MALAYSIA has held on to the ideals of its former colonisers, which say that some races and religions are superior to others, Marina Mahathir said today.

The prominent human rights campaigner said such a concept of a hierarchy of human beings is the reason why abuse and violence continue to be perpetrated against women, children, sexual minorities and different Muslim groups in the country.

“Today, in our own country, the concept of a hierarchy of human beings still prevails. Some humans are superior to others by no other virtue other than their race, religion or gender.

“There are people who even consider sexual diversity irrelevant. To classify a section of humanity, even if small, as irrelevant is a living example of the type of thinking that once considered some human beings as rats and cockroaches,” said Marina in her keynote speech at Suhakam’s 20th anniversary and World Human Rights Day today.

Marina said Malaysia is holding on to these outdated concepts of human rights at a time when its former coloniser, the United Kingdom, is going in the opposite direction by embracing diversity and giving rights to minorities.

“If we care to be honest, we would admit we have not escaped the colonial mindset that insisted on categorising some people as superior to others, masculine being always above the feminine.

“We are sticking to pre-Victorian and Victorian era norms, believing that these rules are not only wholly ours, (that) they have divine origins.”

She added that in Malaysian society, the ideology of equal rights for all citizens is still difficult for many to accept.

“In Malaysia, we live in an era where ever-thinner slices of citizens are granted full rights while all the rest are left to fend for themselves.

“Despite the diversity of the Muslim world, we only accept one narrowly defined community as true and faithful. The rest, we hound and harass and deny them the freedom to believe, even when they pose no threat to us,” Marina added. – December 10, 2019.