SECURITY SHROUD MALAYSIA’S STRONG HOLD ON DETENTION CAMP PRISONERS

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 16

SECURITY SHROUD MALAYSIA’S STRONG HOLD ON DETENTION CAMP PRISONERS

(By

BRIAN EADS,

S, in Kuala Lumpur for the Observer Foreign News Service)

Prisoner number 212, Kok Yok Fah, was 37 years old when he was found hanging in his cell at Kamunting Detention Camp, Taiping, in West Malaysia. If anyone knows the exact circumstances of his death they are not telling; for Kok was a detainee under the country’s Internal Security Act (I 960

He was arrested at 3.30 a.m. on Sunday, May 26, 1974, at his home in Sungei Siput, the so-called “hotbed of communism.’’ in insurgentplagued Perak Province. He was an illiterate farm labourer earning about $BO a month to support his wife and six children.

Kok's crime, the authorities say, was failure to report Communist activities in his area, but, as he was never produced in court, no formal charges were laid against him. Instead he was held at a police station for 56 days, then transferred to Kamunting camp under a two-year detention order. Perhaps it was simply Kok’s misfortune that the day before his arrest a police officer had been shot dead in Sungei Siput. Fourteen months after his death on January 10 last year, no official results of a promised inquiry have been published or given to his family. According to the authorities, Kok had been complaining of severe headaches shortly before he died, and they speculate that the pain of his headaches had proved unbearable. His wife, who visited him three days before his death, finds this hard to believe. She says he was in good spirits, enjoyed some fruit she had taken him, and asked after his children. His family was told of his death 24 hours after he was found, and when the body was returned, the family says, it was covered in bruises, and a post-mortem had already been performed. But while Kok’s detention and death are surrounded in mystery, there are many among an estimated 500

■ other detainees in camps at Taiping, Batu Gajah, Muar, Kuching and at the Tanjong Rambutan mental hospital whose cases seem to be more clear cut. The majority are political prisoners, gaoled for the most part under security laws enacted during the British administration of Malaya and beefed up by the Malaysians themselves. No legal bid Detainees are usually held on tlie ground that they are members, supporters or “fellow travellers” of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya (C.P.M.). The problem is that only the detainees know the truth. Under the Security Act they are not formally charged or produced in court, and when detention orders are reviewed at sixmonthly intervals they are denied legal counsel. The draconian Essential (Security Cases) Regulations introduced last year threaten to shroud the truth even more, providing as they do for special courts where there is no jury or right of appeal, and the accused is judged guilty until proven innocent. Hooded witnesses and the admissibility of hearsay evidence make this a heavy burden of proof. But what has not escaped the notice of observers is that many detainees have made the mistake of loudly voicing their opposition to Government policies, or building political power bases which posed a potential threat to the political and economic establishment. Lim Choon Hwa, arrested in October, 1966, as a “precautionary measure” shortly before the visit of the American President Lyndon Johnson, is, as far as is known, still being held in the Batu Gajah Detention Camp. Lim was deputy chairman of the Partai Socialis Rakyat Malaya (People’s Socialist Party of Malaya). Syed Hussein Ali, arrested in December, 1974, shortly after Malay students demonstrated against the Government’s handling of the problem of rural poverty, is still being held at Kamunting camp after refusing to admit charges that he had promoted subversive student activities. Dr Hussein, an associate professor and sociology lecturer at the University of Malaya, was a member of the Central Committee of the Partai Socialis Rakyat. Among the grounds on which he was detained were “you alleged that the Government’s economic system had exacerbated the suppression of the ‘lower class’ Malays,” and “you alleged that there were rampant corrupt practices among Ministers.” Hunger strike Datuk James Wong, arrested in October, 1974, and again in March, 1975, was detained on the grounds that he had accepted $1,600,000 from the Seri Begawan of Brunei, the father of the Sultan, to press his claim for Limbang, a disputed area

in Sarawak, East Malaysia , Datuk Wong is deputy ; president of the opposition Sarawak National Partv • (S.M.A.P.) which in the elecItions of August-September 1974 emerged as a powerful . threat to the ruling National '■ Front coalition. He was released from detention at Kamunting in January this year along with four other S.N.A.P. members amid reports of a •‘deal" with the Government. Malaysia’s detention camps could be worse. There are claims of frequent assaults by guards, of poor medical facilities, long periods of solitary confinement, and mysterious deaths among detainees. From December. 1973 until February, 1974 detainees at the Batu Gajah camp staged a 47-day hunger strike after the death of an inmate, and they say it was met with “a reign of terror.” When Juliette Chin, a student activist, was released last December after exactly a year under detention, she spoke of intensified persecution and beatings, but there have been no allegations of systematic brutality or torture. According to one former detainee, it was possible for favoured prisoners to have their favourite food sent in, provided there was enough for the camp commandant and his friends. None the less, detainees are still being held 10 years after their arrest, and according to the Londonbased Committee for the Release of Political Detainees in Malaysia and Singapore, 20 more are being detained every month. The relatively humane conditions which greet them are no consolation for the family of Kok Yok Fah. His brother, Kho Yoh Kong, was in no doubt. “I will never forgive the Government for the death of my brother. All his family and friends hate the police, and will never help them again." The political expediency of Malaysia’s detention camps could well backfire. In the words of the Opposition Democratic Action Party (D.A.P.) deputy Secretary-General, Lim Cho Hock, “this sort of detention is creating a sense of helplessness, and who’s to say that their children won’t go into the jungle. Many of them are just waiting for the opportunity to take up arms against the Government.” — O.F.N.S. Copyright.