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Sunday, December 30, 2007

Natural Justice or Natural Law: Does it apply in Malaysia?

From Wikipedia: "Natural justice is a legal philosophy used in some jurisdictions in the determination of just, or fair, processes in legal proceedings. The concept is very closely related to the principle of natural law (latin: jus naturale) which has been applied as a philosophical and practical principle in the law in several common law jurisdictions, particularly the UK and Australia.

According to Roman law certain basic legal principles are required by nature, or so obvious that they should be applied universally without needing to be enacted into law by a legislator."

It was reported in theSun that "The court also paved the way for Saravanan to carry on with his other aims, including to seek custody of the two children and conversion of the second child to Islam, when the court set aside the Erinford injunctions obtained by Subashini previously against Saravanan."

What exactly is natural justice or natural law? I am no lawyer, but a mere layman, and to a layman, it is natural that a child be subject to the authorities of both the father and the mother. In other words, a mother, to me, according to Natural Justice or Natural Law, a mother should have a say over the religious upbringing of her child or children until they grew to adulthood able to make decisions on their own.

Thus it would appear to me that it is very unfair that the mother have no say whatsoever over the religious upbringing of her child or children until they are old enough to make decisions on their own behalf. To me, it is also very unfair that children of such tender age should be converted to a religion from which they can have no escape when they reach adulthood. To me, it goes against Natural Justice or Natural Law. But who am I to say such thing. I am a mere layman, not a trained lawyer.

2 comments:

gmk said...

"Natural Justice or Natural Law: Does it apply in Malaysia?"
Justice My Foot! NO !

(UMNO)Malay Muslims controlled government and its cronies,(MCA,MIC,PPP,Gerakan & others)in Barisan Nasional should know that if they sow hatred they cannot reap goodwill.
If one good thing comes out of this, it would be the catalyst that finally mobilizes the non Muslims to rise up for their rights and remove self serving politician and the hypocrite in their communites.

Manature said...

Hi GMK,

Perhaps your optimism? may bear some fruits. Someone forwarded an article by Jacqueline Ann Surin which was about meeting a Vietnamese refugee whose parents sent off on a boat to escape the Communist rule at a tender age of 12 I think. The boat ran out of fuel, etc. A Swedish cruise ship saw them, stopped alongside, the tourists took photos, then the Captain sailed off, leaving the helpless refugees to their fate. The wake of the departing cruise ship almost capsized the boat, but the good thing about this near tragedy was that what nearly drowned them pushed the boat to an oil rig. They were allowed to board the oil rig, and I think the boy eventually settled in New Zealand via Singapore (I vaguely remember a compilation of the outrageous sayings of our Malaysian polititians quoted our former PM saying about the Vietnamese boat refugees "Shoot them" or something like that) and became very successful. Something good coming out of something bad. Maybe there is room for optimism.

But all these are from memory so all may be rumors. I cannot vouch for the truth of what I write as it is via third party, from memory and I no trained jouralist who knows how to verify facts. So take it all as rumors which if any reader of this comment wants can research for themselves.