Caught this very interesting snippet from The Sun today.
"Kartika is a first-time offender, did not cause harm to others, and has conveyed remorse for her actions, said the Women's Candidacy Initiative (WCI), calling for Pakatan Rakyat coalition parties to support human rights by repealing such severe forms of punishment."Will Pakatan Rakyat (PR) do anything about this? I'm betting it won't, Human Rights be damned.
Its easy to cherry pick the human rights violations you want to disagree with when you're in the Opposition. Right to assembly? Right to free speech? No problem, PR will stand up for those rights all day long. Organize massive street demonstrations, shout about them at the top of our lungs in Parliament.
But the right against torture and degrading treatment (Article 5 of the UNDHR), nah we'll skip that one. Not a word, a whisper, a peep. Shush everyone! Don't want to offend our Al-Quran thumping partners, the guaranteed-to-Heaven, PAS. We don't want to seem un-Islamic, now do we.
Come on, PR. Prove me wrong. I dare you. Where is your moral authority now?
Politics is always hypocritical. But here's a few points for you to ponder:
1) The powers and punishment that can be prescribed by the Shariah Courts (including caning) is prescribed by a Federal law...yup that's your buddies in BN
2)I am not convinced that caning administered by Shariah Courts will be in violation of Article 5 of UNDHR. YOu have to do more than just cite the article...show the nexus
3)What is your take on the much more brutal caning that is administered in other criminal cases under the Penal Code under BN's legislative power. Should we repeal them too? Why has BN kept them for so long?...two can play this game of proving inconsistencies.
1. A bad law is a bad law. Corporal punishment doesn't work. Neither does it deter, nor does it necessarily create remorse. The crime hurt no one (arguably, in this case), therefore, the punishment serves no retribution.
And 6 lashes for a beer? seems that justice is not served as the punishment is too harsh.
2. I've seen pictures of the marks left behind from prison canings (during those wonderful campaigns the Gov bombard us with when we're young to ward us off drugs). Those marks are permanent.
If the Shariah prescribed lashing are anything like that, then the permanent shame carried by the scars necessarily violates Article 5 on the grounds that it humiliates the recipient, for life.
Take a beer and be scarred for life?
Even if the lashing Shariah style =/= caning for common law crimes, the humiliation the subject undergoes is arguably permanently damaging from a psychological perspective.
3. My point was: PR claims that laws such as the ISA, etc are bad and they use the UNDHR as their fulcrum of debate. I'm arguing that you can't cherry pick the UNDHR for articles that support your cause and ignore the rest. If you're going to fight for human rights and use the UNDHR as a beat stick against the Government, you got to support it in its entirety or none at all.