Torture under the ISA

In their effort to justify this draconian law, the Malaysian ruling coalition unwittingly use the former colonial master’s racist arguments that countries such as ours still require laws which blatantly violate human rights, such as the ISA.

This is an affront to the dignity of Malaysians for even after the Sept 11 terrorist attack on the US, the Americans would not contemplate a law which allows detention without trial such as the ISA.

The Prime Minister and other BN leaders have been misleading the Malaysian public when they say that the Americans are thinking about learning from Malaysia’s use of the ISA. In the first place, the Americans can learn from their War Minister, Tony (“The Third Way”) Blair since Britain is the mother of the ISA. Why do they need to learn from Malaysia? Britain has its own Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974.

The ISA has long served as the ruling coalition’s instrument of terror. Its specific purpose is to terrorise social activists, dissidents and the Opposition. It is first and foremost, a licence to torture. Renewable periods of detention under the ISA already serves as a deterrent to would-be dissidents — some ISA detainees have been detained for as long as 15 and even 16 years!

Torture under the ISA is not hearsay. The judges in the recent habeas corpus hearings should have known better. This is amply documented in affidavits by ISA detainees before, during and after Operation Lalang in 1987.

It is not surprising that to date, the Malaysian government has still not ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture. This is shameful for a country that has chaired a session of the UN Human Rights Commission.

• The tortures undergone by ISA detainees during the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and Eighties are well known to those who know the former ISA detainees. Their experiences are slowly but surely coming to light, mainly in Chinese publications. The following is an excerpt from a hitherto unpublished statement by “political prisoners of Kawasan A, B, C”, dated May 1,1969, a historic document released from Batu Gajah Detention Camp:
  "We political detainees have undergone days and nights of endless interrogation which have inflicted grave toll on the mental condition of many detainees;
  
• During interrogation, we have been handcuffed, had our abdominal parts kicked, our heads bashed against the wall until they bled, and some have had to be hospitalised;
  We have had needles stuck in our fingernails and pencils used to squeeze our fingers between them;
  
• We have been burnt with cigarette lighters and hit with elastic bands, some have had nails inserted into their genitals;
  
• We have been asked to strip off our pants and to sit on open bottles;
  
• We have been made to take off our clothing and to stand before fans and air-conditioners until we passed out;
  
• The Banishment Law has been invoked to force political detainees out of the country, while those who do not accept banishment are kept on long-term detentions. Some at Seremban Detention Camp have already been detained for 10 to 20 years;
  
• We political prisoners here have been detained for between four to eight years without trial;
  
• The riot squad has been mobilised to storm our detention camp in order to force those who have refused to wear handcuffs when they leave the camp to do so. In the process, there has been bloodshed;
  
• Health and medical services are very poor in the camp. Those who leave for hospital treatment are forced to be handcuffed. After nine o’clock, we are forced into hot and stuffy cells…”