DEMOCRATIC ACTION PARTY
Media Statement (3)
by DAP National Chairman Lim Kit Siang in Penang on
Tuesday, May 1, 2001:
Ministers should speak up in Cabinet tomorrow to
demand that the 10 ISA
detainees are allowed immediate access by family
members to ensure that the
ISA is not applied in the most inhuman manner in its
41-year history
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Barisan Nasional Ministers should speak up in Cabinet
tomorrow to
demand that the 10 ISA detainees are allowed immediate
access by their family
members as seven of them are entering the fourth
week of detention
probably making them ISA detainees longest denied
access to family
members.
As a two-time Internal Security Act (ISA)
detainee, I am very
concerned about the safety and treatment of the ten
ISA detainees, particularly
the first seven, namely Parti Keadilan Nasional Youth
chief Mohd Ezam
Mohd Nor, its vice president Tian Chua; Keadilan
supreme council member N.
Gobalakrishnan, Penang Keadilan Youth exco
member Abdul Ghani Harun,
former JIM Chairman Saari Sungib, Free Anwar Campaign
director Raja
Petra Kamaruddin and social activist Hishamuddin Rais.
The "assurance" given by the Deputy
Inspector-General of Police, Datuk
Jamil Johari when he responded to the query on the
condition of the
detainees: "What more safer place than in police
hands?" is no assurance at all.
Anwar Ibrahim and many other ISA detainees who had
been victims of
police brutality during the 60-day ISA interrogation
period would have
dissented and asserted that that in the
circumstances, there is "no more
dangerous place than in police hands".
Although the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister,
Datuk Seri
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had given an assurance that he
did not want to
see "another black eye" and that "We
have had enough with one black eye …We
don't want to see two or three more", the police
refusal to allow access to the
detainees after three weeks of the initial
arrest raises alarm about
their safety and treatment short of "another
black eye".
Deputy Home Minister, Datuk Chor Chee Heung does not
know what he is
talking about when he said that families of the 10 ISA
detainees will
be allowed to meet them only after police have
completed their
investigations.
Can he tell how many of the 118 politicians, social
activists and
academics who were detained under the ISA during
Operation Lalang in 1987 were
still denied access to family members in the fourth
week of their 60-day
detention? I will be surprised if there is any such
single person.
Ministers should query in Cabinet tomorrow why the ISA
is being
administered with unusual harshness and callousness
this time, in
utter disregard of the legitimate concerns of family
members, Malaysians
and the international civil society about the safety
and treatment of the
detainees by the obdurate refusal to allow
access to their family members
against all past police practices.
If Ministers dare not question the use of ISA, the
least they should
do is to ensure that it is not applied in the most
inhuman manner in the 41-
year history of the ISA by raising the issue of
immediate family access
for the 10 ISA detainees at the Cabinet meeting
tomorrow.
Lim Kit Siang
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