A-Infos (en) Malaysian Police `Kidnapping Indonesian Exiles'

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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        MALAYSIAN POLICE `KIDNAPPING INDONESIAN EXILES'
_________________________________________________________________
 
     THE INDEPENDENT
     FRIDAY, 1 MAY 1998
     http://www.independent.co.uk/stories/B0105803.html
     By Richard Lloyd Parry in Kuala Lumpur
 
     MALAYSIAN police snatch squads are abducting exiled
opponents of the Indonesian government as part of a secret deal 
between the two countries, according to human-rights
organisations in Kuala Lumpur. 
 
     More than 50 people are being held without access to
families, doctors or lawyers, according to the groups, many of
them legal residents of Malaysia who have been abducted in
daylight by plain clothes security personnel. Despite repeated
requests, the Malaysian authorities refuse to allow access to the
detainees by officials of the United Nations High Commission on
Refugees (UNHCR). There are growing fears that they will be sent
back to Indonesia, where they risk imprisonment and torture for
their political activities.
 
     In the past two weeks alone, at least nine people are
reported to have been arrested, and are being held incommunicado
in unknown locations. According to Suaram, a Malaysian rights
group, individuals have been kidnapped from their homes, their
shops, and while standing at a bus stop in Kuala Lumpur. One man,
Ishak Bin Mohammad Daud, was stopped in his car in which he was
travelling with two companions. They were allowed to go, but he
has not been seen since. Yesterday, lawyers acting on his behalf
were told by Malaysian police that they knew nothing of his
whereabouts.
 
     The abductees are all from Aceh, the northernmost province
of Sumatra, where Islamic guerrillas have been fighting a
sporadic war of independence since the 1950s. After a wave of
suppression in the early 1990s, when at least 2000 Acehnese were
killed or abducted by the Indonesian army, members of a group
calling itself the Aceh/Sumatra National Liberation Front (ASNLF)
fled to Malaysia. Some lived without proper documents, but others
obtained residence permits from the Malaysian government.
 
     Illegal immigrants caught by police, including several
hundred from Aceh, were held in detention camps. Recently their
numbers have been increased by large numbers of new "illegals"
who have sailed to Malaysia to escape the economic crisis in
Indonesia. Human-rights groups believe the Malaysian government
is using the mass deportation of "illegals" as an excuse too
deport legitimate asylum-seekers at the behest of Indonesia.
Several ASNLF members have gone into hiding, and their houses are
being watched by police. "Just yesterday the home of one of our
members was raided," an ASNLF spokesman said. "He wasn't there,
but his wife and children were very afraid."
 
     Syed Husin Ali, of the opposition Malaysian People's Party,
said: "It is just beginning. They're taking the opportunity of
the economic crisis to expel the new illegals and at the same
time to round up the Acehnese. We believe they have been asked to
do this by the Indonesian government."
 
     Copyright 1998 Newspaper Publishing PLC
 
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