KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 — Malaysia is against any form of trade sanctions to resolve conflicts between nations, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.
The prime minister said such sanctions were acts of aggression at an international level that punishes more than one country economically, denouncing it as the worst form of democracy.
“We generally don’t believe in sanctions. We don’t point out the specific cases but sanction is a criminal act because you are not only punishing the country concerned, other countries as well.
“When they applied sanction on Iran, we lost our market and Iran is big market to us and trade reduced to almost nothing. This can only be done by strong countries.
“Weak countries like Malaysia… I would like to apply sanction to Trump but I can’t. But he can apply sanction to whole countries and we suffer. This is democracy at its worst. When we talk about freedom of speech, they themselves deny democracy to other people,” Dr Mahathir told a news conference at the end of the inaugural Kuala Lumpur Summit that gathered world Muslim leaders to discuss problems plaguing their world here.
He shared Malaysia’s experience in trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Hamas movement, where the aid ships were illegally detained in international waters by Israeli gunboats.
The world’s oldest elected representative said nine Turkish sailors lost their lives while Putrajaya still remains unaware of what had happened to the cargo of building materials to be sent to Palestine.
Dr Mahathir said the three-day summit discussed ways Muslim countries could mutually boost trade for each other.
“We also need inflow of money to invest in property, finance, other areas where those with capital can invest. Those that are poor should be ready to accept foreign investment, especially if they come from Muslim countries.
“We are not rejecting non-Muslim investment but we feel that Muslim countries so far have not invested enough in other Muslim countries needing their investment. We hope as a result of this conference, more Muslim countries will invest in poorer Muslim countries,” said Dr Mahathir.
