By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 14 2004 (IPS)

The verdict is out on Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his promise to institute reforms more than a year after occupying the top political office and months after winning Malaysia’s biggest ever-electoral mandate.

Opposition politicians and democracy activists, now, are united in saying that under the soft-spoken fatherly veneer public image of Abdullah, is a leader who has no qualms in allowing the state to use brutal force to maintain a culture of fear in the country.

Abdullah rose up the political charts last year promising reforms, more democracy and less oppression and tough action against corruption. But his slow pace of reforms and seeming indecisiveness and inability to make tough and painful decisions is boiling over into disillusionment.

Last week some of the frustration showed.

For one Malaysia’s opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim launched a concerted nationwide campaign to mobilise public support to pressure the government to repeal the draconian Internal Security Act or ISA that provides for indefinite detention without trial.

Anwar singled out the Special Branch, the intelligence wing of the Malaysian police, as the inhuman and brutal arm of the state that has no respect for human rights or due process of law.

”What happened to me and many of you out there who are victims of the ISA is a testament of the brutality of the Special Branch,” said Anwar who was twice detained under the ISA. ”It is not just the arrest that is damaging but the climate of fear that the ISA throws over society that is the most damaging.”

“The ISA is the top of the heap….remove it and you open up a lot of democratic space,” Anwar told IPS.

Anwar’s campaign to abolish the ISA was soon followed by the country’s leading civil liberties group SUARAM, which released on Dec. 10 – to coincide with World Human Rights Day – a damning annual report criticising the lack of progress and worsening human rights under Abdullah.

Parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang upped the stakes later with a move to form an all-party “Parliamentary Caucus on Human Rights” to debate the ISA and check abuses, torture and eventually repeal the dreaded legislation.

”A dark cloud hangs over the 2004 World Human Rights Day in Malaysia with serious allegations of violation of human rights at detention centers where hunger strikes had repeatedly broken out,” Lim said. ”The ISA has to go and we need to close ranks to pressure the government.”

Even the National Human Rights Society or SUHAKAM, often criticised for its docility, found courage to slam the government’s human rights record and urged it to either charge in court over 100 ISA detainees now held at the Kamunting detention camp or release them.

The detainees mostly comprise alleged members of the Jemaiah Islamiyah Islamic militant group and have been imprisoned without trial since 2000. Their repeated demands to be charged in court or be freed have been ignored.

To top it all up about a dozen of the detainees and prison guards clashed during a search of their quarters at Kamunting. Some of the detainees were injured. The Information Ministry said that 20 guards were also hurt in the fight, which followed the discovery of alleged makeshift weapons.

The disturbances highlight the frustration and sense of hopelessness, coupled with deep depression that detainees experience once arrested under the ISA. ”Arrest is like falling into a deep dark hole….there is a feeling of no return,” ISA detainee and democracy activist Tian Chua told IPS.

”Such hopeless conditions frequently lead to clashes,” he said.

In March, Abdullah’s ruling coalition won 195 of 219 seats in the federal parliament and stunned the Islamic opposition by securing huge margins, even in the states the opposition thought were safely its own.

Despite winning the biggest ever electoral mandate in Malaysian history and consolidating his hold on the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) left to him by former strongman Mahathir Mohamad, Abdullah has done little to improve the country’s sordid human rights record, the SUARAM report said.

”Expectations for change were high, because he couldn’t do any worse than his predecessor Mahathir Mohamad with his authoritarian stature,” SUARAM director Kua Kia Soong told a gathering of rights activists and diplomats.

”Unfortunately, the substance of reform has been lacking. Laws long considered as draconian and contrary to international human rights norms have neither been reviewed nor repealed,” he said.

Abdullah, 64, took over when Mahathir retired on Oct. 31 last year after 22 years in power.

”Crucial and fundamental international instruments such as the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention Against Torture have not been signed, and the government has indicated no interest in doing so,” said Kua. ”The government has also not ratified the Convention on the Status of Refugees, even as the number of asylum seekers in Malaysia continues to increase.”

“If Abdullah delays anymore he will loose credibility,” he added alarmingly.

However one feather in Abdullah’s cap however is the release of Anwar by the court on Sept. 2 – and it is a large feather too. Supporters say Abdullah made it possible for the court to exercise independence while critics say the unexpected release arose out of a political bargain.

Abdullah’s Royal Commission on improving the police was also warmly received but after an initial report urging police reforms, has now lapsed into a strange anonymity.

The SUARAM report also cast doubts on the transparency of the general election in March that saw Abdullah wiping out the opposition. SUARAM said the general election was tainted by widespread reports of irregularities, police bans on opposition gatherings and tight government control over the media.

The report also said Abdullah had disappointed many by failing to review and repeal a raft of laws that severely curtail publishing, press freedom and individual liberty.

Apart from the Internal Security Act, the Emergency Ordinance and the Dangerous Drugs Act also provide for indefinite detention without trial.

Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh, the chairman of the Abolish ISA Movement told IPS that more than 10,000 people have been arrested under the ISA since 1960.

”It is a colonial relic and completely against all norms of civilised society…why is Abdullah still keeping it when he said he will reform society and promote democracy?” asked Syed Ibrahim.

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