Freeing ourselves from the ISA
By Andrew Yong
Following the anti-ISA demonstrations in August, another anti-ISA protest took place in London on Saturday, 30 October. Recounting the August event, a LoyarBurokker in London reminds us why all of us should continue denouncing the ISA.
TORTURE is not a word that is used lightly in the international human rights community. Yet when the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded their visit to Malaysia in June this year, they announced, having interviewed detainees in prisons and detention centres across the country, that “virtually all … especially those detained under the preventive laws, indicated that they had been subjected to torture or ill-treatment in order to obtain confessions or evidence in police detention.”
Now read that again, and consider what that means in terms of the suffering, pain and humiliation that is regularly being inflicted on shackled and defenceless people every day in Malaysia.
As Malaysians, the most appropriate emotional response to this indictment is shame. Shame, because we know that the indictment is doubtlessly well-deserved. Shame, because as citizens and as voters we have been unable to prevent what has been going on in our name. And shame, because as a people we belong to a country that today deserves to be treated as a pariah in the international community; one of the Zimbabwes and Burmas of this world.
Raja Petra Kamarudin at the protest in London on 30 October 2010 (Source: malaysia-today.net)
Demonstrating in London
On 8 August 2010, some 20 or more Malaysians and friends gathered outside the Malaysian High Commission in London, where the Foreign Minister, Anifah Aman was due to speak. This demonstration, organised at short notice, came a week after another regular monthly anti-ISA protest in Trafalgar Square, and hot on the heels of a demonstration against the visit of Taib Mahmud to Oxford. The demonstration was a small act of solidarity, seeking to express the impatience and disgust that Malaysians back home had been prevented from showing on 1 August, the week before.
There were no riot police, no mass arrests and no “untoward incidents”. All we had were banners, placards and candles – and a megaphone with which we shouted slogans across the road towards the High Commission. Eventually, we got word that Anifah himself would come and speak to us when he arrived at the High Commission. When he did, he heard our views, and he expressed his own view and that of the Government to boisterous dissent. I will not rehearse what was said, which has been reported elsewhere, but I will make several observations that may be relevant to people back home.
