Malaysia’s Besut Appeal Court Decision: Analysing Corporal Punishment Against International Human Rights
By Sabahat Mazhar
International human rights law operates on consent. A state that never signs, never ratifies, and never accepts a treaty’s provisions bears no legal obligation to follow them — and therein lies one of the most fundamental limitations of the international human rights framework.
The Besut sword murder case is a case in point. On June 8, 2026, Malaysia’s Court of Appeal upheld the 36-year prison sentence and 12 strokes of the cane each for five men convicted of the sword murder of Mohd Shahrulanuar Dek Der in Besut, Terengganu. The mandatory caning sentence, though lawful under Malaysian law, sits in direct tension with human rights standards, enshrined in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—a treaty Malaysia has neither signed nor ratified—meaning it has not formally consented to be bound by its provisions.
The case dates back to June 21, 2017, when five men murdered the victim with a sword in Besut district. Following amendments to Malaysia’s Penal Code in 2023 which abolished the mandatory death penalty, caning of a minimum 12 strokes remained mandatory for male offenders under 50. Under this framework, High Court judge Abdul Wahab Mohamed sentenced the five men to 36 years in jail and 12 caning strokes each on May 9, 2024. The Court of Appeal dismissed their appeal in June 2026, with Justice Azman Abdullah finding it lacked merit. The case now sits at the intersection of domestic legal procedure and an unresolved question in international law.
The international standards from which Malaysia has opted out are specific and widely ratified. Article 7 of the ICCPR prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment — a provision ratified by 173 states. Article 16 of the UN Convention Against Torture (CAT) similarly requires state parties to prevent such treatment by public officials. Together these instruments represent the broadest international consensus on the limits of state punishment. Malaysia has ratified neither. The question this raises is not whether Malaysia has broken international law — it has not — but whether a human rights framework that 173 states have accepted can meaningfully claim universality when states can simply opt out.
Malaysia’s relationship with international human rights law is not one of wholesale rejection. It has selectively ratified standards like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, albeit with reservations, reflecting a deliberate exercise of sovereignty rather than outright dismissal. Separately, the caning in this case is prescribed by civil law, not Shariah law, making clear it is a product of domestic legislation rather than religious imposition. However, this is not unique to Malaysia — international law itself permits non-ratification as a legitimate exercise of state sovereignty. Under Article 14 of the Vienna Convention on the Laws of Treaties, states can refuse to ratify treaties without breaking international law. Ultimately, this points to a structural tension within international law itself — between the universality human rights frameworks claim and the voluntary nature of treaty obligations that allows states to opt out entirely.
Malaysia’s Besut appeal court decision illustrates a longstanding tension within international law. Analysis of corporal punishment by human rights advocates often focuses on condemnation, without accounting for the structural nuances of international law itself. The debate between the universality of human rights and state sovereignty has remained unresolved for decades — and cases like Besut show why.
A state cannot be judged against standards set by a framework it was never obligated to join.