Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad is undoubtedly displeased, in fact angry, about the factual Suhakam report that proves police brutality during the peaceful gathering at Kesas Highway. He accuses Suhakam of trying to please the west. It appears all too natural for Mahathir to brand whoever and whatever that does not please him as meant to please the west instead. Is Mahathir trying to say that the Suhakam commissioners are now western agents? Is he already planning to replace some of them when their terms are over, because they have the courage to tell the truth? Mahathir should stop behaving like one of those African can-pot dictators.

I am afraid that Mahathir has long lost his mental balance. This time he proves it again by justifying the brutal acts of Malaysian police at Kesas Highway, on the grounds that by his comparison the Italian police in Genoa and the American police in Seattle were even more brutal. This may be so. But this should not give a free license to the local police force to resort to all kinds of cruel act it chooses. True, Malaysian policemen have not shot dead any peaceful demonstrators recently, but they are known to have been guilty of committing this in the past. Recent events have shown that the police and agent provocateurs have always been guilty of starting and perpetrating violence at peaceful gatherings organised by the alternative parties.

It may be relevant to remind the Prime Minister that during the past three years the police have shot to death about 200 persons, merely on suspicion or information that they were criminals. Is that not brutal, especially when many of them would not have been given death sentences if they were arrested and brought to court? In these cases the police prefer them dead, because they believe that dead men will not be able to tell tales in the open court.

PRM wishes to endorse Suhakam’s view that beating up of ordinary people at peaceful gatherings, causing temporary blindness to innocent person by spraying chemical into his eyes at close range, denying early medical treatment to victims of police brutality, and many more, are brutal and violations of human rights. We highly commend and support the Suhakam commissioners for the courage they have shown. The Malaysian police have been brutal to citizens for long time before and after Kesas. Of late, they have been happily shooting water canons at innocent rural folk who attend opposition political rallies, beating them and arresting them arbitrarily. Stop the cruelty, Mahathir!

Dr Syed Husin Ali
President PRM

23rd August 2001