Inside the glass house:

10th October 1999

Mahathir takes on the West

By: Thalif Deen at the united nations

NEW YORK— Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamed, one of the world's most outspoken political leaders, is a newspaperman's dream— and a Western diplomat's nightmare.

Whenever he addresses the General Assembly or holds a press conference at the UN, he is so outrageously candid that most Third World journalists rarely miss his encounters or his verbal jousting.

However, the Western mainstream mostly Jewish-dominated newspapers, which he passionately attacks at every turn, scrupulously black him out— as they did the late Prime Minister S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike who rightly told a New York audience in the 1950s that Israel had no legitimate right to exist as a nation state.

In his address to the General Assembly last week, Mahathir was his usual self: he criticised the manipulation of the UN by Western powers, ridiculed their concern over child labour, sympathised with Eastern European nations for having been taken for a glorious ride by the West and declared that globalisation will eventually destroy markets.

Under globalisation, the West is looking, not for a level playing field, but a level killing field, he said, as fragile Third World economies are in danger of being destroyed by open markets, currency de-controls and unfettered privatisation.

No other world leader has had the courage to take on the West as Mahathir does. Although some of his critics say he oversteps his mark, in most instances Mahathir is dead on target. One of the reasons why Malaysia has not been silenced is that it does not depend on economic handouts or military grants either from the US or the West, although Western investors and currency manipulators nearly destroyed the onetime booming economy.

Unlike Malaysia, most Third World nations that depend on Western generosity are usually silenced into submission on some of the most politically sensitive issues at the UN.

The Malaysian prime minister said the UN is often bypassed by the big and the powerful as new groupings of powerful nations or even one nation by itself seems to decide when to step in and when to step out.

"While they like to wield power," he said, "they are inordinately unwilling to pay the price."

Mahathir said that high-tech weapons are being deployed in so-called "pinpoint bombings" in order to avoid body bags from coming home.

"The unwillingness to face the enemy often results in unnecessary killing of innocent people and destruction of wrong targets," he noted.

Mahathir was specifically referring to the incessant bombing of Kosovo by NATO forces and the continued shelling of Iraq by the US and Britain.

Unfortunately, he said, no one should expect any change for as long as the UN belongs to the veto-wielding Big Five — the US, Britain, France, China and Russia.

The only saving grace, he said, are the UN agencies who do good humanitarian work in the field.

He pointed out that small countries lack a public forum to air their views. A longtime advocate of a global Third World newspaper, Mahathir accused the Western media of distorting everything that small countries say or do.

Still, he said, Third World nations are expected to give immunity to Western journalists. "They may break our laws but no legal action may be taken against them.

I would like to point out that in Malaysia even the King and the hereditary Sultans are not above the law," he told the General Assembly.

Mahathir said he was mindful of the "touching concern on the part of the West over human rights," but when the West manipulates economic sanctions causing millions of people to suffer, their rights are not considered human.

When the Malaysian economy was shattered by currency manipulators, it resulted in the deprivation of the right to work for millions of people.

But Amnesty International had not uttered a single word about violation of human rights, he said. "What does the group say about the continuous bombing of Iraq where innocent people are being killed? Don't these people have the right to live?", he asked.

"If you don't like their leader, you take action against the leader, but why do you starve the people?," he asked. Mahathir also struck a note of sarcasm when he said that the West's concern over child labour and sweat shops is expressive of a sense of caring.

Unfortunately, he argued, the concern is shown only when the products of child labour and sweat shops compete successfully with the products of highly-paid, high-living, four-day week workers in industrial nations.

After a long traumatic experience, the Malaysian economy is now on the road to recovery. "With the blessings of Allah, we have now turned around," he added.