Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Comparative on Right to Religion
on Cambodia and Malaysia


Name: TES Loudeth
ID : 0576
Date : September 3, 2007
Submit to Prof. Stan Staryging

Outline:
- Cambodia
- Malaysia
- Conclusion


Abstract:
As we have known that Cambodian is the Buddhism, according to the Constitution people have the right to belief whatever religion people believe. In this essay we will take a look on Cambodia and Malaysia country. We will tell you and let you compare by your own self about how different Cambodia and Malaysia in the way they practice in Human Right. Cambodia is a small country in Southeast Asia and Malaysia also. However Cambodia is just a poor development country but how they practice their religion is in peacefully, it’s contrast to Malaysia that is kind of more developed than Cambodia but it’s seems different how they practice their Human Rights. This is could be because Cambodia put Buddhism is a national religion even in national motto, which is the religion that teaching people in a peaceful, no violation way. But Malaysia has put Muslim religion as Federal religion to be official, which is the religion that easy to entry but it is difficult to get out.
That is why Malaysian has a problem on religion like the Lina Joy’s case who has wanted to change her religion from Muslim to Christian follower her boyfriend. She were file complaints three times: 1)- Her application for name change was rejected by National Registration Department (NRD) without any reason being given on 11 August, 1997. 2)- She made a second application for name change but this time to Lina Joy on 15 March, 1999. 3)- On 25 October, 1999 she was asked to applied for a new replacement of identity card.
So this case got it own popular mean and every body start to question whether this is the right decision for Malaysian?.


Comparative on Right to Religion
on Cambodia and Malaysia


Cambodia and Malaysia’s are located in Southeast Asia countries. However these two countries are in the same area of the world, they may have the same common sense about culture (Not very much but at least a little bit). The way they treat people or the way they practice something are almost the same, for example religion. Common religions those countries in Southeast Asia are Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian.

Cambodia:
About 90% people are Buddhism[1] because they think that Buddhism teaches people to avoid domestic violence, do not look down the poor people and should live depend on their self without interfered any body.

Cambodia constitution in art 43 stated: “Khmer citizens of either sex shall have the right to freedom of belief. Freedom of religious belief and worship shall be guaranteed by the State on the condition that such freedom does not affect other religious beliefs or violate public order and security.” This is mean that people from everywhere in Cambodia has their own right and decision to choose whether which religion that fit them most, and they has free right to change their religion without any problem or punishment. This article also stated that Buddhism is a national religion. Also in the national’s motto stated started with the word
“Nation, Religion and King” this is to show that in the society the people should think about those these things.

However that Buddhism religion always go first, but people who are the followers of other religion still didn’t have any action to against Buddhist people or Buddhist people rarely having problem with the other follower religion even the discriminations.

At the same time Art 31 of Cambodia also stated Cambodia constitutional recognize and follow the Universal of Declaration Human Right of United Nation and all the covenants that related to all Human Rights. In UDHR and ICCPR in the same art stated that[2] “Everyone (shall) has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right (shall) includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” Cambodia does respect human right. In constitution of Cambodia they stated everything that people have to follow and respect human right and nobody can against it. For example, every Buddhism holidays like Meak Bochea, Visak Bochea, all people have set it in the calendar to be a public holiday, this mean that they recognize the religion as the National religion.
But we have a real different case in Svay Rieng that happened last year, people who are Buddhism got angry with the Christian people because there has no raining for them to grow the rice and they were convince their religion to people, so they were hit the church. After the church were destroyed the rain coming. So in this case it can make people more proud with their Buddhism. And they think that because of the church it does not rain.
People in that case, they didn’t really actually follow the real Buddhism. Buddhism never taught people that when there was no rain for growing rice, this is because of somebody else. The way they practice Buddhism is mixed with Hinduism. So it’s different and people don’t understand it. This case is rarely happen. Not many cases like this happen very often.

MALAYSIA:

As for Malaysia country, most of the people 60% of Malaysia’s 26 million people are Malay Muslims[3] and only Muslim Religion is the religion of Federation. But they set many places for all everyone to learn about Buddhist religion and make it easy for anyone who want to study about it can find any information that they want easily because there are 350 Buddhist Organization throughout the country .

In Malaysia, there are 4 major religions. There Muslim, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christian[4]. Malaysians are defining as a Muslim people. Muslim religion is a federal religion according to art 3 of Malaysia Constitution.
This is because Muslim is the federal religion that’s why seems that they give the priority to Muslim religion. For example, Lina Joy’s case is the popular case about a woman who wanted to change her name and her religion from Muslim to Christian[5]. In 1997, she filed a complaint to change her name but it was rejected by NRD without any reason. In 1999, she filed complaint again for name change. Finally she got her name changed but she can’t get her Religion change. In 2001, High court of Malaysia ruled that if Muslim people wanted to changer her religion, then the Syariah Court is the one who decide that.

Malaysia is not respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Malaysia is one of the UN members, so Malaysia must has to follow the Human Rights. In constitution of Malaysia did state that “Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation.” The decision violates the International law and disobedience the Universal Human Right to religious freedom. International law and the Malaysian Constitution guarantee the right to choose your own religious beliefs and change those beliefs according to your conscience. After the decision, Malaysia makes it clear that people who born to be Muslim is exception. They allow other people who weren’t born in Muslim to practice and believe whatever religion they want, ut they didn’t allow all the Muslim people to change their belief to another religion.

The fundamental rights are never absolute. They have to be balanced against others’ rights and subject to a few compelling limitations. For example, one can not claim the right of free speech to smear other person’s good reputation or to shout “Fire” in a crowded cinema. But Lina Joy has married a Christian guy, she absolutely want to convert her religion like her husband. She just doesn’t want to be Muslim. Because her kids must be designated as a Muslim or the kids must be taken away from them because they can’t be raised in Muslim.
But in my opinion, the majority on the Malaysian court was too quick to rely on such a rationalization. They didn't ask themselves what other rights were being balanced against, for example; they should also have looked harder at the practicalities of sending Lina Joy to the Syariah courts. Would she get a fair hearing? Should she have a sensible chance of success it?
The court ruled that the decision that whether someone is a Muslim or not is the jurisdiction of Syariah courts, not the secular courts. But it’s the role of secular courts to enforce the constitution. So, in the problem of freedom of religion, who is responsible to enforce that?
Without freedom of give up the religion then it would be no freedom in religion. This may be seen to some Malaysia people that “No duress” but it actually means no freedom to change religion. You can't make anyone stay on something they have other ideas on even if they were born into it. You just can't do such a thing. Religion has and will always be between you and whatever form of God you worship. To force someone to believe one religion when they already have something to believe in is like mental rape.
Just because you’re born into that religion, it doesn’t mean that you’re very into it. Lina Joy wanted to change her religion may be she thinks it’s fun and it’s more trustful, so we just can’t force her to believe in anything.

Conclusion:
So after we have researched this topic we can see that even in the constitution stated that we should respect human rights but in the real practice it may not a 100% perfect like in the book like in Cambodia. But in Malaysia government should provide the justice to their people even they are not Muslim religion or they will have a problem like in Thailand, fighting between Muslim and Buddhism because of the religion discriminating.

[1] http://countrystudies.us/cambodia/48.htm
[2] Stan Starygin , Human Rights and World Politics, UDHR, Article 18, p 160
[3] Stan Starygin , Human Rights and World Politics, UDHR, p 281
[4] [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
[5] Stan Starygin , Human Rights and World Politics, (Lina Joy’s Case)

10 comments:

Blog.Ponnarith said...

Even your writing of some parts of paragraph is wrong grammar and trouble to make assumsion, but your expression of your own opinion is very good. Anyway, your abstract should be narrowed and spesific directly to the topic. And between your footnote and references, it should be separated and more detail especially with the author name and publish year. Thanks!

DETH said...

Hi Ponnarith,

Thank you very much for your comments. I accepted whatever you have mention but just to direct you to look at the differences between Cambodia and Malaysia in the way they practice religion. Even Cambodia just developed and a small country but it never have a conflict on religion. And it has more respected on religion according to the Constion and its also mentioned in national motto " Nation, Religion and King". And it never purnished or sentense somebody to be a bad person in believe in religion. Cambodia constitution in art 43 stated: �Khmer citizens of either sex shall have the right to freedom of belief. Freedom of religious belief and worship shall be guaranteed by the State on the condition that such freedom does not affect other religious beliefs or violate public order and security.�

By the way, in Malaysia, Lina Joy's Case, it is very stricted for their people to choose the religion such as to change her origional religion to a new one. So it is sound very discriminated religion in Malaysia.
Its can make thier people to scar to change the religion because they think that it is too complicated to change even religion.

So this is my understanding if you want to add or any comments please your comments are welcome.

Anyway, my text is has only footnote, so if my mistack on it please you shoucl tell me how to write it, and I will fix it again.

Thank you again for your interesting on my topic.

Best regards,

DETH

Blog.Ponnarith said...

Ok, your feetback is so clear now, anyway, you should aske prof. what happen when one particular country does not obey the international law? Thank!

Blog.Ponnarith said...

Ok, your feetback is so clear now, anyway, you should aske prof. what happen when one particular country does not obey the international law? Thank!

sithanay said...

Hi,Deth
That is my small concept in your Topic.
i'm agree with argument that in Malaysian country, government repect human rights. In Asian, countries especaially in ASEAN countries. If we commpare the situation in Cambodia to other countries as Malaysia we see that other rights as right to employment, we see that Malaysian people are better than Cambodian, but if we compare the right to practice religion in of changing of religion to another, we see that the right of religion in Cambodia is better than Malaysia. Eventhough, changing or adopting a new religion is stated in the Constitution, but in the practice, no one is not punished because of religion changing. However, I recognised the economic deveopment, and human rights of Malaysia,but denied some part of it beside of it. Accrding some inviews of the woman Cambodian workers who had employmen in Malaysia, I think that mostly huam rights are abused. However, Malaysian government did not ratify the UDHR and ICCPR, but according them, Human Rights is universal so Malaysian repect the rights of their own people but do not any other means that it not human rights and that is the discrimination.There fore,my concept is still in the same way that freedom of religion means that we can choose any religion and can change from one to another but when freedom to choose or quit are prohibited means that not freedom of religion. That menas that freedom of religion is limited. If we see the priciple of democarcy the human rights and freedom of speech is the main.Religion is a choice of human to practice but if freedom to choose is banned. In short, freedom of religion are narrow in Malaysian.

Stan Starygin said...

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Stan Starygin said...

Review:

Deth,

This topic is a good follow-up to our in-class and online discussion of the Lina Joy case. There are some questionable assertions you had made, though. One, I don't believe that Cambodians believe in Buddhism because "it teaches how to avoid domestic violence". To the best of my knowledge there is nothing in the Buddhist doctrine that in any way relates to domestic violence and there's no prohibition of such. For most people Buddhism was not a matter of personal choice, but something they were born into. Two, there's nothing in international law that prohibits establishing a national religion and national religious holidays. It is more of the question whether religious minorities can freely exercise their right to freedom of religion, and those were born into the majority religion can free convert out of it, and the other way around. Three, why would Malaysia need to respect the UDHR, if it never signed it, but signed the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam instead? Four, you have very strong statments of certain beliefs that you must have copied from somewhere and that I don't sound like the rest of your text. I believe I had made the regulations on academic honesty clear and that this should not have happened.
Your footnotes don't conform to the Bluebook Citation Style, and therefore, are not valid for the purposes of this paper.

I generally do appreciate your interest in the topic and attempt to make a comparison between between the right to freedom of religion in Cambodia and Malaysia.

Stan

DETH said...

Dear Pro. Stan,

I really appreciate your comment and i honestly agree that i have made some mistakes in this text but i really don't appreciate that you said my text had been copied from somewhere. All this idea come up from my idea. I may not good at organizing because when i can think about anything i just put it rihgt away in. I would suggest you to find out the proof exactly if i copied it somewhere else before you say.

Deth,

Stan Starygin said...

Deth,

I don't make allegations without proof. Here's one of the websites you had copied word-for-word. See below

http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2007/yax-752.htm

Your "The fundamental rights are never absolute. They have to be balanced against others� rights and subject to a few compelling limitations" is exactly the same as theirs, and I don't think they had copied from you.

I can produce many more examples of this, if you decide to contest your grade formally.

Academic dishonesty is a bad thing, trying to argue your case while knowing full-well that you had violated this policy is simply unacceptable.

Best,

Stan

DETH said...

Dear Pro. Stan,

I will try to reply you back tomorrow.

Thank you for your comments.

Best regards,

Deth