“Clear weakness in the UN is when it sees a government being absolutely cruel towards its people but it cannot do anything.
“We can preach, pray, ask them not to do such things. But we don’t invade countries to remove such governments,” he told students at the forum in the prestigious university.
However, he pointed to the US invasion of Iraq with its leader, Saddam Hussein, accused of killing the people and being a dictator.
“The US went in to remove Saddam, and Saddam was eventually killed,” he said.
He added Malaysia was unfortunately not in a position to help in the crisis despite much talk about freedom and human rights.
“Nowadays, despite our talk about freedom of the world, trying to abolish wars and all that, when a country carries out such atrocities, there’s practically nothing we can do,” he said.
Mahathir said Malaysia had always had friendly diplomatic ties with Myanmar and had even sympathised and campaigned for the current State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi to be released when she was under house arrest .
“Now, we find that she is not standing up to other people.”
He also noted a lack of protests by the Myanmars themselves, saying that it seemed that there were “… no Myanmar people wanting to overthrow this government, to take the risk to fight … to remove the government that is obviously very cruel”.
He noted that the world can only stand by the sidelines, as “nobody wants to invade Myanmar to overthrow the government”.
Holocaust
When asked by a student on his stance on the Holocaust, Mahathir said he was just practising freedom of speech and said he had not denied that the Holocaust had happened, only the six million death toll.
On multilateralism, he said Malaysia welcomed it despite there needing to be certain rules and limitations.
However, he said such rules should not affect trade but promote trade, adding that Malaysia has always been a trading nation and trades with more than 190 countries.
“Whether you like it or not, the world has become small. We have become neighbours of each other and you cannot ignore your neighbour.
“Multilateralism is inevitable now. You cannot be alone or independent of other countries,” he said.
On a related note, Mahathir also said, in many instances, Malaysia was forced to give in when it came to negotiations with bigger countries.
“Dealing with big countries, we have to accept we can’t go to war with them,” he said.
Referring to China’s claims over the South China Sea, he said it was all right for it to be making such claims so long as it allowed other ships to pass through.
He added that at the end of the day, the South China Sea was the corridor for trade between the East and the West. He said if it was sealed off, it would be detrimental to China too.
When questioned about the affirmative action for the Bumiputeras, Mahathir said this was meant to ease racial tension by minimising economic disparity.
He said violence tended to erupt if the economic disparity was amplified by differences between races.
He said policies should not be fair to all as the rich would continue to move forward, leaving the poor behind.
However, he again dismissed criticism that the affirmative action policy had not helped poor Malays. “To say it has not been successful is not correct. Many were helped and many have succeeded.”
He also said there was still a need for an alternative if Malaysia does away with affirmative action.
“One thing we need to accept is something has to be done. If we do away with affirmative action and if we do nothing, the disparity will become worse.
“There will be tension between races, between the rich and the poor,” he said.