not have spent 30 minutes attacking Anwar if he was not a force to be reckoned with," said Terence Gomez of the University of Malaya.
Anwar, who marked his 1,000th day of incarceration on Saturday, is confined to a wheelchair and wears neck and back braces after suffering a slipped disc in - depending on who you ask - either a beating by prison guards and police officers or an innocent fall while playing football.
Mahathir is offering Anwar surgery in Malaysia. But this will involve a general anaesthetic and, experts say, has a 20% chance of leaving him paralysed. Anwar wants to be treated using highly sophisticated endoscopic surgery under local anaesthetic in Germany that has a less than 5% chance of going wrong.
"He's really afraid of what might happen here," said Chandra Muzaffar, the deputy president of Keadilan, the party founded by Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, to formalise the struggle against Mahathir. "You can't say his fear is unjustified after what he has gone through."
On Tuesday, Malaysia's prisons chief formally rejected Anwar's demand to be allowed to go overseas for treatment. Not only was Anwar beaten up on several occasions he was almost poisoned. After falling very sick, a blood sample was smuggled out and found to contain dangerously high levels of arsenic.
Despite his physical ailments, he is "otherwise all right," according to Wan Azizah. "He's not going to give up fighting for what he knows to be right." Although they only meet once a fortnight, the two exchange messages every few days discussing how Keadilan should develop in both the short and long-term.
What the last three years have shown is that the wave of sympathy generated by Mahathir's treatment of Anwar was not a flash in the pan. It has developed into a permanent, and still growing, political movement.
"Anwar was one of the few ruling party leaders who had built up his own political base from different groups and sections in society," explained Sivarasa Rasiah, one of Anwar's lawyers. "That's where Mahathir miscalculated."
Anwar's continued pulling power as an icon of the reformasi movement is most clearly demonstrated by the four major opposition political parties agreeing that he would still be their first choice as prime minister if they were to unseat Mahathir. "There's no one else who has the same appeal as he does," said Lim Kit Siang, the chairman of the Democratic Action party.
So while Mahathir might demonise Anwar in a mural at his party headquarters by showing him sneakily dipping his hand into a box marked "IMF first aid kit" while he fights the evil forces of western capitalism by rejecting International Monetary Fund assistance, the boot might well end up being on the other foot.
"It might not happen at the next general election [due in 2004] but it would be a brave man who says Anwar Ibrahim will never be prime minister," Lim Kit said.
