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.