Gideon Polya, “Dr. Mahathir Slams West. Dr Mahathir slams Bush, Blair & Howard as war criminals”, MWC News, 28 June 2006.
Dr. Mahathir Slams West. Dr Mahathir slams Bush, Blair & Howard as war criminals
DR. MAHATHIR, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, is one of those rare political leaders with a Negative Body Count to his name. Under Dr Mahathir, Malaysia was peaceful and prosperous and became one of the most outstanding examples for the Developing World. Dr Mahathir is accordingly very well qualified to comment on world economics and world affairs and is surely an outstanding candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
A fundamental measure of social policy success is “avoidable mortality” (technically, “excess mortality”), which is defined as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics (see: here ). A further good measure is “under-5 infant mortality”, which for impoverished Third World countries is very roughly about 0.7 of the total “avoidable mortality” – this enabling ready estimation of “avoidable mortality” for such countries from infant mortality data provided by the UN Population Division and by UNICEF i.e. the information is only several clicks away for any interested humanitarian (see MWC News ).
The “annual avoidable mortality” (2003 figures) is zero (0) for the South East Asian countries of Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand but, with the exception of the Philippines, huge for the other South East Asian countries which have variously suffered from US occupation, US war or US-supplied militarism, namely (“2003 annual avoidable mortality”/2003 population): Cambodia (84,000/14 million), Indonesia (721,000/218 million), Laos (48,200/5.6 million), Myanmar (354,000/49 million), Timor Leste (7,200/0.8 million) and Vietnam (194,000/81 million) – this ratio is only 8,000/79 million for the Philippines, which secured its independence from the US 60 years ago in 1946.
The excellent zero annual “avoidable mortality” outcome for Malaysia after 2 decades of democratic rule by Dr Mahathir is confirmed by outstanding Malaysian “under-5 infant mortality” statistics. Thus the “annual under-5 infant death rate” is as follows for South East Asian countries (2003 figures; in ascending order of magnitude): 0.07% (Singapore; the best in the world), 0.13% (Brunei), 0.14% (Malaysia), 0.58% (Thailand), 0.71% (Vietnam), 0.73% (Philippines), 0.89% (Indonesia), 1.45% (Timor Leste), 2.26% (Laos), 2.61% (Myanmar) and 3.83% (Cambodia).
The above figures give a good indication of the horrendous long-term human cost of US militarism in South East Asia and underscore the immense humanitarian achievement of Dr Mahathir’s 22 years of sensible governance.
Dr Mahathir recently told a conference in Kuala Lumpur that: "The leaders of countries which wage war must be labelled war criminals. Will Bush, Blair, Howard, Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and others be arraigned before a war crimes tribunal?”
Subsequently interviewed by the Australian ABC TV Foreign Correspondent program, Dr Mahathir amplified these comments about the Coalition leaders: "They are responsible for killing people … They know exactly what they are doing. They know that when you drop a bomb, when you fire a rocket with a warhead, then you are killing people …Yes, Saddam is a dictator, he may have killed people but the numbers that he killed does not compare with the killings that are going on now.” (The Age, 28 June 2006 ).
Remarkably, Malaysia (arguably still a Developing Country) does better than the US (under Bush), the UK (under Blair), Australian aborigines (under Howard), Iraqis and Afghans (under the UK-US-led Coalition or NATO Occupiers), Haiti (under US occupation) or Palestinians (under Israeli occupation), as seen in the following "annual under-5 infant death rate" statistics (2003): 0.07% (Singapore), 0.1% (White Australia), 0.12% (Israel), 0.14% (Malaysia), 0.15% (UK), 0.17% (United States and Cuba), over 0.33% (Australian aborigines i.e. Indigenous Australians), 0.51% (Occupied Palestinian Territories), 2.7% (UK-US-Australia-Coalition-occupied Iraq and US-occupied Haiti), and 5.7% (UK-US-Australia-NATO-occupied Afghanistan).
The huge, disproportionate "annual under-5 infant death rates" in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories is appalling evidence of gross, war criminal violation of the Geneva Conventions by the Occupiers (variously the UK, US, Australia, Coalition countries, complicit NATO countries and Israel).
They are responsible for killing people … They know exactly what they are doing. They know that when you drop a bomb, when you fire a rocket with a warhead, then you are killing people …Yes, Saddam is a dictator, he may have killed people but the numbers that he killed does not compare with the killings that are going on now.
Dr. MAHATHIR, former Prime Minister of Malaysia
The Geneva Conventions unequivocally demand that Occupiers do everything in their power to preserve the health and life of their conquered Subjects (see: here ) but this is being grossly violated by the Occupiers of the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories where the post-invasion avoidable mortality presently totals 0.3, 0.5 and 1.8 million, respectively, and the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality totals 0.2, 0.4 and 1.4 million, respectively (see MWC News: and here ).
Dr Mahathir has been critical of Australia in the past (and vice versa). However the White Australian treatment of its Indigenous Australians (Aborigines) under Howard is utterly appalling and in gross violation of the Human Rights and Rights of the Child Conventions. The "annual death rate" is 2.2 % (Indigenous Australians; about 5 times greater than it should be given the high child proportion demographics), 2.4% (Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory), 0.7% (White Australians) and 2.5% (Australian sheep in paddocks on Australian sheep farms) (for documentation see MWC News ).
Dr Mahathir is quite correct in demanding war crimes trials for the Coalition leaders. Indeed his sensible, humane comments echo the similar demands of British Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter (see MWC News ) and outstanding Indian writer and human rights activist Arundhati Roy (see MWC News ) that the Coalition leaders face war crimes tribunals. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people faced with such horrendous abuses of humanity are obliged to (a) inform others and (b) behave ethically in all their personal and business dealings with grossly human rights-abusing countries such as Israel and those of the Bush US Alliance.