If Human Rights are akin to Communism, is Perkasa akin to Nazism?

While the world moves forward, establishing better living standards and fortifying the rights of individuals across the globe, in Malaysia the defence of Human Rights is scorned as a religion that will endanger Malaysia’s social contract. Atrocious as it seems, but this appears to be the line of thought subscribed to by Perkasa and its supporters.

In his opening speech at Perkasa’s general assembly, former police chief Abdul Rahim Noor warned that civil liberty activists here considered the US and UK as their spiritual home, and drew parallels as to how the Comintern had engineered the global spread of communism from its Moscow base.

Obviously, the former IGP was trying his very best to engineer a state of panic and fear among the Perkasa members. Fear that their standings as Malays in Malaysia would be threatened by Human Rights practitioners.

The birthplace of human rights is in our hearts

Unfortunately, the former IGP is totally ignorant about history and the struggle of man seeking to create a civil and just society. For Perkasa members to gauge if human rights are good or bad for humankind, all they have to do is to answer the following questions.

If Perkasa rejected human rights, does this mean that it supports slavery especially of the kind we see in Africa involving children? Does Perkasa subscribe to the thought that women should remain indoors and out of sight as practiced in some Middle-Eastern countries? Does Perkasa support ethnic cleansing? Does Perkasa support the segregation of a nation based on racial demographics?

Perkasa and Rahim Noor are wrong if they think that the US and UK are the spiritual home of activists. The birthplace for the greatest human rights is within the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens. It is only natural that every individual on this planet wishes for fairness and justice. This is a natural instinct and precedes the invention of governmental methodologies like democracy, communism or socialism.

In fact, the ethos of Human Rights is what gave rise to the system of government that we now call democracy. The right to vote, the right to representation in Parliament, the right to govern, the right to voice one’s opinions are all cornerstones of democracy and constitute the basic tenets of human rights.

How can Rahim Noor and Perkasa believe other-wise? To contend that human rights threaten the social contract in Malaysia? In fact, it is people like Rahim Noor and Perkasa who threaten the social contract by believing that one ethnic group is superior over others.

Superior race

In truth, Perkasa is closer to the stance taken by the Nazi party of the past, which believed in the existence of a superior race. This in turn gave them the right to exterminate other races deemed “unworthy”. Whenever a race thinks of itself as superior, there will always be an element of extermination in order to maintain the balance of power in favor of the so-called superior race.

This is the stance of Perkasa. By belittling Human Rights, Perkasa is saying that they and they alone have the right to determine what and how ethnic groups co-exist in Malaysia. And this is really the game Perkasa is playing. It has no intention of uplifting the Malays, Perkasa has no intention of seeing the betterment of social unity in Malaysia.

Perkasa is never going to be anything more than a disgruntled bully who seeks attention; a reflection of the men who conceptualized it - Ibrahim Ali and Mahathir Mohamad. And this is why, Malaysia does not need entities like Perkasa running amok.

Malaysia Chronicle