KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Two unmarked police
cars cut off Nagapan Gobalkrishnan as he drove away from a political
rally after delivering a blistering speech urging Malaysian Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad to resign.
"You have to come with us," one of the officers
told him. "We have to ask you some questions."
When he got to the police station that April
night, the commanding officer told Gobalkrishnan that he was being
detained under Malaysia's Internal Security Act, a colonial-era
law that allows people to be held without trial for as long as
the government wants. Police officials accused him and seven other
leaders of the opposition National Justice Party of planning to
use "militant means" to overthrow Mahathir, Asia's longest-serving
leader.
For the next seven weeks, Gobalkrishnan was
held in solitary confinement and denied access to a lawyer or
his family. He said he was subjected to lengthy interrogations,
often ending with fierce beatings, that focused not on the allegations
of political violence, which he denied, but on the internal operations
of his party and a large anti-government demonstration he had
been organizing.
"It was all a sham," growled Gobalkrishnan,
41, a loquacious veteran political activist. "They arrested us
on these false charges to intimidate us -- and the rest of the
opposition."
Rival politicians and human rights activists
contend that Mahathir is resorting to a variety of draconian measures
to crack down on a fast-growing opposition movement that has become
the most potent threat to his governing coalition in the two decades
he has been in power. Mahathir's government has ordered a wave
of arrests under the security act and he has banned all public
rallies, pulling thousands of police officers off their regular
jobs to break up any opposition gathering of more than four people.
"Our democracy is being emasculated because
he is afraid that he's not able to maintain his iron grip on power,"
said Chandra Muzaffar, deputy president of the National Justice
Party. The party was formed by the wife of Anwar Ibrahim, the
popular former deputy prime minister who was jailed on sodomy
charges that many here believe were fabricated.
Earlier this month, the government detained
10 more people under the security act, several of whom were active
members of the largest opposition group, the conservative Pan-Malaysian
Islamic Party. Officials accused the detainees, who allegedly
were trained in Afghanistan, of involvement in a series of bombings,
robberies and the murder of a politician. Party officials deny
the charges and say they were arrested because of their opposition
activities.
The arrests and the ban on assemblies have
ratcheted up political tensions in this Southeast Asian country
of 23 million people, raising fears of a broader opposition crackdown
and increasing religious and ethnic polarization in a country
that has long been regarded as a model of multiethnic harmony.
Although Mahathir's secular-oriented coalition
holds three-quarters of the seats in Parliament, opposition parties
have made significant inroads in recent years. In the last national
election, the Islamic party tripled its seats in the legislature
and captured two state governments.
Since then, opposition groups have continued
a campaign to persuade people to defect from Mahathir's party
by capitalizing on widespread disgust with his close relationship
with business tycoons, his demonization of Anwar, his manipulation
of the judicial system and his combative style. The Islamic party
also has tried to convince the dominant Malay population, which
is overwhelmingly Muslim, that Mahathir is not conservative enough
on religious issues.
Though there are no reliable opinion polls
in Malaysia, political analysts said the strategy appears to be
working. By all accounts, it has made Mahathir increasingly nervous.
"The aggressiveness of the opposition is causing
considerable concern," said Zulkifli Mohd Alwi, an official with
Mahathir's party, the United Malays National Organization.
The prime minister and his associates deny
that the arrests were an attempt to squelch his rivals. They contend
that the National Justice members and those affiliated with the
Islamic party intended to resort to violence to topple the government.
"Some even tried to make hand grenades, find
weapons and buy guns from other countries to hold demonstrations
and riots all the time until the government was ousted," Mahathir
said of the National Justice leaders who were detained. "We cannot
allow that."
But the government has not provided any evidence
of those claims. Under Malaysia's Internal Security Act, known
as the ISA, officials do not need to file charges or get a judge's
consent to hold a person incommunicado for 60 days. After that,
suspects deemed to be an ongoing risk to national security can
be incarcerated indefinitely by the home affairs minister. Legal
specialists said Malaysia's law is among the world's most repressive
security acts.
Lawyers representing the National Justice
Party detainees argue that the government's failure to provide
any evidence of the allegedly violent acts being planned suggest
that the claims were concocted. "These are just trumped-up reasons
offered to the public to legitimize the use of the ISA," said
attorney Sivarasa Rasiah. "The real purpose was to blunt the growing
strength of the opposition movement."
Sivarasa said his clients told him that they
were interrogated about the party's organization and finances,
not terrorism. They also said police officials urged them to renounce
their membership in the opposition and join Mahathir's party,
Sivarasa said. "This was all about politics," he said.
That was the same conclusion Gobalkrishnan
came to a few hours into his 51-day detention, when he was interrogated
for the first time.
"They never asked me any questions about terrorism,
or the grenades and guns and rocket launchers they said we were
going to use," he said. "They wanted to know about the inner workings
of the party."
Then, he said, his questioners "wanted me
to say that I had sex with women other than my wife, women in
the party. They wanted to portray women in the party as loose
women."
Political analysts and diplomats said they
were surprised by the police's apparent interest in the sex lives
of opposition members, noting that the government's graphic allegations
of sodomy involving Anwar, which resulted in a conviction despite
a raft of contradictory evidence, wound up hurting Mahathir's
reputation more than Anwar's in the eyes of many Malaysians.
Gobalakrishnan attributes his release, along
with one other party activist, to a sympathetic judge who bristled
at the government's failure to present any evidence of their alleged
crimes. Six other party leaders, whose appeal to be released was
denied by another judge, remain in custody. Mahathir's deputy
recently ordered them transferred to a prison camp after signing
an order allowing them to be detained for as long as two years.
Attorneys for the six have appealed to the
country's top court. In a surprising procedural victory, the country's
chief justice brushed aside government objections and ruled this
past week that he would consider evidence about the interrogations.
Party lawyers and rights activists are hoping
the chief justice, Mohamad Dzaiddin Abdullah, who has said he
wants to restore the "image" of the judiciary, will put Mahathir
on notice that the law cannot be used to target political opponents.
In recent months, the judiciary has been showing
signs of renewed independence. In the most notable example, a
judge in June nullified the results of a state election that had
been won by a member of Mahathir's ruling coalition. The judge
said that in 1999, when hearings on the case began, he had been
"given a directive" by a "superior" to dismiss it.
"The judges now feel they are a little freer,"
said Param Cumaraswamy, a Malaysian lawyer who serves as a U.N.
special overseer of judicial independence. "With the new chief
justice, the climate is more conducive for them to judge cases
on the facts and the law without taking into account outside pressures."
The prime minister said recently that his
government "does not apologize to anyone" for the arrests, which
he said were conducted "for the sake of the safety of the country's
majority."
Political analysts and diplomats said the
arrest of the 10 people alleged to have links to Islamic freedom
fighters in Afghanistan could be an attempt to deflect criticism
from Western governments over the security act. "He is trying
to portray this as a crackdown on Muslim extremists," said a Western
diplomat. "He's hoping it will play well in the United States
and Europe."
But the diplomat questioned the prime minister's
claims. "We haven't seen any evidence that really shows what these
guys were doing other than working for the opposition."
Some of Mahathir's allies have expressed concern
that the detentions could backfire, emboldening instead of intimidating
opposition leaders like Gobalkrishnan.
"Mahathir hasn't frightened me," Gobalkrishnan
said. "I'm going to continue the fight even if it means going
back to jail."
