BY EVA CHENG
Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, in power for 20 years, has turned increasingly to a notorious repressive law, in a desperate attempt to crush rising internal dissent.
Enacted in 1960, the Internal Security Act allows for indefinite detention without trial for those deemed to be a threat to "national security".
On July 5 and 7, two student leaders, Khairul Anwar Ahmad Zainuddin and Mohamad Fuad Mohd Ikhwan, were the latest to be locked away under the cover of the ISA. In April, the law was used to detain 10 leaders and supporters of Keadilan (the National Justice Party), the party led by Wan Aziza Ismail, the wife of jailed former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.
Only days before the latest arrests, police spokesperson superintendent Benjamin Hasbie was still busy defending the April clampdown, telling the British Guardian "If you let these little things get out of control, they could cause instability and then disrupt the nation's economy".
Among "these little things" was a gathering of about 4000 on April 14 to deliver a "people's memorandum" to the parliament-sanctioned Human Rights Commission (Suhakam), urging it to call on the government to stop its blatant disrespect for basic civil liberties and, specifically, to abolish the ISA.
Repeated violent suppression of peaceful assemblies preceeded the April 14 action, the second anniversary of the "Black 14" events of 1999 when Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced to nine years of imprisonment on what are believed to be trumped-up charges.
In 1999, as now, many people took Anwar's side, believing his case would become a focal point for the growing Reformasi movement for democratic reforms.
The student movement in Malaysia has been in the doldrums for years — but the April ISA arrests prompted more than 400 to protest on June 8 in front of Kuala Lumpur's National Mosque.
When the crowd started to disperse at the end of the event, the police attacked them, arresting seven students. The seven were bailed the next day, after being beaten, were charged with "illegal assembly" and told to report to the Dang Wangi police station on July 5.
They turned up that day in the company of about 10 students, who included Khairul Anwar Ahmad Zainuddin, an outspoken student leader and a co-ordinator of the student movement against the ISA.
As soon as they arrived, Khairul Anwar was dragged into the police station by three men in civilian clothing, assisted by uniformed police.
Two hours later, the police took Khairul Anwar, handcuffed, to the office of his student organisation at University Bangsar Utama. The cops broke into the office, ransacked it and took away boxes of belongings, before confirming that Khairul Anwar had been charged for ISA offences.
On the same morning, police raided the home of Mohamad Faisal Abdul Rahman, the secretary-general of the Alliance of Peninsular Student for Reform and president of Muslim Student Union of University of Malaya. Faisal wasn't there at the time.
Then in the late afternoon of July 7, Mohamad Fuad Mohd Ikhwan, the president of the Student Representative Council of University Malaya, was also arrested under the ISA while driving a motorcycle alone in the capital.
Outraged by the arrests, some 40 activists turned up that night to protest outside the federal police headquarters to demand the release of the two students.
They lit candles and sang progressive songs, but were ordered by the police to disperse after 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, other student activists also came under attack. On June 22, Rapzan Ramli, one of the seven students arrested for June 8 anti-ISA protest, was expelled by the University Institute of Technology Mara, at which he was studying, after a 15-minute disciplinary "trial".
On July 4, three students from the International Islamic University were also charged by the university's disciplinary board for holding anti-ISA protests in the campus. Among other actions, the students were involved in a daring May 18 two-hour "walk for freedom" from Kuala Lumpur's city centre to University Malaya in protest against the ISA.
The arrests have sparked anger from human rights groups. Speaking immediately after Khairul Anwar's arrest, the National Human Rights Society described the arrest as "politically motivated" to suppress dissent while local rights group Suaram called it a calculated move to "silence students' activism on campus".
Amnesty International said the move showed that the ISA was being used to "harass and penalise people" who disagree with the policies and practices of the government.
Even the official Suhakam came forward immediately after the April arrests to challenge the government to either bring the arrested to an open trial or release them. Law minister Rais Yatim quickly condemned Suhakam's move, forcing the human rights commission to issue a much tamer statement saying the ISA should be modified, rather than scrapped.
Under the ISA, the police can detain anyone for up to 60 days, usually in solitary confinement without access to lawyers and contact with their families, under conditions of intense mental and even physical torture. The home minister can then extend the detention for another two years, renewable for an indefinite period.
According to Amnesty International, the total number of documented ISA detainees jumped to 1051 in the last year, with the real numbers certainly larger.
The trumped-up nature of the ISA's usage was illustrated by the 10 arrests in April, which happened as preparations for the Black 14 commemoration were in full swing.
Police alleged that those arrested planned to buy grenades and rocket launchers, had organised a sustained program of street demonstrations to gather support, and were readying riots to "destabilise" the country.
Mahathir himself reportedly confirmed the weakness of the allegations, stating that detention without trial was necessary because the authorities did not have enough evidence to back their charges in court.
In a letter smuggled out and published on June 23 by the British Guardian, Tian Chua, a representative of the 10 April detainees, revealed that they were brought blindfolded and handcuffed to an unknown place with no sunlight in the cell and had undergone "very intense" interrogation for four to five weeks. A number of detainees were deprived of sleep for days in a row.
A ray of hope came from a habeas corpus application, under which a detainee can ask a court to determine whether the detention itself is lawful.
Two of the April detainees were released on May 30 after obtaining favourable hebeas corpus judgements. Two more were released in early June, but the remaining six detainees were sentenced to two years of detention shortly before their hebeas corpus hearings.
From the Kamunting camp, Tian Chua, one of six remaining detainees, wrote on June 16, "Black 14 became a symbol of judiciary manipulation, of the public outrage, of rising people's consciousness and worse, it was a reminder that dictatorship would be eventually overthrown by the people's power.
"Observing from afar, events in the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, even the distant Mexico, the tyrant in Sri Perdana [Malaysia] too sensed that his time will soon arrive ... The authorities understood fully that Reformasi emerged because the people's consciousness is ripe for change. The demands for democratic rights spread like wild fire."
The wave of arrests has prompted a new layer of activists into action, including the formation of the Abolish ISA Movement by 78 organisations and the launch of an international petition campaign to press for the law's abolition.
Protests, hunger strikes, vigils and demonstrations have taken place internationally also, in Sydney, London, Bangkok and Hong Kong.