According to the Malaysian English website the ‘Borneo Post’, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Malaysia had the right to keep its border closed to certain people, especially those coming from places the nation feels have taken many wrong measures.
“A country has the right to keep its border closed to certain people, that is why the border is there, but in Malaysia, we have no diplomatic relations with Israel at all and we feel that they are doing a lot of wrong things but getting away with them because nobody dares to say anything against them,” he said after delivering the Oxford Union talk earlier today.
The Malaysian Prime Minister said this when asked by Oxford Union president Daniel Wilkinson on Malaysia’s ban on Israeli athletes’ participation in the World Para Swimming Championships to be held in Sarawak in July.
Swimmers from some 70 countries are expected to compete in the July 29-Aug 4 championship, an important milestone before next year’s Tokyo Paralympics.
Asked whether it was fair to penalise the Israelis rather than the Israeli government, the prime minister said that it seems that most Israelis support the stand taken by their government.
“I can’t understand this. We talk about freedom of speech and yet you cannot say anything against Israel, against the Jews, why is that so? If we are free to say what we like, we can say it, but we are being regarded as anti-Semitic by the Jews,” he said..
“That is their right to hold such opinion on me, this is my right to tell them also that they have been doing a lot of wrong things,” he added.
MNA/PR
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