Khalid looks for terrorists
Anti-terrorism act
allows for indefinite detention without trial
The Malaysian government has passed an anti-terrorism bill reminiscent of the
notorious Internal Security Act that the country discarded in 2012, earning the
government widespread condemnation from international civil rights groups and
journalism associations. The passage comes at a time when the country is
also increasingly using its 1948 Sedition Act – which Prime Minister Najib Tun
Razak also promised to do away with against its political critics.
The new Prevention of Terrorism Act, pushed through in the early hours
of April 7, allows suspected terrorists to be detained for a maximum of 38 days
without trial, with a Prevention of Terrorism Board that would then be
empowered to extend detention to two years and renewed every two years after
that, with no maximum period of detention. The measure allows for detention
solely on the word of a police inspector, extendable without access to
counsel. Critics of the government fear the act could be used against
them.
Prime Minister Najib, when he was in a considerably stronger position
than he is now, ordered the cessation of detention without trial in 2011,
earning praise as a moderate leader from the United States and other
governments.
However, the country is plainly worried – and rightly so –about
suspected fundamentalist returnees from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq
with estimates of those who have slipped out of Malaysia for the Middle East
running into the hundreds. Inspector General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar, the
police chief, in a Twitter message, told Agence France Presse on Monday that 17
people had been arrested on April 5 on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks
in Kuala Lumpur, including two recently returned from Syria.
Malaysian voters are plainly jittery. As Asia Sentinel reported on March
20, unofficial guesses are that as many as 400 young Malaysians have left for
the Middle East although some alarmists put the figure as high as 1,000.
Authorities say the numbers are far lower, at “scores.” Zahid Hamidi, the home
minister, told reporters in January that 67 were known to have gone to join the
fighting and that at least five had been killed.
Civil rights and journalist groups, however, questioned the need for the
return of a draconian security act that was abhorred by much of the country. Amnesty International, in a prepared release,
said that: “Such laws do not comply with international human rights law and
contradict commitments made by the Malaysian authorities to the international
community.”
The Kuala Lumpur-based Center for Independent Journalism (CIJ) “appalled
at the government’s proposal to reintroduce indefinite detention without
trial.” The organization said it is “farcical that Prime Minister Najib Razak
made a big show of announcing the repeal of the ISA in 2011 and for Parliament
to have passed a law repealing it in 2012, only to have a very similar act
reintroduced in 2015 under the exact same leadership.”
Human Rights Watch issued a similar statement, saying “Permitting a government-appointed
body to order indefinite detention without judicial review or trial is an open
invitation to serious abuse,” according to Phil Robertson, the Bangkok-based
deputy Asia director of the organization. “The draft law creates conditions conducive
to torture, and denies suspects the right to challenge their detention or
treatment.”
The measure appears at a time when the government has dramatically
stepped up the use of the sedition act, which Najib had also promised to do
away with. However, under
pressure from United Malays National Organization party chieftains alarmed by
growing public frustration and annoyance over a continuing string of scandals
including that of 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB, a shaky state investment
fund, Najib has been forced to return to the law with a vengeance. The debt problems of 1MDB have impelled the
Fitch rating service to downgrade the country’s entire financial system over
the fear of a default. In particular, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad,
who engineered Najib’s replacement of former Premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has
been savaging Najib at every turn.
So far, nearly 160 arrests have been made under the sedition act, almost
all of them members of the opposition, members of the press, human rights
organizations and others including Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, or Zunar, perhaps the
country’s most popular cartoonist, who makes a specialty of mocking the
spending habits of Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor.
That has led Amnesty International to describe the country as an
expanding black hole for human rights, calling on authorities to end the use of
the act “to criminalize criticism of the government.”
Amnesty International, according to the statement, “has long expressed
concerns about Malaysia’s oppressive laws which allow for arbitrary and/or
preventive detention, in the same way that it has expressed its increasing
concern over the use of existing laws to repress peaceful dissent.” Asia
Sentinel
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