Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak out tonight on behalf of fellow democrats around Asia who are flabbergasted at events unfolding in Kuala Lumpur. I refer to the trial which began yesterday of the Malaysian opposition leader Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim. For the second time, the leader of the Malaysian opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, is on trial for what is called in ancient, grating English ‘sodomy’. For the second time, the Malaysian legal system is being manipulated by supporters of the incumbent government to drive Malaysia’s best-known leader out of national politics. For the second time, documents are being forged, witnesses are being coerced and evidence is being fabricated.

This trial, like the first trial of Anwar Ibrahim, is a disgrace to Malaysia—a country that aspires to democratic norms where parties change power peacefully and political opponents are not persecuted by organs of the state. Perverting the legal system for political ends by charging Anwar with sexual offences is an affront to human rights. In the first place, the offences with which Anwar has been charged should not be on the statute book. Australia abolished laws punishing consenting adults decades ago. It is long past time that Malaysia also repealed these laws, which many Malaysians have reminded me are a vestige of British colonialism. If these laws did not exist, they could not be used for political purposes as we are currently seeing.

19:37:03 In the second place, everyone in Malaysia and everyone in the international legal community knows that Anwar is innocent of these charges. This week the Wall Street Journal published a devastating firsthand account of how the Malaysian Special Branch fabricated charges that led to Anwar’s first trial in 1998. Munawar Anees recalled movingly how he had been starved and beaten into signing a false confession to implicate Anwar. Now it is happening again. These are the lengths to which elements in the Malaysian ruling party are willing to frame Anwar and remove his threat to power.

Malaysia is a long-time friend and ally of Australia. Over the past 40 years Malaysia has become an increasingly prosperous and successful multicultural society. We continue our friendly and mutually beneficial relationship with Malaysia, which has deep economic, strategic and cultural ties with our country. Malaysia is also a country of 28 million people who have lived ever since their independence, more than 50 years ago, under the rule of the one party, the United Malays National Organisation—UMNO. UMNO has stayed in power by playing on the Malay fears of Chinese and Indian minorities. So long as Malaysian politics are polarised, even subtlety, by racial fears, and so long as Malays voted loyally for UMNO, then the self-perpetuating UMNO oligarchy was able to grow rich through long years of power and through their cosy links between business that would keep them all safe.

That is why Anwar Ibrahim is such a threat to them. For the first time, Malaysia has a charismatic Malay opposition leader who is able to appeal to Malay voters and to minorities, such as the Chinese, Indians and Christians within Malaysia. He poses a real threat to UMNO’s hold on power. At the 2008 election, Anwar’s People’s Justice Party and its allies won 60 seats from UMNO and its allies, creating a viable two-party system for the first time by denying the ruling party an automatic majority in parliament. As a result, Abdullah Badawi was deposed as Prime Minister and replaced by Najib Razak, but the threat from Anwar’s coalition continues to grow for them.

I recently had the privilege of meeting Anwar Ibrahim when he was in Melbourne for the Parliament of the World’s Religions in December. I have met him many times before, as have many Australian leaders. He is an intelligent, articulate and passionate democrat. He is committed to a thorough reform of the Malaysian government, to ridding it of cronyism, corruption and authoritarian tendencies. He is a great, although not uncritical, friend of Australia. If he were to become Malaysia’s Prime Minister, our relationship with Malaysia would become even stronger.

There are claims that Anwar Ibrahim’s chief accuser met with the wife of the Prime Minister of Malaysia just before this person went to the police with his charges. Under all systems of ethics, those who bear false witness are regarded with great contempt. I hope Prime Minister Najib and his ministers are not involved; they have been subpoenaed. The best way for them to prove that they are not involved is to intervene and see these disgraceful charges withdrawn. Malaysia is a great country and an emerging power in our region. It can do without the embarrassment that these disgraceful proceedings have caused that country, undermining its newly won democratic credibility. I call on the government of Malaysia and appeal to the Malaysian High Commissioner here in Australia to free Anwar Ibrahim and to drop these charges against him.