Abolish ISA, not amend it!
When the law is utterly unjust, reducing the period of detention from 60 days to 28 days does not remove the evilness of such a law. ISA is not opposed because it detains a person for 60 days or 28 days.
Mohamed Hanipa Maidin, The Malaysian Insider
The government is looking into a proposal to reduce the detention period under the Internal Security Act from 60 to 28 days, said Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein. The home minister said this was among the suggestions made to review the controversial Act, which is up for review in the next Parliament meeting.
However, he cautioned that the revision of the ISA could not be rushed as there were many things that needed to be sorted out, such as getting feedback from related government agencies, such as the Immigration Department, prison authorities, police and non-governmental organisations.
He further said that "the opposition is afraid because once we amend these laws, they will be out of bullets to accuse the BN of not being serious in helping the people. They only want to politicise the issue."
He added that the opposition was welcome to submit proposals on the matter but that the government would not engage them in discussion.
PAS has never agreed with the ISA since this “satanic” legislation was born. Thus the question of agreeing to the proposed amendments of this draconian law does not arise at all. For us there is only one solution to the ISA — that is by abolishing it. Period. PAS believes that the ISA is a wicked law and only needed by a wicked government in order to protect and hide its wicked acts.
National security mantra has been used again and again to justify the existence and continuity of this law. When BN claims that this law is necessary for national security it is in fact driving home various implicit points inter alia it is all right to detain a person without trial. In other words a trial is not important at all to ISA detainees.
It is also all right not to give a person a right to be presumed innocence until proven guilty for the ISA presumes him or her to be guilty forever.
It is also all right to incarcerate a man in a solitary confinement and subject him to interrogation for very long hours (some are even denied sleep) by several policemen.
All these inhumane and degrading treatments are acceptable and tolerable in the interest of “national” security. Human dignity is irrelevant and immaterial when it collides with national security. Islam says God has dignified the sons of Adam. The ISA on the other hand says get lost with human dignity. National security is everything.
