Tricia Yeoh: Egalitaria - Freedom to offend

Excerpt:

"THERE are many ways to think about freedom. If you live with your parents and your parents impose a curfew on you to come home by midnight, you might say that you are not free to do as you wish. That may be true. But that is not the same thing as defining the freedom of a country or a particular system.

Let me put it another way. The state or the government plays an important role of facilitating things like healthcare, education, defence and foreign affairs. But the question is when the government takes on the role of making decisions on behalf of us as individual citizens that the state of our personal freedom comes into question. To quote from Hayek, "The more the state plans, the more difficult it becomes for individuals to plan".

Of course there are many indicators that show where we stand as a nation internationally. Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2016 report shows that Malaysia is "partly free". Our press freedom status is considered "not free", and net freedom is "partly free". We perform particularly poorly in the areas of political rights (18/40), civil liberties (27/60), and Freedom on the Internet (43/100). The Economist's EIU Democracy Index classifies Malaysia as a flawed democracy, ranked 68th place amongst 167 countries. Finally, Amnesty International's report stated that in 2015 alone, 91 instances of the Sedition Act was used to arrest, investigate or charge individuals. That is nearly five times as many as the first 50 years of the Act's existence.

So by international standards, we know we're not quite hitting the mark. But critics will turn around and tell you that Malaysia is unique in its multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural society. That we have our own way of doing things and cannot be compared with the rest of the world. "Itu bukan budaya kita" is what you hear a lot of the time especially when advocates of human rights and liberty confront conservative views.

The real question we are confronted with when living in Malaysia is balancing freedoms with communitarian values.

Malaysia has the highest scores in the world in the Power Distance Index, according to a study cited by the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre's Asian Leadership Index 2014. The power distance measures the extent to which the less powerful members of organisations and institutions such as the family accept and expect power to be distributed unequally. Countries' high power distance may observe traits such as those in authority openly demonstrating their rank, politics being prone to totalitarianism and class divisions within society being accepted. Based on the study, society's power inequality in Malaysia is endorsed by followers as much as its leaders.

Malaysians are highly intolerant when this delicate balance is tipped over, preferring not to rock the boat. A recent example is when nine Australian men were charged for public nuisance when they stripped down to reveal underwear with the Malaysian flag design. Or the four tourists who stripped naked on Mount Kinabalu. Malaysians responded harshly by saying they are disrespectful to local morals and customs. Public morality is held in high regard here.

Contrast this to how Malaysians responded when our foreign diplomat was charged with burglary and assault with intent to rape after following a 21-year-old woman to her home, or when a Malaysian student was sentenced to jail in the UK for possessing over 30,000 images and videos of child pornography. These were actual serious crimes, and yet there were Malaysians who felt sorry for them, saying we should bring them back and pardon them. The Malaysian High Commission originally sought diplomatic immunity for Rizal – and Mara initially supported their scholar to give him a chance because he was a "smart student". Where was our public morality then?"

Rest of article: http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2001171

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