Anwar Sodomy II - internationalising Malaysia’s Misrule of Law?

I had wanted to ask the Foreign Minister, Datuk Dr. Rais Yatim the following supplementary question in Parliament this morning:

“Are you aware that by taking Anwar’s Sodomy II selective prosecution to the United Nations by way of a letter of protest to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at American interference in Malaysian domestic affairs as well as organising a series of ‘information sessions’ overseas, you are only internationalising Malaysia’s ‘misrule of law’ which you had so eloquently and devastatingly criticised in your book ‘Freedom under Executive Power’, exposing the nation to greater mockery in the global arena as we will only be able to depend on rogue states like Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan for sympathy and support for the following reasons:

(i) deterioration of the rule of law in the past decade since the publication of the book, as evident from disturbing developments in the system of justice in the country, such as

(a) the selective prosecution of Anwar on Sodomy II under Section 377B of the Penal Code on consensual sodomy when the complainant Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan had alleged that he had been raped, which should have come under Section 377C on sodomy rape;

(b) why Saiful was not similarly charged under Section 377B on consensual sodomy;
and

© the insistence by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi that Anwar should also swear on the Quran like Saiful, making Malaysia an international laughing stock as to whether we have a Prime Minister who understands and upholds the system of justice in the country;

(ii) grave loss of national and international confidence in the independence, impartiality, integrity and quality of the system of justice when material witnesses like private investigator Bala Subramaniam on the Mongolian Altantunya Shaariibuu murder trial and the Pusrawi Hospital doctor Dr. Mohamed Osman Abdul Hamid had “disappeared” together with family members after making two contradictory statutory declarations within 24 hours in the former and after penning medical notes on his first examination of Saiful in the latter;

(iii) grave international concerns of a conspiracy against Anwar Ibrahim in the Sodomy II charge, which has been expressed not only by Western leaders but also by Islamic leaders like former Indonesian President and head of the largest Indonesian Islamic organisation Nahdlatul Ulama with 40 million members, Gus Dur, yesterday.”

Unfortunately this multi-barrelled supplementary question to Rais was not asked as I did not get the chance to pose it during the exchange on the first question this morning on the measures the government was taking to tackle “foreign meddling in the sovereignty of laws of the country”.

However, as these questions continue to be uppermost in the minds of right-thinking, justice-loving and patriotic Malaysians, is the Abdullah government capable of answering them?

If so, I call on the Prime Minister or even Rais to make a Ministerial statement to answer all these questions before next Tuesday – the polling day for Permatang Pauh by-election.

Lim Kit Siang
19/08/08