Coming up: Interview Tun Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925), former prime minister Malaysia
Dr. Tun Mahathir bin Mohamad is the fourth and seventh prime minister of Malaysia. He ruled for a total of twenty-four years, making him the country’s longest-serving prime minister. He was also the world’s oldest prime minister when he took office for the second time in 2018 at the age of 92.
In the West, he is seen as controversial for his critical stance regarding neo-colonial policies. In 2019, for example, he was denounced in the Dutch press for his criticism of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that is investigating the downing of the MH17. According to Mahathir, the case was politically used to blame Russia.
Less well known is that he was also the initiator of The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in 2005. It was a response to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq two years earlier, and the failure of the international institutions to bring this crime to justice. Under his leadership, an international team of judges and lawyers was assembled who based the proceedings on the guidelines of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Eventually, George Bush and Tony Blair were convicted in absentia in 2011. This was followed in 2013 by a verdict against the State of Israel and Amos Yaron for crimes against humanity committed in September 1982 in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in the Israeli-occupied territories of Lebanon. The tribunal went much further than condemning human rights violations within the context of war, but it criminalized the conduct of war as a political tool.
Media Mondo interviews the now 99-year-old Mahathir in his office at the headquarters of the Perdana Leadership Foundation, in Putrajaya, the government city south of Kuala Lumpur. We discussed how hundreds of years of European colonization (Portuguese, Dutch and British colonialism) shaped his country and continues to leave traces. For Malaysia, the colonization began with the Portuguese capture of the port city of Malaka (also known as Malacca), a strategic trading post. From the 19th century, with the arrival of the British, more and more land was confiscated. Unlike Indonesia, Malaysia was not colonized because of the amount of raw materials, the land was mainly used for establishing rubber plantations. The British occupation also determined the inter-racial relations between the original population and people of Chinese, Arab and Indian descent. In 1970 Mahathir wrote the book The Malaysian Dilemma in which he expressed his views on the racial and economic problems that his country faced.