The Nation, Thailand
Sept. 15, 1999
Malaysian justice system poisoned
Opening a major international conference of jurists this week, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, without so much as batting an eyelid, declared that ''Malaysia is a democratic country where the rule of law is upheld''.
That assertion, of course, should be taken with a very generous pinch of salt.
Indeed, foremost in the minds of the international legal fraternity at the 12th Commonwealth Law Conference in Kuala Lumpur must be the accusation by Mahathir's former protege, Anwar Ibrahim, that he was poisoned in prison.
Last Friday, Anwar was taken to hospital after his lawyers told the court during his sodomy trial that arsenic 77 times above normal levels had been found in his urine.
Apparently a sample of his urine was smuggled to Australia for testing because of concern for the former prime minister-in-waiting's abnormal hair loss, feelings of numbness in his fingers and a dramatic nine kilogrammes loss in weight. For centuries, perhaps since the arsenic poisoning of Napoleon, this nearly tasteless and odourless chemical has been the murder weapon of choice because of the subtlety of its effects when administered gradually, which can eventually lead to death.
The reaction from Mahathir to this latest opprobrium is a replay of an earlier incident when Anwar appeared in court sporting a black eye.
Then, Mahathir said that the injury could be self-inflicted. Now, he said the sample was probably someone else's urine. In addition, he suggested that Anwar's family might have given him poisoned food. He also accused Anwar of pulling a stunt, timing his allegation with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Auckland.
Kuala Lumpur has nevertheless ordered an investigation into the poison claim, but for many Malaysians nothing less than a truly independent probe will do. After all, the police investigation of Anwar's black eye took three months to complete and it led nowhere. It wasn't until an independent commission was established that the culprit who landed the near-fatal blows on Anwar was named. And that process, in contrast to the police probe, took no more than 10 days.
Anwar is not alone in facing the skewed justice system in Malaysia. On Saturday, Murray Hiebert, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, was jailed for six weeks after he lost an appeal against a contempt of court conviction.
His crime? He wrote an article in 1997 which suggested Malaysia was becoming an increasingly litigious society.
The article highlighted the case of a senior judge's wife who had taken legal action against an international school because her son was dropped from the debating team. It said the case had moved rapidly through the court system possibly because the tudent's father, Gopal Sri Ram, was a prominent judge. While the law suit was settled out of court, the plaintiff was so angered by Hiebert's article that she demanded the judge hearing the case jail him for contempt as an example to other ''errant'' journalists.
Hiebert, who is a Canadian citizen, has been prevented from leaving Malaysia for the past two years as he awaited the result of his appeal. He opted to begin his sentence now, rather than await a further appeal in a higher court, so that he could rejoin his family in Washington for Christmas.
Clearly, Malaysia has learnt well from its southern neighbour to couch its attacks against freedom of the press and its efforts to stifle criticism of the judiciary in the guise of law suits and contempt of court proceedings. Indeed, Hiebert is not the only person cited for ''scandalising'' the court: a number of lawyers, and more recently a Malaysian journalist, are facing charges of contempt.
Peer group pressure must be brought to bear on Malaysia to respect freedom of expression. Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy has vowed to raise the issue of Hiebert's jailing when the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, set up to investigate human rights abuses in member countries, meets later this month in New York. The Commonwealth is having a summit in November, which Mahathir is attending, and a censure by the grouping of the 54-nation grouping of mostly former British colonies will definitely rile the man who likes to fashion himself as the spokesperson of the Third
World.
In dismissing Anwar's poison claim, Mahathir said political assassination is not part of his country's culture. True, Malaysians have not seen much political killings, Benigno Aquino-style. But perhaps Mahathir should be reminded that Malaysia, too, does not have a culture of lies, fear and intimidation.
The Nation