The cherry on a pile of BS: Noynoy Aquino comfy in bed with the Malaysian police state

March 8, 2013

by benign0

What is the government of Philippine President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III doing in bed with a police state like Malaysia to begin with? This is, after all, a regime that is the antithesis of every piece of the Philippines’ Aquino-Cojuangco feudal clan’s Yellowist rhetoric. President BS Aquino ascended to power on the back of talk and symbolism that advocates the supremacy of the “people’s will”, some sort of “fight” for “reform”, an upholding of aright to expression and self-determination, and — get this — transparency as key to all that.

Malaysia is all about everything that is anythig but.

Malaysians like it rough.

Malaysia under the regime of its Prime Minister Najib Razak is known for its appalling record of human rights abuse. Back in 2011, an Amnesty International report cited the way Malaysian police allegedly used excessive force to quell a peaceful protest rally organised to demand electoral reform.

Police arrested peaceful demonstrators, fired teargas canisters directly at protesters, and teargassed a hospital compound on 9 July, in attempts to stop the electoral reform rally known as Bersih 2.0 from gathering in a stadium.

One protester, 56-year-old Baharuddin Ahmad, collapsed near the landmark Petronas Towers while fleeing teargas, and was pronounced dead later in hospital.

“Prime Minister Najib’s government rode roughshod over thousands of Malaysians exercising their right to peaceful protest,” said Donna Guest, deputy Asia-Pacific director at Amnesty International.

“This violent repression by the Royal Malaysian Police flies in the face of international human rights standards, and cannot be allowed to continue. Any future peaceful demonstrations should be permitted and respected by the authorities.”

More recently, a Human Rights Watch report describes how the human rights record of Malaysia has in the last several years remained unprogressive and may have even regressed despite token gestures on the part of its government to institute “reforms”. Notable of all is the approach its police force takes to maintain peace…

Malaysian police appear to routinely violate the rights of persons in custody, Human Rights Watch said. Police personnel have employed unnecessary or excessive force during demonstrations, while carrying out arrests, and in police lockups. Deaths in custody, routinely attributed to disease, go uninvestigated, suspects are beaten to coerce confessions, and criminal suspects die in suspicious circumstances during apprehension by police. Alleged police abuses go uninvestigated.

Malaysian immigration law still does not recognize refugees and asylum seekers, and prohibits them from working and their children from going to school. Unauthorized migrants face arrest and detention in unsanitary and overcrowded immigration detention centers, and caning for violating the immigration law. Anti-trafficking efforts conflate human trafficking with people smuggling, and punishes rather than protects trafficking victims by holding them in inadequate, locked shelters that resemble detention centers rather than care facilities. The government continues to do little to protect migrant domestic workers from beatings and sexual abuse by their employers.

Indeed, take stock of how well President BS Aquino remained consistent with his own propaganda, and you will find that the Yellow One has spent the last three years living up to his name’s now-iconic two-letter acronym. His collusion with the Malaysian police state against his own people in a blatant contradiction of everything his so-called campaign platform stood for tops the hump year of his six-year term as “president” of this sad modern-day by-product of Spanish imperialism. The only aspect that one might consider consistent in the conduct of the Second Aquino Administration is how yellowthey now come across — not in the sense of how the colour symbolises the Pinoy “Fight” but in the sense of how the rest of the world really thinks of what it means to be yellow.

It is hardly surprising now that even his closest cohorts — the men and women he is trying to infest the Senate with in the coming May elections, and the Media lapdogs whose loyalties his Uncle Peping likely spent a lot of money cultivating now struggle to themselves remain consistent with all the BS. There is, after all, only so much BS one can take — and dish out.

[Photo courtesy Herald Sun.]