My speech

Famous for being an outspoken politician and a defender of ‘Asian values’, Tun Dr. Mahathir
Mohamad was the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia. He is known as Malaysia’s ‘Bapa
Pembangunan’ (Father of Development) or ‘Dr M’. Throughout the years in politics, he has
been labeled a visionary, dictator, modernizer and anti-Western.

Good afternoon everyone. I am very happy that you’ve come here today. Before anything else, I
would like to introduce myself. I am Mahathir Mohamad, known informally as Dr. M. I am a
Malaysian physician and politician who is the current Prime minister of Malaysia. I am 92 years
old but I’m still strong. I have always been an antagonist to the Westerner’s interests and later
you’ll know why.

As the chief architect of Asian values, it is my pleasure to discuss to you the concept and nature
of Asian values which are different from the Westerners’

First and foremost, the community comes always first. The needs of the individuals are
always outweighed by the importance given to the community. The individual exists in the
context of his family. He is not pristine and separate. The family is part of extended family, and
then friends and the wider society. This is in contrast with the individualistic character of
Westerners.

Moreover, I believe that whatever they do or say, they must keep in mind the interests
of others. It means that the individual tries to balance his interests with those of family and
society. The individual should realize that the interests of their nation or state are more
important than one’s private interests; considerations for the community should always take
priority over personal concerns.

Asians are supposed not to be selfish, and their behaviour is motivated by their
responsibilities and their duties and not by their rights as proposed by the West. The primacy of
the community is based on the idea that the state has the duty towards its people to establish
peace, to succeed economic development and deliver stability.

Asia needs a strong and stable government, prepared to make decisions in the best
interest of the nation. We, Asians also stress the value of unity and order because for me, too
much diversity is a threat to society; everyone should be a law-abiding citizen.

The family is also given a special place in the “Asian values” argument, both because it
provides the prime conceptual basis of a relational view of society, and because it is a natural
and self-sustaining mechanism for providing nurture, socialization and social services to the
population. It is within the family that children learn their role in the society. They get lessons
of hierarchy, and they learn to think of society as a vital unity that somehow rationalizes the
idea of communitarianism.

For all these reasons, family should be respected and especially the elderly. It is
Confucius who implies that people should sacrifice their interests in order to serve the elderly,
as the duty to our parents is the greatest duty of all. Besides, there is a law that enforces the
duty of sharing one’s property with his parents.

Asian values created a better society. High rates of crime, unemployment, divorce, drug
use and welfare dependency in Western societies are prevalent because Westerners were lazy,
selfish and greedy; and they sent their elderly to nursing homes and married several times.
Asians by contrast did not have so many problems because they cared for their grandparents,
shunned divorce, worked hard, saved their money and were devoted to their families.

Religion is a third value which continues to play an important role in everyday life
of Asians, despite the fact that there is a religious diversity with Buddhism, Christianity and
Islam to be the main religions. For me, the separation of state and church in the West led to
immoral phenomena and had negative effects for the individuals.

Values such as hard work, consensus and commitment to education are also strong
among Asians. Asians try their best to avoid overt conflict in social relations and political
struggle. Unanimity is better than majority rule, and Asian parents care their children’s
education. Moreover, Asians are said to be more industrious than Westerns; together with this
value is thrift and high savings.

Freedom of expression and the accountability of public officials are the only two values
common with West. We value freedom of expression, openness to new ideas and the
accountability of public officials. We do not express these values in terms of individual rights;
we give priority to order-supporting values whereas Americans privilege rights-related values.

Confucianism is further source of values which may not apply equally, if at all, in East
Asian context generally. Apart from being a religion, Confucianism is a philosophical thought,
most associated with Chinese societies. The need for social harmony, the respect for family, the
acceptance of hierarchy within the society, and the altruism of government are some of the
basic values of the Confucian tradition. And all of them lead to the acceptance of a state’s
authority that fights for the common good. Furthermore, there is also the economic value of
the Confucian values such as the hard work, the teamwork, the thrift, and the high standards
for education.
II-

In advocating ‘Asian values’, traditions are being invented in many new Asian nations to
support a paternalistic type of authority.

A nation is like a big family, the government is seen as the unchallengeable ‘father’ who is
obliged to exercise both the disciplinarian and custodial roles, and the society is deemed to be
the children who ought to obey the father in all circumstances

We introduce traditional patriarchal 'family values' into modern states in order to

strengthen our paternalistic rule and to guard against the influence of "Western hedonism".
Hence, state fatherhood legitimizes Asian governments to intervene into the daily affairs of
individuals and families such as their sexuality, marriage and reproductive rights by
implementing fertility control and gender policies in order to achieve national development.
This intrusion into civil society is justified by affirming the claim of 'Asian values' that social and
economic rights of the nation go before the individual rights.

Asian values’ are used to justify the governments’ restrictions upon the freedom of
press and media in China, Singapore and even in my country in Malaysia. As a parent-state, it
will do whatever it can to protect its ignorant children subject from the exposure of potentially
'harmful' materials presented by the media. And I don’t care if they criticize me for doing such
thing. I believe that media control is a necessary measure to maintain internal peace and
stability given that a proportion of our population is under-educated. Any conflicts with
national ideology can be sufficient ground for us government to withdraw a broadcast license.

III-

The most frequent criticism of Asian values is that they run contrary to the universality
of human rights. These human rights issues have come to international prominence in the post-
Cold war world when United States had enlarged its scope of democracy and the promotion of
human rights in its foreign policy. I am against this universalistic claim of human rights by the
West, because for me, rights are not universal and neither can they be globalized. They emerge
differently according to the context of particular social, economic, cultural and political
conditions.

There are three themes that highlight the supposed tension between Western and Asian
perspectives on human rights: universalism versus relativism; individualism versus
communitarianism; and, civil-political rights versus economic-social rights.

Universalism versus relativism. The first dichotomy between Western and Asian
perspectives on rights is the supposed divide over whether rights are universal or culturally
relative. One account views human rights as universally applicable to all human beings
indiscriminately. Universalists view rights as natural concepts held simply by virtue of being
human. According to this view, human rights apply to all human beings everywhere, no matter
which state or which culture one is from.

Cultural relativism emerged as a reaction to the universal rights model. Relativists

challenge the concept that rights are universal, arguing that rights are dependent on cultural
norms and that human rights are not universally valid because they are the product of Western
norms or that human rights need to be appropriate for, and accepted in, specific local contexts
in order to politically legitimate. The “Asian values” ideology is a main example of cultural
relativity. I viewed universal human rights as an alien imposition from the West, reflecting
specific Western values, and I argued for an approach based on “Asian values” instead.

Individualism versus communitarianism. The second theme that emerges from the
polemic between Western and non-Western human rights perspectives engages with the idea
of individualism versus communitarianism. The supposed contrast between Western and Asian
models of human rights lies in the perceived priority of the Western approach on an individual’s
rights against society; by contrast, the Asian approach emphasizes socio-political stability and
duties over the rights of the individual. “Asia has never valued the individual over society. The
society has always been more important than the individual.”

Economic priority and “Asian values”. The emergence of the “Asian values” paradigm is
closely linked to the economic success of Southeast Asia in the 1990s before the 1997 Asian
financial crisis. The main thrust of the economic priority argument is that economic
development must be given precedence over civil and political rights.

We cannot afford the “luxury” of civil and political rights which developed countries can
because of their economic prosperity. Economic development our main priority, and that
strong authoritarian governance is needed in order to steer our country in this direction.

This debate is frequently framed as a tension between economic and social rights versus
civil and political rights, with Asian states prioritising the former and Western states prioritising
the latter.

My position on human rights, which in essence is the rejection of the universality of

human rights imposed by the West was guided by the basic Asian values. The rejection is based
on the argument that human rights are derived from the historical experiences of Western
countries which cannot be equated or compared to the Asian experiences. Thus, imposing the
dissemination of human rights idea to the non-Western cultures is an injustice measure.
 I believe that the West has hidden agenda when it introduces universalist idea such as
human rights, that is to create disorder and impede the advancement of Asian states in
international sphere for the sake of the continuation of Western hegemony.

Westerners, generally cannot rid themselves of this sense of superiority.

They still consider their values and political and economic systems better than any
others. It would not be so bad if it stopped at that; it seems, however, that they will not be
satisfied until they have forced other countries to adopt their ways as well. Everyone must be
democratic, but only according to the Western concept of democracy; no one can violate human
rights, again according to their self-righteous interpretation of human rights. Westerners cannot
seem to understand diversity, or that even in their own civilization values differed over time.