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Human Rights In Malaysia Not Improving
by Kazi Mahmood for IslamOnline
KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Malaysia's Human Rights record was severely criticized last week during a United Nations (U.N.) conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
Elizabeth Wong, a member of the Malaysian delegation to this year's U.N. human rights commission session, said fundamental questions of human rights in her country have seen no improvement throughout 2000 despite the formation of a local rights commission (Suhakam).
Before her statement, Suhakam chief Musa Hitam, former Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, said his country's rights record was improving and was even better than that of many countries in the ASEAN region.
Wong said Malaysia was witnessing intensified assaults on civil society with attacks on the opposition, pro-reform activists, the independent media, and further restrictions on expression, assembly and association.
Wong, also secretary-general for the National Human Rights Society, touched on issues pertaining to jailed former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, the Internal Security Act (ISA) and police brutality.
"Question marks remain etched on the independence of the Malaysian judiciary in the conviction and the imposition of a heavy sentence on Anwar and his adopted brother Sukma Dermawan for alleged sodomy," she said.
Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah was also in Geneva where she delivered a speech to the same conference, appealing for the restoration of her father's rights.
Wong criticized the use of the Internal Security Act (ISA) by the Malaysian government. She also told the commission that since July 2000, 65 members of Al-Ma'unah Islamic group had been detained under the ISA for trying to "overthrow" the government.
ISA is a form of detention without trial and is being criticized by the opposition as a repressive tool at the hands of the Malaysian government.
"In September last year, three Acehnese residing in Malaysia were detained under the ISA, and the act was invoked a month later against four men for practicing the Shiite faith," Wong said.
A human rights watch group qualified Malaysia as a troubling region with various abuses of human rights in several sectors. The report said that the Malaysian government generally respected its citizens' rights in some areas, but that its record was poor in a number of other areas, with significant problems remaining.
"Police committed a number of extra judicial killings; however, authorities prosecuted the perpetrators in some of these cases. Police on occasion tortured, beat, or otherwise abused prisoners, detainees, and demonstrators.
"The former chief of police was sentenced to two months imprisonment for having beaten the handcuffed and blindfolded former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1998," the report said.
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