From an AFP News report on September 15

 

A Malaysian Islamic court has sentenced an Indonesian man to be caned and jailed for drinking alcohol, weeks after triggering a furore by ordering a woman to be caned for the same offence.

The Sharia High Court in central Pahang state on Monday sentenced odd-job worker Nazarudin Kamaruddin to six strokes of the cane and one year's imprisonment, a court official confirmed.

"The sentence meted out to him is not meant as punishment but to serve as a lesson," judge Abdul Rahman Yunus said according to the New Straits Times, adding that Nazarudin had dishonoured the holy month of Ramadan.

Malaysia, a multicultural country with large Chinese and Indian communities, has a dual-track legal system and sharia courts can try Muslim Malays -- who make up 60 percent of the population -- for religious and moral offences.

In some parts of the country it is a punishable offence for Malays to drink alcohol. They can be fined, caned, or jailed for up to three years but prosecutions have until now been extremely rare.

The case of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a part-time model who in July was sentenced by the Pahang court to six strokes of the cane for drinking beer, was sharply criticised by human rights groups.

As international headlines mounted, jeopardising Malaysia's reputation as a moderate nation, the government last month announced her sentence would be reviewed, saying it was "too harsh".

Nazarudin, a 46-year-old permanent resident of Malaysia, said he had bought a bottle of "samsu", a cheap local liquor, to share with friends at a restaurant when religious authorities swooped in a raid.

"I've been in this country for so many years and have been very careful not to get onto the wrong side of the law," he told the paper.

 

It took a diminutive but courageous 32-year-old nurse and mother to expose what has been obvious to many but conveniently ignored: a grossly unjust and frankly hypocritical Malaysian Shari’a court system.
Subjecting a first offender – and a young mother at that – to six lashes of whipping for drinking beer in public cannot be considered a “just” punishment. Bluntly put, it is barbaric. And if something is not just, it cannot be Islamic. It is that simple. I wonder if those advocates for caning could tell me under what of the 99 attributes of Allah would caning a young mother fall under. Certainly not Ar Rauf (The Compassionate) or Ar Raheem (The Most Merciful)!

A Profile In Courage
Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno is truly a profile in courage, a genuine heroine. She did not seek out to be one; the circumstances could easily have tuned her into an angry rebel, or worse.
She succeeded by adhering to our traditional halus (soft) ways. She did not challenge the system; on the contrary she freely admitted to her error and accepted her fate, just like a good obedient Malay daughter was taught to be. She asked only that the whipping be done in public so others could learn from her mistake. How noble and touching!
By those seemingly meek actions she exposed the hypocrisy of the Islamic establishment, and did so far more effectively than all the shrill voices of those in Sisters-in-Islam and other vociferous advocates for reform. More significantly, her Gandhi-like passivity is now noticed by the world.
Thus far what seems to get whipped is the image of Malaysia as a modern tolerant Islamic country. Her submissiveness, reflecting her Islamic faith (Islam after all means ‘one who submits’), also rattled Prime Minister Najib and Women’s Minister Sharizat. It is hilarious if not pathetic to see them scurry for cover.
In urging Kartika to appeal despite having her appeal period lapse, both Najib and Sharizat must feel confident that the sentence would be reversed. What however, if it were sustained? Their utterances imply that they could influence if not control the Shari’a Appeals Court’s decision. That is a scary thought. It bears pointing out that Kartika was sentenced by a court in Pahang, Najib’s home state. Meanwhile Shahrizat is bewildered as to why Kartika refused to appeal. The poor Women’s Minister still has not figured it out.
Home Minister Hishammuddin too joined in with his share of idiocy. When Kartika presented herself to jail for the planned whipping, she was turned away as the prison, under Hishammuddin’s portfolio, was not prepared to carry out the sentence!
The idiocies did not stop there. The Chief Judge of Pahang’s Shari’a Court of Appeal ordered a deferment and review of the sentence “in the interest of justice.” Left unstated was under what statute his order was made. Then there was the Federal Attorney-General also intervening, obviously not realizing that Islam is strictly under state jurisdiction.
There are those who would like us to believe that the ‘Islamic’ version of whipping is not at all cruel. The association of Shari’a lawyers and an umbrella group of Muslim NGOs maintain that “caning, in the context of Muslim punishment, is for the purpose of education and is different from the penal nature of some provisions in the Common laws and the civil courts.” Let’s ‘educate’ them!
Presumably the ‘Islamic’ whipping is closer to the S&M variety. Kartika is assured that she would not be stripped but allowed to wear her baju kurong. How thoughtful! Perhaps they could supply her with a black leather one; she just might like the whipping.
The Perak mufti opined that Kartika should be grateful as she would receive only six instead of 80 lashes that the mufti himself would impose and, I presume, like to administer personally. Thanks to the mufti’s advice, Kartika has now accepted her fate with equanimity, if not his blessing.
In the ensuing furor, the sentence was deferred, “in the spirit of Ramadan!” The piety of these folks is truly touching. Presumably once Ramadan is over, and the furor subsided, the whipping could begin. What is obvious is that the deferment was a relief not for Kartika but the establishment, a chance for them to recover from their collective shame and stupidity.

Expansion of Shari’a
In the past, the Malaysian Shari’a was restricted to family laws with such mundane matters as inheritance, divorce, and adoption. As part of Mahathir’s move at “out Islaming” the opposition PAS, the Shari’a was granted greater jurisdictions such that today it is on par with the secular system, as well as extending into civil and criminal matters.
Malaysia prides itself in being the only nation with a unique dual-track justice system that coexists harmoniously. Both assertions are erroneous. Canada also has a dual judicial system, with Quebec following “civil law” based on the Napoleonic Code and the rest subscribing to common law of the English tradition. However, the Canadian Supreme Court has final authority over both.
As for the harmonious part, Malaysia has yet to resolve the often conflicting jurisdictions of the two systems. It is not at all clear whether the country’s Federal (Supreme) Court has jurisdiction over the Shari’a courts, which gives a special Malaysian meaning to the word “Supreme.” Many maintain that it does not, which makes a mockery of our constitution. This unresolved issue has consequences, often heart wrenching, as demonstrated in many recent well publicized cases.
As the Shari’a now also has criminal jurisdiction, Malaysians are inherently not treated equally under the law; their fate depends not on the crime but their faith. A non-Muslim man caught committing adultery faces only the wrath of his wife, and possibly her vicious divorce lawyer. A Muslim man however, could be whipped, the same ‘Islamic’ whipping that Kartika would face. Now imagine the complications if one partner is a Muslim and the other, non-Muslim.
There are other distressing inequities if not outright hypocrisy. While Kartika would be whipped for drinking beer in public, the Muslim directors of beer companies – the manufactures and pushers, in the language of the drug culture – are honored. I also do not see the Shari’a going after ministers and sultans running away from their gambling debts.
All these would have remained hidden had it not been for Kartika. We owe her an immense debt of gratitude for exposing this flawed and misguided system. She has done her part, but I do not see the nation doing its share. Instead we are consumed with the minutiae of her caning and ignore the huge elephant in the room: a hypocritical and an unjust Shari’a that is ill suited for our needs.
Muslims confuse the concept versus the content of Shari’a. The concept – Shari’a being a body of laws based on the Quran –is accepted by all. It is a matter of faith; no disagreement there. The contents however are the products of human interpretations. As such it suffers from all the imperfections inherent in such endeavors. It also results in the Shari’a of the Shiites being very different from that of the Sunnis, as well as variations within the Sunni Fighs.
The corollary is that the content of Shari’a can be debated. These discussions must necessarily involve all stakeholders, not just the scholars and ulamas, a point emphasized by Abdullahi An Naim in his book, The Future of Shari’a. He suggests that Muslims revisit the Shari’a using the same rigorous intellectual tools used by earlier luminaries while cognizant of today’s universally accepted norms of constitutionalism, gender equality, and human rights, among others.
If that is too ambitious, begin with a more modest one. Get rid of the unjust elements in our Shari’a, like whipping women, and the grossly “un-Islamic” elements in our secular laws, like jailing citizens without affording them due process.
That is the crux of the issue, not caning. Thanks to Kartika, she is forcing us to face this reality squarely. She gently stared at the system, and it blinked.

Malaysian caning reveals politics behind the punishment

 

MARK COLVIN: Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has intervened in the row over the Sharia law sentence of caning on a young woman for drinking a glass of beer.

The Prime Minister urged the woman Kartika Dewi Shukarno to appeal against the sentence. he said she'd been too quick in "asking for punishment".

Emeritus Professor Clive Kessler of the University of New South Wales has been studying Malaysian politics for more than 40 years and he's just back from two months there.

He says the whipping sentence on a woman was in itself a kind of political challenge to Najib Razak and his weakened UMNO Government.

The sentence had been due to be carried out yesterday but it was postponed allegedly because of Ramadan.

I asked Professor Kessler what was likely to have happened behind the scenes to delay the whipping.

CLIVE KESSLER: The story is that a higher authority prevented people proceeding with this. This presumably refers to the Federal Government which, in whose interests it is to stop this but in whose shorter term political expedient view it doesn't want to be seen to be acting and that's why there's a great degree of unclarity about how the matter is being handled.

Normally a first offender and one who shows remorse as this, as Kartika has, would not be treated severely. She might be fined if she was arrested at all. She has been given a maximum fine and sentenced to whipping.

MARK COLVIN: So why?

CLIVE KESSLER: Well because the Sharia Court wishes to impose that penalty. We shall come onto that in a moment. But the point is then that in order to have her whipped she technically needs to be in prison. She was not sentenced to a prison term so the manoeuvres yesterday were about the transferring of her to a prison even though she hadn't been sentenced...

MARK COLVIN: And that's got to be a federal prison...

CLIVE KESSLER: And that will have to be a federal prison...

MARK COLVIN: And that brings in the Federal Government.

CLIVE KESSLER: And that brings in the Federal Government, right.

MARK COLVIN: Are you saying that there is politics in the original decision? What, why? You said there was an interesting question as to why now.

CLIVE KESSLER: Well the deeper background to this is that you have a basic legal dualism, legal dichotomy in Malaysia. You have the coexistence both of derivatively common law, British law and Sharia based Islamic law.

In 1988 Dr Mahathir attempted to try and coopt or appease Islamist sentiment when Anwar Ibrahim was his deputy, passed a constitutional amendment whose implications he himself didn't really understand. He thought he was merely giving increased status to the Sharia courts; give them formal legal social equality with the other courts.

But in effect this has been the basis for massive expansion of the role, scope, the activism of Sharia law and placed the Sharia law and its proponents in a position where they can defy the claims of civil law and the state and even the Constitution.

MARK COLVIN: But you said that he did that in 1988. Why are they flexing their muscles now?

CLIVE KESSLER: Again good point. There has been an attempt to expand, to use that extra leeway ever since 1998 to expand the role, the scope, the activism of Sharia law.

The crucial, the crux of the matter came with the following the early 2008 elections, the March 2008 elections which represented a major setback for the UMNO - for the governing party and great advances in particular for its Islamist Opposition, the PAS, the Malayan Islamic party.

In this context the UMNO is seeking to detach PAS from the Opposition Coalition and to garner its support for itself. The UMNO is trying to appease the Islamic party and cannot afford to stand out and oppose it...

MARK COLVIN: So this is all about the fact that UMNO is extremely weak. The Government is crumbling.

CLIVE KESSLER: UMNO is in disarray. It's in paralysis. PAS knows it and in that context the people, whether they are Islamic supporters are not, but who are Sharia law activists and expansionist see the opportunity through the Sharia courts to suddenly impose unprecedented, outra...

MARK COLVIN: The divide and rule strategy.

CLIVE KESSLER: Well the UMNO is trying to play wedge politics of its own and the Islamic party response is playing its kind of wedge politics.

What they are, having failed earlier to get, have the formal institution of the Hudud punishments of the Sharia law, hand chopping and all the rest of it, enacted because to do that at a state level required federal consent which the federal government wouldn't give under Dr Mahathir.

What many of the Sharia court activists such as these judges in Pahang are basically declaring anyway de facto Hudud law sentences without there being enacted and as an ambit claim, as a challenge, as a try-on to see if the UMNO led Government has the courage to stand its ground and oppose them. And so far it has not shown that courage.

MARK COLVIN: Now Kartika, the woman at the centre of all this has said that she wants her caning to take place in public and probably on television. Does that indicate that she may also be playing a political game in all of this?

CLIVE KESSLER: This one can speculate about. I wondered for a while whether she had a very cunning and crafty lawyer and she was playing a very subtle strategy.

It would now seem that she, from the information I've heard, that she has not been particularly well served by her legal advisers. Her father has been very upset about this. And in this context she took the view she wanted it to be over and done with.

But in that context she or her father took the view that if this was going to be done it should be seen publicly to be done.

And that seemed to me would be a good strategy to stop people in their tracks. To some extent the thought of whipping anybody and whipping them in public is appalling.

Whipping is part of Malaysian law for certain crimes but under the civil law of the state whipping is nor permissible for men over 55 and for women at all. Yet the Sharia court authorities were seeking to have this woman transferred on their remit, on their order to a basic, basically to a civil law detention institution for her to be whipped under provisions, their provisions of Sharia law against the provisions of the civil law and constitutional tradition.

MARK COLVIN: How much damage in the end will it have done to Malaysia's international image?

CLIVE KESSLER: I think the potential for damage is enormous. Malaysia wishes to see itself and to be seen internationally as a model, modern, moderate, progressive Islamic country.

Well you can't pursue that objective, hold that view and go ahead with this whipping.

While torture under the Bush administration was horrible, at least it has stopped. Right?

Wrong.

Jeremy Scahill (the reporter who broke most of the stories on Blackwater) says that a military police unit at Guantanamo regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals.

Specifically, whenever there is “disobedience” by the detainees - which can include praying, or having 2 styrofoam cups in their cell instead of 1, or refusing medication or failing to immediately respond when spoken to - the “Immediate Reaction Force” (IRF) is sent in.

Scahill describes what happens next:

When an IRF team is called in, its members are dressed in full riot gear, which some prisoners and their attorneys have compared to “Darth Vader” suits. Each officer is assigned a body part of the prisoner to restrain: head, right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg…

[The IRF teams then mete out brutal punishment, including] gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner’s head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them — sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end…

[One prisoner was sprayed directly in the eyes with mace and gouged in the eyes and was then refused medical treatment, which resulted in permanent blindness in one eye. He also endured a "sexual attack".

Another prisoner had a third prisoner's feces spread on him.]

There was also torture using water:

The ERF team came into the cell with a water hose under very high pressure. He was totally shackled, and they would hold his head fixed still. They would force water up his nose until he was suffocating and would scream for them to stop. This was done with medical staff present, and they would join in.

Scahill says that these are not “a few bad apples”:

The IRF teams “were fully approved at the highest levels [of the Bush administration], including the Secretary of Defense and with outside consultation of the Justice Department,” says Scott Horton, one of the leading experts on U.S. Military and Constitutional law. This force “was designed to disabuse the prisoners of any idea that they would be free from physical assault while in U.S. custody,” he says. “They were trained to brutally punish prisoners in a brief period of time, and ridiculous pretexts were taken to justify” the beatings.

Scahill’s allegations are being confirmed by the Spanish torture investigation. Indeed:

“Up to 15 people attempted to commit suicide at Camp Delta due to the abuses of the IRF officials,” according to the Spanish investigation.

One particular incident shows how brutal the IRF interrogators are:

In January 2003, Sgt. Sean Baker [an active-duty U.S. soldier and Gulf War veteran] was ordered to participate in an IRF training drill at Guantánamo where he would play the role of an uncooperative prisoner. Sgt. Baker says he was ordered by his superior to take off his military uniform and put on an orange jumpsuit like those worn by prisoners. He was told to yell out the code word “red” if the situation became unbearable, or he wanted his fellow soldiers to stop.

According to sworn statements, upon entering his cell, IRF members thought they were restraining an actual prisoner. As Sgt. Baker later described:

They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and, unfortunately, one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was ‘red.’ … That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: ‘I’m a U.S. soldier. I’m a U.S. soldier.’

Sgt. Baker said his head was slammed once more, and after groaning “I’m a U.S. soldier” one more time, “I heard them say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ you know, like … he was telling the other guy to stop.”

According to CBS:

Bloodied and disoriented, Baker somehow made it back to his unit, and his first thought was to get hold of the videotape. “I said, ‘Go get the tape,’ ” recalls Baker. ” ‘They’ve got a tape. Go get the tape.’ My squad leader went to get the tape.”

Every extraction drill at Guantanamo was routinely videotaped, and the tape of this drill would show what happened. But Baker says his squad leader came back and said, “There is no tape.”

The New York Times later reported that the military “says it can’t find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident.” Baker was soon diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. He began suffering seizures, sometimes 10 to 12 per day.

“This was just one typical incident, and Baker was recognizable as an American,” says Horton. “But it gives a good flavor of what the Gitmo detainees went through, which was generally worse.”

If they did that to a U.S. soldier during a training exercise, one who was given a special code word to have the interrogation stop, what they do to actual detainees must be much worse.

The torture by IRF teams is continuing under the Obama administration. In fact, it is actually getting worse:

The Center for Constitutional Rights released a report titled “Conditions of Confinement at Guantánamo: Still In Violation of the Law,” which found that abuses continued. In fact, one Guantanamo lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, said that his clients were reporting “a ramping up in abuse” since Obama was elected.

And see this.

Note: I don’t know whether or not torture is continuing in conjunction with interrogations. This essay focuses on a different type of torture.

When An Iranian appeals court announced that it was reducing the sentence and ordering the immediate release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was convicted by an Iranian court last month of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison,work the Western News network aired saturated coverage of her.

 

But the US media and networks were cpmpletely silent on their government's incarceration of foreign journalists allegedly for espionage as well. However, unlike Saberi,none of them were ever charged.Saberi's imprisonment in January became a cause célèbre among American journalists, who -- along with the U.S. Government -- rallied to demand her release.  Within minutes of the announcement, several of them posted celebratory notices of Saberi's release.

 

 

 

 

Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind, and spent most of that time interrogating him not about Terrorism, but about Al Jazeera.  For virtually the entire time, the due-process-less, six-year-long imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. produced almost no coverage -- let alone any outcry -- from America's establishment media, other than some columns by Nicholas Kristof (though, for years, al-Haj's imprisonment was a major media story in the Muslim world).  As Kristof noted when al-Haj was finally released in 2007:  "there was never any real evidence that Sami was anything but a journalist"; "the interrogators quickly gave up on asking him substantive questions" and "instead, they asked him to spy on Al-Jazeera if he was released;" and "American officials, by imprisoning an Al-Jazeera journalist without charges or meaningful evidence, have done far more to damage American interests in the Muslim world than anything Sami could ever have done."

 

In Iraq, we imprisoned Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein -- part of AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning war coverage -- for almost two years with no charges of any kind, after Hussein's photographs from the Anbar province directly contradicted Bush administration claims about the state of affairs there.  And that behavior was far from aberrational for the U.S., as the Committee to Protect Journalists -- which led the effort to free Saberi -- documented:

Hussein’s detention is not an isolated incident. Over the last three years, dozens of journalists—mostly Iraqis—have been detained by U.S. troops, according to a Centre To Protect Journalist research. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by U.S. forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction. In one highly publicized case, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, a freelance cameraman working for CBS, was detained after being wounded by U.S. military fire as he filmed clashes in Mosul in northern Iraq on April 5, 2005. U.S. military officials claimed footage in his camera led them to suspect Hussein had prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces. In April 2006, a year after his arrest, Hussein was freed after an Iraqi criminal court, citing a lack of evidence, acquitted him of collaborating with insurgents.

 

As the American press corps celebrates itself for demanding Saberi's release in Iran -- the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters, even though an Iraqi court last December -- more than five months ago -- found that there was no evidence to justify his detention and ordered him released.  The U.S. -- over the objections of the CPJ, Reporters Without Borders and Reuters -- refused to recognize the validity of that Iraqi court order and announced it would continue to keep him imprisoned.

 

One finds only a tiny fraction of news coverage in the U.S. regarding the treatment of al-Haj, Hussein, Jassam and these other imprisoned journalists as has been devoted to Saberi.  It ought to be exactly the reverse:  the American media should be far more interested in, and opposed to, infringements of press freedoms by the U.S. Government than by governments of other countries.  Yet the former merits hardly a peep, while the latter provokes all sorts of smug and self-righteous protests from American journalists who suddenly discover their brave commitment to press freedoms when all that requires is pointing to a demonized, hated foreign government and complaining.

 

Many people scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process.The US mainstream media loves to point to and loudly condemn the behavior of other governments as proof of how tyrannical and evil they are -- look at those Iranian mullah-fanatics imprisoning journalists/look at those primitive, corrupt, lawless Iraqis and their "culture of impunity"/look at the UAE and their tolerance of torture -- while completely ignoring, when they aren't justifying, identical behavior by their own government.

 

In Iran, at least Saberi received the pretense of an actual trial and appeal (one that resulted in her rather rapid release, a mere three weeks after she was convicted), as compared to the journalists put in cages for years by the U.S. Government with no charges of any kind, or as compared to the individuals whom we continue to abduct, transport to Bagram, and insist on the right to imprison indefinitely with no charges of any kind.  Who was treated better and more consistently with ostensible Western precepts of justice and press freedoms:  Roxana Saberi or Sami al-Haj?  Saberi or Bilal Hussein?  Saberi or Ibrahim Jassam?  Saberi or the Bagram detainees shipped to Afghanistan and held in a dank prison, away from the sight of the entire world, without even a pretense of judicial review, a power the Obama administration continues to insist it possesses?

 

Pointing to other governments and highlighting their oppressive behavior can be cathartic, fun and gratifying in a self-justifying sort of way.  Ask Fred Hiatt; it's virtually all he ever does.  But the first duty of the American media -- like the first duty of American citizens -- is to oppose oppressive behavior by our own government.  That's not as fun or as easy, but it is far more important.  Moreover, obsessively complaining about the rights-abridging behavior of other countries while ignoring the same behavior from our own government is worse than a mere failure of duty.  It is propagandistic and deceitful, as it paints a misleading picture that it is other governments -- but not our own -- which engage in such conduct.

 

A search for "Roxana Saberi" reveals 2,201 mentions in press reports, virtually all of them in the last two months regarding her arrest by Iran.  By stark contrast, a search for "Ibrahim Jassam" -- the Iraqi journalist still held without charges by the U.S. even in the face of an Iraqi court finding that there's no evidence of his guilt -- produces a grand total of 71 mentions.  A search of "Sami al-Haj" for the first five years of his detention in Guantanamo (2001-2006) reveals a grand total of 101 mentions.  For the entire period of his lawless detention, Bilal Hussein's name was mentioned 556 times.  See those Nexis searches here.

 

One of the rare mentions of Jassam was an Associated Press International report that ran in the February 11, 2009, issue of The New Zealand Herald.  It reported:

A media watchdog group [the Committee to Protect Journalists] said it has urged President Barack Obama to end the US military's practice of detaining journalists without charges and asked for a full investigation into killings of journalists by US military forces. . . .

Officials with the New York-based group took the United States to task, saying the detention of journalists without trial by US authorities in such countries as Iraq has reduced America's standing in the world and emboldened other countries to do the same. . . .

[Wall St. Journal editor Paul Steiger] noted in [the letter to Obama] that 14 journalists have been held without due process for long periods in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Sixteen journalists have been killed by US fire in Iraq, he said.

"We don't believe that these are deliberate attacks, but they have not been adequately investigated," Simon said.

Journalists detained by US forces in Iraq include Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who was held without charges for two years before being released in April 2008.

 

 

 

 

What a waste of public funds! The creation of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission will go down in history as a feeble and pathetic final clutch at the straws by a sitting duck prime minister best remembered for his inexhaustible supply of good intentions but with nothing to show for them. The MACC was hastily conceived against a murky background of a web of duplicity and deceit. It was a desperate attempt at deluding the people of this country and the world anti-corruption community at large that the Abdullah Badawi administration still had a lot of fire in its belly to make corruption a high risk and low return business. The whole process was nothing more that a charade, a sleight of hand that we had come to expect of this government.

In the meantime, corruption continues to be in robust good health. We saw the Anti-Corruption Agency for what it really was in operational terms. It was the weakest link in both the “supply and demand sides” of the corruption equation. We saw the ACA as part of the problem of corruption and not, as it should rightly have been, part of the solution. We thought its claim to “independence” was a joke in poor taste. It was as independent as a beached whale. We demanded from day one that the ACA be converted into an independent commission along the lines of the highly professional Independent Commission Against Corruption with a strong and influential oversight civilian committee to keep an eye on the staff who could otherwise be tempted to abuse their wide powers. After years of insisting that the ACA was independent despite glaring examples to the contrary, the government finally relented just as the Abdullah Badawi administration went into its death throes. Abdullah Badawi woke up all of a sudden to try to put in place the flawed Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission. He is, he has just told us, happy with the judiciary and the MACC. But then our prime minister is an easy man to please. You will note that for all the rhetoric about an independent commission, the key operating word itself does not appear in the name and title of the new body. I suppose it matters not what name you give it, the creation of the MACC is nothing if not a clumsy attempt at decanting old wine into a new bottle. As for the much hyped up “Hong Kong model” upon which the new corruption fighting machine is apparently based, the less said about this the better. It is clear for all to see that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission falls far short of the Hong Kong template on at least two counts. The first and most obvious shortcoming is an absence in the current law of a provision enabling a MACC officer to call anyone to account for their wealth and lifestyle that stick out like a sore thumb against his known income. It is not a crime for public servants to be wealthy, but would they please explain how they have acquired their wealth to the satisfaction of the authorities, assuming naturally that the authorities themselves are incorruptible? The absence of this specific provision in the law renders the fight against corruption an exercise in futility. The legions of the corrupt in Malaysian public life know that they cannot be touched. The framers of the law knew what they were doing when they decided to omit this powerful provision both in the 1997 Act as well as the current law. They claim that there is no need for it as there is already in the statute book a provision against money laundering. They have missed the point deliberately and with a cynicism of Machiavellian proportions. It is frighteningly sinister. The second and equally serious shortcoming is the quality of the commissioners. You cannot by any stretch of the imagination compare them with their highly professional Hong Kong counterparts. I have kept abreast of the excellent work of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption from the time when the iconic Bertrand de Speville was its commissioner. The Hong Kong model works because of the quality of the officers employed. They are all of them drawn from the professions, and are well trained to behave and act professionally. Above all, the ICAC is truly independent, set out to be just that from day one. Now that the MACC has been officially launched, let us hope it will shed its reputation for bias and sloppy approach to its mission, and above all, its officers must resist the great temptation of seeking premature publicity such as the “million flying licences” of some years ago. Let your professionalism be its own reward, and Datuk Seri Ahmad Said Hamdan, the head of the organisation should learn to keep his counsel and not repeat that most uncalled for and disgraceful act of finding Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim guilty while his “car and cow” case was still a work in progress. I wrote this piece before the official launch of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission yesterday, and I am glad that I delayed submitting it to the editors so that I can now have the pleasure of congratulating Datuk Anwar Fazal, a partner in the setting up of Transparency International Malaysia, Tan Sri Megat Najmuddin, and Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon, all strong anti-corruption advocates and my co-workers, on their appointment to the advisory board. They have their work cut out for them, and I wish them well. As for the MACC, remember this; we can have the best legal framework, systems and procedures, but if we put crooks in charge, nothing will change. A “bunga tahi ayam” by any other name will not smell like a rose.

Blogger Augustine “Gus” Gan Liam Tee, a 47-year-old father of two, was one of 21 people who appeared in court on 23 January on charges of “illegal assembly” and “disobeying a police order to disperse” in connection with an anti-government demonstration on 11 November. Leading bloggers Raja Petra Kamarudin (Malaysia Today), Haris Ibrahim (People’s Parliament) and Bernard Khoo (Zorro Unmasked) were also among the accused, as were parliamentarians and the head of the Malaysian bar association.

The defendants all pleaded not guilty and the defence called for the case to be dismissed as the right of assembly is guaranteed by article 10.1.b of the Malaysian constitution. The judge ordered each of them to pay bail of 1,500 ringgits (312 euros) and adjourned the case until 10 March. An appeal for donations to help pay the bail yielded a total of 43,500 ringgits (9,000 euros), much more than the sum required. It was decided to use the balance to start a fund for bloggers in case of more arrests.

BARELY a day after Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi unveiled his judicial and anti-corruption reforms, criticism has poured in from all fronts.

 

Earlier, in my first posting about the ACA revamp I pointed out the discrepancies between the promises and the realities of the new-look entity. As expected from the responses from most parties, there is nothing new that would make the ACA more efficient or independent, except to burden the tax-payers by adding more layers of red tape, perhaps hiding the fact it was no better than the current watchdog.

 

IWhile Malaysians have been dreaming of an independent judiciary and a powerful body to curb endemic corruption, the tabling of the Judicial Appointments Council Bill (JAC) and the Malaysian Commission for Anti-Corruption Bill (Maca) by the prime minister himself a few days ago would tend to arouse elation that eventually something good is going to be done.

By right, such important bills should have been published long before they are tabled in Parliament, to invite public discussion from all stakeholders, which in this case, is the entire population of Malaysia. But patronising BN government would never dream of consulting the rakyat, so that is that.

It seemed as if no one had a good word for the two Bills presented to Parliament on Wednesday. 

 

Key materials based on which the sedition charge against blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin was framed have been tampered with, his lawyer J Chandra claimed today. [Malaysiakini, 9/10/08]

October 9, 2008: The prosecution just admitted that the exhibit which forms the foundation of the charge against RPK was not originally taken from Malaysia-Today but was a police cut-&-paste job.They also did not deny that a large part of the original article is true. [Malaysia Today, 9/10/08]

On October 6, controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin (image) was taken to the Petaling Jaya Sessions Court to face a sedition trial regarding his article, Let's send the Altantuya murderers to hell dated April 25 on his website, Malaysia Today.

The 58 year old was charged for implying Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and his wife, Rosmah Mansor were involved in the murder of Mongolian national, Altantuya Shaariibuu. Raja Petra was arrested on September 12 for another article of his for allegedly "insulting Islam" and have been sentenced to 2 years in detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA).

If found guilty of sedition, Raja Petra could face up to three years of imprisonment or not more than RM5,000 fine, or both. However, signs of police hanky panky in their handling of the case were already showing.

On October 9, it was reported that the prosecutor admitted that there was a mistake by the police in the exhibit that formed the foundation of the sedition charge. Raja Petra's defence lawyer J. Chandra claimed that key materials used as evidence against the blogger was altered and tempered with; possibly to frame his client.

True enough, the prosecutor conceded that the evidences brought against Raja Petra was not originally taken from his site, Malaysia Today but was also a police cut and paste job. Reports also disclosed that the prosecutor did not deny the truth contained in a large part of Raja Petra's article.

Justice Rozina Ayob, who is presiding the trial was shocked to learn that the evidences were manipulated and could therefore dismiss the sedition charge all together. However, the prosecution sought to stand down on the trial and requested for more time to decide their next decisive step as their initial charge was faulty to begin with. The court was adjourned to October 13.

This was not the first time the prosecutor embarrassed themselves over Raja Petra's sedition charge in court. On the first day of the trial, deputy public prosecutor Farhan Read summoned Harme Mohamed, a 39-year-old information technology expert from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) as trial's first witness. The commission was responsible for the closure on the Malaysia Today on August 27 but the ban on the site have been lifted.

Harme was called to the stand to explain on various technical terms and the basic technology behind website hosting. The prosecutor spent 5 hours questioning the technology expert over the definitions of the internet, servers, internet service providers (ISP), online blogs, Wikipedia and so on.

Judge Rozina Ayob was reportedly annoyed with the prosecutor's irrelevant questions like Wikipedia and blogs and subsequently told Farhan to rephrase his lengthy questions and avoid repetition. However, when asked to explain the relevancy of his questions, Farhan failed to provide a sound explanation and then withdrew his prior queries.

If Raja Petra's trial wasn't already a waste of time, a 5 hour long lecture on the internet and Wikipedia by a lawyer certainly was.

During a cross-examination session, the MCMC technology expert also confessed that he was an avid Malaysia Today reader; browsing through Raja Petra's Malaysia Today at least once a week. Nonetheless, the prosecution intends to call six to seven more witnesses to testify against Raja Petra.

Perhaps six to seven more Malaysia Today readers too?

The disgraceful shams from the public prosecutor further affirms that the arrest of Raja Petra was altogether baseless and unlawful. The fact that the evidence was manipulated and the countless irrelevant questions were enough to show that the instigators of Raja Petra's downfall were indeed running in circles.

The prosecutors of this trial might just stand a better chance in proving that cows could fly rather than making a stab at framing an innocent man of a non-existant crime.

 

This is a follow-through to my last posting on the Pulau Batu Putih issue.

 

In the aftermath of the Pulau Batu Putih loss to Singapore, it looks like the Malaysian mainstream media has gone into spin overdrive, as expected. While we the public had been told by Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim less than a week ago that Malaysia would win,  the ultimate reality is not as soothing as what the media controlled by the powers-would-be is trying to force on us. His claim that it was a “win-win “ situation rings hollow in the face of the humiliating reality that now the country is forced to accept, after the ruling by the International Court of Justice.

 

Please remember that the whole objective of the exercise is for Malaysia to regain possession of Pulau Batu Putih. The Abdullah administration and his media spin meisters did not emphasise at all Middle Rock and Southern Ledge, which are  actually just  a few rocks jutting from the water anyway. When the Malaysian media reported about the two other rock outcroppings on Saturday, it was the first time the public heard about Middle Rock and Southern Ledge – and with very good reason. Those teeny-weeny stones are of  no consequence at all, and was never the prime objective at all. However, the embarassing outcome for Malaysia forced some media doctors to bring out the fig-leaves to cover up the dissapointments.

 

 The real prize here is PBP and not those stones, so it comes with some amusement and disappointment that the UMNO-controlled newspapers have tried to putar belit the news as a 50-50 win for Malaysia and the republic via awarding two tiny stones jutting from the water aka Middle Rock as belonging to Singapore’s northern neighbour. At best, this can only be seen as a very tiny consolation, compared to the very strategic and much larger PBP, which has a state-of-the art lighthouse dubbed Horsburgh by the US Marines. The Americans installed listening devices aimed up the straits of Melaka, and no doubt Singapore intelligence are listening to Malaysia’s radio traffic. Now that it is confirmed that PBP is Singapore territory,the republic's matritime border is too close for confort to Johor Baharu. Thus, Malaysia's main objective for wanting  back control of PBP – security of sovereign waters and air-space- has failed miserably.

 

Another reason for having back PBB is for Johor fishermen to be able to venture farther into waters that their ancestors hundreds of years ago could do, but are out of bounds to them since the 1950’s. The latest ruling is only prolonging their agony, especially after all that spin and hype by UMNO that their welfare is being protected. How would the Prime Minister explain this , not just to Johoreans but to all Malaysians? One of the Malay newspapers had the obligatory “win-win” report on the front-page, but buried deep within its pages was the stark and painful reality of a report about a group of Johor trawlermen  looking sadly  at a TV News report about Singapore’s victory. One of the fishermen was quoted as saying that he and his colleagues were pinning their hopes on the case so that they could provide some extra income to feed their families. No such luck here, I’m afraid.

 

So, no matter how much hyperbole and  spin the media tries to make out of the PBB loss,  I believe the public will not be taken in – even if they are caught between a rock and a hard place.

 

 

 

Court awards islet to Singapore

The InternationalCourt of Justice has ruled in favour of Singapore in its 29-year dispute with Malaysia over a tiny uninhabited island, making more problems for the embattled Abdullah administration.   However, when I followed the “live” announcement on RTM1 by Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim on Friday afternoon, you wouldn’t guess that Malaysia lost Pulau Batu Putih, to the republic. Rais talked about cooperation with Singapore by having a joint commission for the island’s use, which he already did a few days earlier. I suspected then that things would not turn out the way Malaysia wanted. What a spin! He said then, and on Friday, that Malaysia hopes to have cooperation with Singapore on the island and two other islets, Middle Rock and South Ledge. Watching his comments on TV, Rais said in his meandering diplomatic language that the ICJ did not find any evidence of structures on PBP ( called Pedra Bianca by Singapore) to award the biggest of the three islets to Malaysia. This was the bombshell that finally wrapped up the outcome, although Middle Rock was awarded to Malaysia while the third islet’s possession had yet to be determined. So, Singapore gets the prize while Malaysia the crumbs.   I recalled also that almost two weeks ago he was quoted in the mainstream media as saying that Malaysia was confident of having the ICJ ruling in it’s favour for all three points of contention. Now it looks like an embarrassing setback, hence the talk about trying to get an agreement with Singapore. It’s the talk of the loser. This comes at a time when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is facing mounting pressure to quit, starting with the heavy losses of the general election on March 8. The ICJ ruling will further add ammunition to Abdullah's critics, especially in Johor where he is percieved to be too soft on the republic. Many Johoreans had been offering special prayers for a favourable outcome, but this result will not improve the federal government's standings in the eyes of the general public as well.   The UN court in The Hague ruled by 12 votes to four that sovereignty belonged to the Republic of Singapore. The football field-sized island is valued for its strategic position. It is located by the Malacca Strait, which carries 40% of the world's trade.   The dispute is one of several that have soured relations between Malaysia and Singapore since they separated in 1965, after a brief union following their independence from Britain. Malaysia said that the rocky granite outcrop on the Singapore Strait historically belonged to the sultanate of Johor. But Singapore argued that it had exercised sovereign rights there since the 1800s, when the British colonial government occupied it and built Horsburgh lighthouse there.   The case was referred to the court in The Hague in 2003. It agreed with Singapore and Friday's ruling was the final say in a dispute that began in 1979.

 

 

 

United Kingdom police were alerted to a luxury auto distribution operation involving Malaysia's auto czar Tan Sri Nasimuddin Amin which was allegedly exporting cars to Malaysia using forged British vehicle-registration documents.

Now lawyers and auto executives wonder whether the probe will be abandoned following Tan Sri Nasimuddin's death in the US yesterday of cancer.

Sources close to the situation told The Straits Times that the investigation is in its initial stages and stems from a business disagreement between Tan Sri Nasimuddin and his one-time British business partner, Mr Nigel Peter Albon.

According to the lawyers and auto executives, the dispute is over funds Tan Sri Nasimuddin allegedly owed Mr Albon.

In the course of the legal wrangling, the mechanics of Tan Sri Nasimuddin's export operations surfaced.

The Malaysian tycoon was a major recipient of so-called Approved Permits (AP), which are essentially licences to import foreign cars into Malaysia. These APs are granted to a select group of government agencies and ethnic Malay businessmen like Tan Sri Nasimuddin.

Foreign auto industry executives have long argued for the scrapping of the controversial AP system citing concerns that the import licensing system is not well supervised, resulting in the loss of millions of ringgit in foregone tax revenues.

Auto industry executives say that in some instances new cars purchased overseas are passed off at the Customs entry point in Malaysia as second-hand vehicles using forged documents which predate the year of manufacture.

'By backdating the year of manufacture, the importer pays less tax to the government,' says a senior car industry executive familiar with the dispute between Tan Sri Nasimuddin and Mr Albon.

Executives from Tan Sri Nasimuddin's Naza Group were not available for immediate comment.

Disputes between Tan Sri Nasimuddin and his business partners are not new.

Last year, he was embroiled in a fight with his Singapore partners over the distribution of Ferrari models in Malaysia.

Businessman Alfred Tan Chor How and his son, Edward, left Malaysia abruptly last year after they fell out with him over disagreements on how to run their car import business.

The elder Mr Tan is the patriarch of Singapore's Hong Seh Group, a marine equipment supplier which diversified into the distribution of luxury cars in the early 1980s.

The company has been the sole agent for the distribution of Ferraris in Singapore since 1982 and added the Maserati and Bentley franchise to its list in the early 1990s.

The Tans struck a partnership with Tan Sri Nasimuddin in 1996 through a joint-venture company called Next Car Sdn Bhd.

  "The storm in Terengganu is just the latest in a series of crises brought on by an apparent failure to understand how State powers work relative to Federal ones."

-Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah  

The post-election period has brought into focus matters pertaining to the powers of our monarchy under the law. The question as to who actually has the power to appoint the menteri besar plus the qualification of a menteri besar comes to light. The following questions and answers relating to the powers of our monarchy with reference to the state of Terengganu are highlighted :

Question 1: Who has power to appoint the menteri besar of Terengganu.

Answer: His Royal Highness, the Sultan of Terengganu.

Question 2 : What is the criteria to become MB of Terengganu?

Answer: Under Article 10 of the constitution of Terengganu (first part), the Sultan appoints a menteri besar who fulfils the following criteria: ‘He is of the Malay race and professes the Muslim religion’ and ‘who in his judgment is likely to command the confidence of the majority of members of the assembly’ [Article 14 (2) (a)]

Question 3 : Can his royal highness forego/dispense of the above criteria?

Answer: Yes, under article 14 (4) of the Terengganu constitution, it says: ‘In appointing a mentri besar, His Royal Highness may, in his discretion, dispense with any provision in Article 10 restricting his choice of a mentri besar, if, in his opinion, it is necessary to do so in order to comply with the provisions of this article’.

Question 4: Who advises His Royal Highness?

Answer: The advisors to His Royal Highness under the state constitution are divided into three:

1. The state executive council [Article 12(1)]

2. Any person or body of persons that may be specified [Article 12 (1a)]

3. The State Council for Religion and Malay Customs (Article 4)

Question 5: Is His Royal Highness, in the exercise of his functions, bound to accept and act upon such advice?

Answer: Yes, under Article 12 (1) and (1a) it says: ‘His Royal Highness shall act in accordance with the advice of the state executive council’ and ‘His Royal Highness shall accept and act in accordance with such advice’.

Question 6: Does this mean that His Royal Highness has no discretionary powers in exercising his authority?

Answer: No. His Royal Highness still retains his ‘discretion’ in the performance of the following functions as per Article 12(2) of the state constitution:

1. The appointment of the state’s menteri besar;

2. The withholding of consent to a request for the dissolution of the State Legislative Assembly;

3. The making of a request for a meeting of the Conference of Rulers concerned with the privileges, position, honours and dignities of their Royal Highnesses or religious acts, observances or ceremonies;

4. Any function as Head of the Muslim religion or relating to customs of the Malays;

5. The appointment of an heir or heirs, consort, Regent or the Council of Regency;

6. The appointment of persons to Malay customary ranks, titles, honours and dignities and the designation of the functions appertaining thereto; and

7. The regulation of the royal court and palaces.

Moreover Article 12 (3) provides that the state has no powers to make laws requiring His Royal Highness to act only after consultation with or on recommendation of any person or body of persons in the exercise of the above functions.

This means that the Sultan still retains some form of discretionary powers which include the appointment of the menteri besar. This provision is in line with Article 14 (4) which states that the Sultan may dispense with the requirement of Article 10 which requires that the menteri besar be a Malay and commands the confidence of the majority of the state legislative assembly.

 

So, now lets track how the media have been covering the report.

A Malaysian corruption commission heard sensational testimony Tuesday that a lawyer at the centre of the inquiry wrote the judgement in a historic defamation suit, on behalf of the judge.

 

 A Royal Commission appointed to probe questions of political favoritism in the appointment of some top judges is threatening to spin out of control and envelop the entire Malaysian judiciary in charges of deceit, corruption and factionalism. Fingers are also being pointed at some of the would-be reformers in the Malaysian Bar Association.

The commission was appointed by the government last year after opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim made public an eight-minute segment of a 2002 videotape purporting to show a prominent lawyer discussing the appointment of top judges.

With Malaysia’s courts often accused of being under the thumb of the country’s political leaders, the commission’s work offers up a tantalizing look into how the judiciary may be compromised by intervention from on high. It remains to be seen if there is any real appetite to rattle the skeletons in the judicial closet, however.

VK Lingam, the lawyer on the tape, is seen in conversation with Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim, then the country’s third-ranking judge who was in charge of most senior judges. The conversation seemed to indicate that Mahathir Mohamad, then the prime minister, was closely involved in the appointment of malleable judges. The videotape purports to show that some of Mahathir’s closest cronies, particularly gaming tycoon Vincent Tan, were involved as well. Ahmad Fairuz later became chief justice of the Supreme Court, now called the Federal Court.

However, Mahathir’s involvement has been largely pushed into the background as the case has gone well beyond Fairuz to reel in the names of other judges and attorneys, including some in the reform movement. The commission has widened its terms of reference to go well beyond the issue of a single lawyer – Lingam – discussing a limited number of judges to delve into wider allegations, including charges that the bar association is not above seeking favors itself.

A hearing by the commission turned into a free-for-all Monday when Lingam accused Robert Lazar, a lawyer representing the Malaysia Bar Council, of seeking Lingam’s help to become an appellate court judge, bypassing the lower courts. Lazar denied the charge.

Anwar, who made the original tape public on September 20, has not been asked to testify, adding to suspicions over its independence.  In response, Anwar held a press conference Monday to release a five-minute continuation of the original 14-minute tape, showing more purported judicial chicanery.

Commission chairman Haidar Mohd Noor described Anwar’s revelation as “news” and questioned why he hadn’t forwarded the tape earlier. In a press statement, Anwar said that “the decision by the commission to arbitrarily disallow me to testify would certainly lead one to the conclusion that some unseen hand is at work. This hand is so powerful that the commission will stop at nothing to prevent me from giving evidence, even though the evidence concerned will definitely shed light on the testimony given so far. “

In one tape made public by the commission itself, Dzaiddin Abdullah, who served as chief justice between 2000 and 2003, is implicated for accepting gifts and payments from Lingam. In addition, as an example of the factionalism in the court, Dzaiddin was asked to explain yet another videotape, in which Lingam claimed that he hated his predecessor, Eusoff Chin, and that Chin had blocked his chances to become a candidate for state honors.

In the meantime, both Fairuz and Lingam have dodged all questions with a fusillade of excuses. Lingam has refused to acknowledged that it was his voice on tape although conceding that “it looks like me and sounds like me."  In a kind of half admission that it could have been, he said he was “bullshitting and bragging,” and that “this is my house. I’m in the privacy of my home,” he was quoted as saying by local reporters. “I can talk rubbish in my own home.” On other occasions, he has said he might have been drunk when he made the call.

Fairuz has also denied he was the person that Lingam was speaking to when the tape was recorded.  Both Lingam and Mahathir repeatedly told investigators they had no recollection of the events on the tapes.

In the instance involving Dzaiddin, Lingam was also said to have been videotaped by the son of a Chinese businessman alleging that he and Vincent Tan had given the former chief justice “the most expensive gift,” making it unlikely that Dzaiddin could “attack us.” Lingam also acknowledged meeting Eusoff Chin in New Zealand, saying that  “people, see you know more, like Eusoff Chin, because I met him in New Zealand.”

Lingam said that when he argued with Dzaiddin in court, Dzaiddin was polite to him. 

“I have been sending cakes every Hari Raya (the feast day ending the Muslim fasting month). Vincent (Tan) has been sending. He can't go and say he is very clean, correct or not?”

In the latest clip, according to local media, Lingam also says he was close to the late Court of Appeal President Wan Adnan Wan Ismail and repeated how he had “helped” former Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz attain his position. “But he is sometimes a bit scared.” Lingam reportedly says on the tape. “I must play shadow from behind.”

“The whole inquiry puts the judiciary in absolute shame,” a senior lawyer told Asia Sentinel. “It’s all fault-finding and from hereon in the judiciary will continue its decline with no hope. This whole thing tarnishes lawyers and judges vis-à-vis the public.”

Malaysia’s judiciary has faced a long series of allegations over fairness and corruption. The independence of the court has been severely undermined since 1988 when Mahathir sacked the several top judges and effectively ended court autonomy.

The system largely remained under Mahathir’s control from that point onward. Some months ago, the Conference of Rulers, made up of the country’s nine sultans, stunned Prime Minister Badawi by refusing to ratify his candidate to become chief judge. The position remained vacant for several months.  In addition, the Perak Sultan, Raja Azlan Shah, later made an unprecedented speech indirectly criticizing the judiciary.

Several recent cases, particularly the trial of three defendants for the brutal murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu, have underscored the court’s problems. One of the defendants, Abdul Razak Baginda, is a close friend of Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose name has surfaced during the trial but who has never been questioned.  The case has droned on for seven months, raising suspicions that both prosecutors and defense would like to draw it out until it disappears.  In addition, tycoon Eric Chia, a close friend of Mahathir’s, was abruptly acquitted last year of criminal breach of trust involving the scandal-tainted Perwaja Steel Corp. The judge summarily shut down the trial after the prosecution presented its case. 

Prime Minister Badawi came to power in 2003 promising to clean up corruption and depoliticize the judiciary. So far, however, he has made little progress. The current panel cannot compel witnesses to testify or interview those implicated although it is questionable how far the probe would go in any case.