/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-MALAYSIA: The Night They Raided Zouks

One Saturday night recently, Sarinah Majid, a 23-year-old accountant, was dancing the night away with her Chinese boyfriend at Zouks nightclub - the most happening night spot in Malaysia's capital city. Then suddenly the world, as she knew it, collapsed dramatically around her.

MALAYSIA: Report Reveals Horrors of Foreign Sex-Slaves

Last November Zu Lian, 22, from a tiny village in China's southern Yunnan province and five colleagues pricked their fingers, dipped a toothpick in the blood and wrote a dramatic note to a Malaysian Chinese politician begging him to intervene and free them from an immigration detention camp where they were incarcerated.

TSUNAMI IMPACT: When Compassion Takes A Wrong Turn in Malaysia

Even the Indian Ocean tsunami has been unable to make compassion-fatigued Malaysia baulk at its latest order. It wants to deport all undocumented workers back to their tsunami-hit countries on Jan. 31, regardless of whether these migrants end up in emergency relief camps surviving on rations handed out by charities.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Abdullah’s Smile Belies a Prevailing Culture of Fear

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.

MALAYSIA: Undocumented Workers to Become ‘The Hunted’ in 2005

Take advantage of the general amnesty and leave before the extended deadline of Dec. 31 or face arrest, fine, whipping and a long jail term.

MALAYSIA-THAILAND: Wounds of the South Hurt Bilateral Ties

The Friday sermons in mosques across Malaysia, often from texts prepared by the government, is an important barometer of undercurrents in Malay Muslim politics. This month, however, some of the sermons had a discernible difference.

MALAYSIA: Pushed to the Edge, Domestic Workers Resort to Murder

A ripple of combined fear and anger has hit the lowly paid and brutally worked community of about 250,000 Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia after one of their compatriots was sentenced to death for killing her employer following a spat over burnt curry.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Rohingyas Finally Recognised as Refugees

Finally after years of living as a stateless person in constant fear of the authorities, 42- year-old Abdul Jaffar, a Rohingya from Burma's Arakan state, can now breathe easily.

MALAYSIA: Back-At-Home Anwar Blasts Thaksin Over Thai Killings

The gruesome deaths in south Thailand was on the mind of Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's most famous dissident and best known moderate Muslim reformist leader, as he set foot on Malaysian soil after spending two months abroad seeking medical treatment for spinal injuries made worse during his time in a local jail.

MALAYSIA: Anwar to Be a Formidable Force in Opposition

Although Malaysia's top dissident politician Anwar Ibrahim failed on Wednesday to make an immediate political comeback, after the Federal Court rejected his application to review and overturn his last remaining conviction, analysts predict the former deputy prime minister will still be a reckonable force in the country's pro-democracy movement.

MALAYSIA: Abdullah Plans to Make Poorest of Poor ‘Millionaires’

Small Malay farmers, struggling daily to make ends meet, are now within the sight of newly elected Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The premier has reprioritised agricultural development in a bid to fight Islamic fundamentalism in the country - that has its roots in rural poverty - in order to wean poor Malays away from the opposition.

LABOUR-MALAYSIA: Abused Sikh Workers Left High and Dry

Darshan Singh's story is all too familiar for many human rights activists. He was recruited from the Indian state of Punjab to work in a Malaysian company. But things soon turned nasty when the labour recruiter pocketed all his salary, housed him in a crammed place, fed him flour and lentils and went further to abuse and torture him.

MALAYSIA: New Premier Under Scrutiny Three Months After Polls

''Walk the talk'' is an unlikely phrase to come from the mild-mannered and Islamic prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

MALAYSIA: Gov’t Agencies Find It Tough to Keep up with Traffickers

Government agencies are often no match - in organisation, money and coercive power to international syndicates that traffic in people, especially women and young girls, for Malaysia's sex industry.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Rohingya Asylum Seekers Have Little to Cling To

Over a dozen sweaty and angry Rohingya men gathered in a small and grubby fifth-floor room of a walk-up flat in Pudu, a suburb outside the Malaysian capital famous for its wet market, thriving counterfeit trade and scores of small Chinese-owned printing presses.

POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Ruling Party Win Leaves Opposition in Tatters

In what is probably the biggest upset in Malaysian electoral history, the Islamic opposition party and its sole ally, the National Justice Party of jailed former deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim, have lost nearly everything they had won in the 1999 election.

POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Ruling Party Win Leaves Opposition in Tatters

In what is probably the biggest upset in Malaysian electoral history, the Islamic opposition party and its sole ally, the National Justice Party of jailed former deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim, have lost nearly everything they had won in the 1999 election.

MALAYSIA: Post-Mahathir Poll a Tussle for Malay Majority Vote

Under former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the government was blind to the kind of biting poverty found in places like Kuala Kedah in northern Kedah state, where poor Malay fishermen live in crowded stagnation in shanty-like conditions on the mouth of the Kedah river.

MALAYSIA: A Month Later, New Premier Shaping Populist Image

One month after taking over from Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is coming across as a caring populist promising to eradicate corruption, improve public service and narrow the gap between the people and their leaders.

POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Islamic Debate Deepens Divisions

The division between moderates and fundamentalists among Malaysia's majority Malay Muslims has sharpened dramatically, if not irrevocably, in recent weeks.

/CORRECTED REPEAT/RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Terrorism Bill Brings Too Many Risks

Too loose a definition of terrorism and the new powers it gives to police and prosecutors to arrest and prosecute in the name of fighting terrorism are among too big risks that come with the bill passed by Malaysia's lower House of Parliament last week, activists say.