Gov't ignores Bersih 3.0 in report to UN rights council

The government does not make any mention of the infamous Bersih 3.0 rally or the incidents of violence, including attacks on participants and journalists that took place during the rally, in its human rights report to the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (HRC).

In its 21-page report submitted to the UN in July, ahead of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Malaysia in Geneva this Saturday, the government presented a rather clean image about the country's human rights issues.

Despite mentioning the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) inquiry into the violence that took place during Bersih, the government left out Suhakam’s findings and also the background behind the inquiry.

Malaysia will face peer nations in front of the HRC on Saturday, under the UPR that takes place once every four-and-a-half years.

The Coalition of Malaysian NGOs for the UPR process (Comango) has called the government's report akin to a "policy paper".

'A re-hash of old policies'

Comango pointed out that the government was merely re-hashing old policies and stating things it has done since the last periodic review in 2009 to try and address the problems that have been raised for Malaysia as far as human rights are concerned.

However, it said, the government in its report gave little or no statistics on the success and effectiveness of the programmes it had implemented.

"This is not how a UN report should be written. It should be more specific, with examples and details. This is very general," Comango's spokesperson Honey Tan Lay Ean told a media briefing this morning.

Meanwhile, the Bar Council's Human Rights Committee co-chairperson Andrew Khoo said after looking at the government report that "a university essay will have more footnotes".

The 21-page report only has 18 footnotes, or references, listed in its final page.

"That's like almost one footnote a page. If you write a university essay, you would probably fail if you had that few footnotes," Khoo added.