Aathi Shankar | Saturday, August 20, 2022
KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian-based international humanitarian group wants the federal government to introduce human rights education at school and tertiary levels.
The Malaysian International Humanitarian Welfare Foundation (MIHWF) founding president Datuk M. Devman Segar said that the syllabus would be imperative to educate future Malaysian generation to appreciate, value and advocate human rights without racial, religious, cultural and political biasness and prejudice.
Although many Malaysians were well aware of human rights, he said they still have tendency to voice out against human rights abuses along racial, religious, cultural and political lines.
“Malaysians advocacy of human rights remains bias and prejudice.”
“Hence importance of human rights education from young at both school and tertiary levels,” said Devman.
“The minds of the future generation must be drilled with the right knowledge to appreciate, value and cherish human rights for all, not just one particular ethnic, religion, cutlural and political group.”
If Malaysians were enriched with human rights knowledge and values, he said they would voice out against any human rights abuse, especially when the liberty of a man being compromised in a court of law to suit a political agenda.
Devman said Malaysians, for instance, tend to fight for rights of a particular political leader when the justice was not seen to be done while ignoring or even gloating over the plight of another just because the victim was from the other side of the political divide.
“Such human rights advocacy is deplorable. Every person is equal before the law. Every person must be given adequate and sufficient opportunities to clear his or her name in the court of law.”
“Malaysians should fully comprehend this principle,” said Devman.
He said that Malaysians’ human rights prophecies also very much evolved around their own respective race, religion and culture.
Currently, he said Malaysians would ignore and even dismissed human rights controversies if the issues didn’t involve their own race or religion.
He said the responsibility was not just on the government but the whole society to educate Malaysians to protect, fight and care for human rights of all people, including that of foreigners in the country.
“First and foremost, all of us are humans who have the equal right to live and die with dignity and pride. No one has the right to abuse others’ rights.”
“We all have the citizenry duty to defend rights of all humans in the country.”
“Only when Malaysians appreciate and value the rights of all humans, we can call ourselves a developed civil society.”
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