The attacks, a la Kamikaze, with the use of hijacked commercial planes, on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon are most unbelievable and horrifying. The US security, defence and intelligence authorities apparently never anticipated or imagined anything like this could ever happen. .

It is believed that thousands of innocent people have been killed or injured. Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) expresses its deepest condolence to the bereaved families. We hold that no act of terrorism by anyone, group or country, to achieve whatever purpose, can be condoned, especially when it causes so much sufferings to the innocent.

There must be many reasons why some people are moved to take this kind of desperate action; but it has been expressed that one of them must be their intense anger with the US foreign policies. The group or individual held responsible for it has thus far not been definitely identified. But fingers are being pointed in the direction of what may now appear to be scapegoats.

We hope and believe that the US leaders will not act in retaliation on any group or country on the basis of long standing suspicion or anger, and in order to assert US global hegemony.

Finally, in Malaysia we hope that the Malaysian leaders will learn a hard lesson from this American tragedy. We wish to call upon the BN leaders to review their cruel and repressive policies, stop linking any political party committed to legal and democratic means of struggle to change the government with any militant group without proof, and ensure that the democratic space for the people will remain wide open and justice will always prevail.

Only in this way can we ensure that no group of people will become politically desperate to the extent that they can threaten peace and well being in this country.

Dr Syed Husin Ali
PRM President
12th September 2001