NO ONE SOLUTION
From Voices, TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 A balance has to be struck between individual rights and overall good of society Letter from PROFESSOR WALTER WOON Attorney-General I REFER to the letter “Keep our door open to ideas” by Siew Kum Hong (June 6). Mr Siew has misunderstood me. I surmise from his letter that he was not present at my talk. In my address at the launch of the Law Society’s Public and International Law Committee, I said that for some people human rights has become a religion. This religion, like so many others, has its fanatics who display all the hypocrisy and zealotry of religious bigots. They believe that there is only one permissible view of human rights — theirs. They assume that when they decide what human rights are, that decision is for the rest of humanity. I gave the example of those who think that the right to free expression means that one can insult the Prophet of a great religion with impunity. I asked rhetorically, can we accept this in our society? I p...