06/02/2007
Ovation for Fiery Mahathir's Claim West Worse than al-Qaeda
Tough stand: Participants and guests listening to Dr Mahathir
speaking at the conference in Kuala Lumpur
KUALA LUMPUR: About 2000 activists applauded as the leaders of the United
States, Britain and Australia were branded "fascist war criminals"
at a conference in Malaysia featuring gruesome exhibits of their alleged
crimes.
The former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad hosted the conference
and won applause yesterday for calling for the leaders to be tried by an
unofficial tribunal for war crimes in Iraq. He said the war had caused more
terror than al-Qaeda.
"We should not hang Blair if the tribunal finds him guilty, but he
should always carry the label 'War Criminal, Killer of Children, Liar',"
said Dr Mahathir in a speech illustrated by pictures of wounded children,
deformed babies and tortured men.
"And so should Bush and the pocket Bush of the Bushland of Australia,"
he said, referring to the Prime Minister, John Howard.
Dr Mahathir, whose own government was accused of human rights abuses
bordering on torture, has been leading a campaign to highlight what he calls
the human rights abuses and hypocrisy of US-led forces fighting for
democracy in the Middle East.
An exhibition accompanying the conference showed alleged war crimes by the
US.
Mahathir Mohamad today announced the creation of a war crimes tribunal
that would focus on victims of abuse in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian
territories.
He said the tribunal - and an investigating commission linked to it - was
necessary as an alternative to the International Criminal Court in The
Hague, which he accused of bias in its selection of cases to cover.
The court does not have government backing and Mahathir admitted he needed
money to set it up and that it would be hard to persuade heads of government
accused of wrongdoing to attend.
"There will be people who take this thing seriously," he said.
"This is not a show."
"The one punishment that most leaders are afraid of is to go down in
history with a certain label attached to them," he added at a press
conference.
"In history books they should be written down as war criminals and
this is the kind of punishment we can make to them."
"We cannot arrest them, we cannot detain them, and we cannot hang them
the way they hanged Saddam Hussein."
Mahathir, who played a high-profile role on the international stage before
stepping down in 2003, has seized on the issue of conflict in the Middle
East during his retirement.
He did not specify who would be targeted by the tribunal, but said it
would focus on abuses in Iraq, Palestinian territories and Lebanon -
indicating it was aimed at United States and Israeli military actions.
"We think that it is time we set up a body, a tribunal, which will
give an opportunity for these people to bring up their complaints to be
heard."
Mahathir also plans a war crimes commission which would first investigate
allegations of abuse. He will sit on its panel along with five Malaysian
legal experts, including one from the nation's hardline Islamic opposition
party.
The tribunal would be staffed by former judges and law professors from
home and abroad, including a Malaysian former chief justice, he said.
However he conceded it would be difficult to obtain the evidence needed to
conduct a thorough trial and that the proposal was short on funding.
"We are asking for donations from interested people," he said. "It's
not been easy."
Mahathir will next week host a war crimes conference attended by some 17
Palestinians, Iraqis and Lebanese who allege they are the victims of abuse
and torture.
The new commission will then begin investigating their cases. The tribunal
itself, provided its judges have been appointed, would operate as soon as
the inquiry panel has referred its first dossier upward.
Mahathir did not specify if the court would have a defence and
prosecution, saying the accused would be invited to send their
representative, but vowed it would not be like the "kangaroo court"
that tried Saddam. |
|