NGOs demand release of Moslem sect leader and family
NGOs demand release of Moslem sect leader and family
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysian human rights groups yesterday demanded the immediate release of a Moslem sect leader and his wife, who were keeping their six-month-old baby with them while under state detention.
"We are deeply concerned for Mubaraka, the baby daughter of Ashaari Muhammad and Khadija Aam, who is now being detained with her parents," R. Sivarasa, a spokesman for six non-governmental organizations (NGOs), told reporters.
The NGOs, representing women, media and professional groups, demonstrated at an international child-abuse congress in Kuala Lumpur yesterday for the release of Al Arqam sect leader Ashaari, his wife and four male followers from detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
The six were nabbed under the ISA over the past two weeks, starting off with Ashaari on Sept. 3, after they refused to disband the Arqam movement and end its allegedly deviationist teachings and practices.
Officials said Khadija was allowed to keep her baby daughter with her in detention as the child was being "breast-fed."
But Sivarasa said the groups were worried the baby was being used as a "tool of torture" against her parents.
"It has been a practice that ISA detainees, during the first sixty days, are kept in solitary confinement and subjected to long periods of interrogation," Sivarasa said.
"We are concerned about the effect of these detention conditions on Khadijah's six-month-old child," he said.
Sivarasa charged the ISA went against natural justice and breached detainees' rights to legal representation "as they can be detained without trial as long as the authorities wish and not allowed visits by anyone."
He also alleged that apart from Mubaraka, the authorities were holding "no less than 90 children" of Arqam followers in normal detention with their parents following raids on communes of the sect in the past week.
News reports said Saturday that 89 children and 22 women were among 121 Arqam followers detained in a raid in the southern Negri Sembilan state.
Sivarasa said despite the harassment, Arqam members had remained peaceful and continued to seek redress through legal means, like filing defamation suits and distributing leaflets and pamphlets to tell their side of the story.
"We are concerned that continued harassment may drive the movement to other forms of protest," Sivarasa said.
Thai human rights groups have also assailed Malaysia for the arrests as a breach of internationally-accepted standards of religious freedom.
"If (sect members) are guilty of wrong-doing, they should be put through the courts openly," the Union of Civil Liberty, which represents five Thai human rights organizations, said in an open letter to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who orders ISA detentions.