The Malaysian immigration authority recently decided to disallow Indonesian lawyer, Dr Adnan Buyung Nasution from entering the country without giving any reason. He was simply ordered to leave upon arrival at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Adnan was invited by Keadilan to speak on the condition of jailed ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.

He also came with a petition signed by several key Indonesian politicians, academics and representatives from non-governmental organisations urging the Malaysian government to allow Anwar to seek the treatment of his choice.

But who is Dr Adnan Buyung Nasution? Is he an "Islamic fundamentalist" or a "Marxist-Leninist"?

Or is he simply an "extremist" whose spectre haunted Suharto throughout his 32-year rule from 1966 to 1998, and now seems to be haunting Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his chief secular ideologue, Abdullah Ahmad, who is the editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times .

To Malaysians who follow contemporary Indonesian politics, Adnan, 68, is no stranger.

Reformasi leader

He is not only a leading Indonesian constitutional scholar and human rights lawyer as well as a member of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ),but was also one of the reformasi leading lights in the streets of Jakarta in the last days of Suharto.

As a former deputy secretary in the Australian Department of Foreign affairs and Trade, Geoff Forrester recalls in a personal account, A Jakarta Diary, May 1998 , Adnan appeared in a crowd of anti-Suharto protestors numbering about 50,000 who were confronted by hundreds of "heavily armed soldiers" outside the Indonesian Parliament on May 20, 1998, and spoke to them.

That was Suharto's last day in power.

According to Forrester, Adnan's political activism in the streets dated back to1966, and he was even jailed once. (see Geoff Forrester & R.J. May, The Fall of Suharto , Singapore, Select Books, 1999; p. 43)

Under the Suharto regime, Adnan was also silenced or gagged. In Feb 1978, for example, after the troops moved into several university campuses to suppress student activism and demonstrations, newspapers that published press statements issued by opposition leaders were banned or suspended, and Adnan was one of the blacklisted opposition leaders whose press statements were not allowed publication.

Also blacklisted were poet and playwright, WS Rendra and former defence minister, the late General Abdul Haris Nasution. Rendra had visited Malaysia recently.

Moreover, before the fall of Suharto, Adnan was repeatedly demonised by the propaganda of Suharto's military leaders for his liberal views and opinions on human rights and democracy.

For example, he was decried as a "traitor" to the national ideology of Pancasila , as well as a Western-educated liberal "virus", as late as 1993.

In the security culture and doctrine of the Suharto regime, political liberalism was also classified as a threat to national security

Adnan, however, struggled on with peaceful determination and a clear conscience. He is the founder of one of the first non-governmental organisations in Indonesia, namely the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute. He also co-founded an American journal titled Human Rights Quarterly .

The Muslim lawyer has not only been an activist, but also a thinker whose insights into the negative effects of Suharto's authoritarianism on the social psychology of Indonesians are recorded and preserved in Adam Schwarz's masterpiece on contemporary Indonesian politics, A nation in waiting Indonesia's search for stability (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1999).

Schwarz was a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review in Jakarta, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Hanoi from 1988 to 1997, and now an adjunct professor at the School of Advance International Studies of John Hopkins University in the United States.

He quotes Adnan as saying that "Suharto's worse crime (is) that he has made Indonesians afraid to think, (and) afraid to express themselves" (p.237), and that "Indonesians have lost the habit of debating issues, of accepting differences of opinion". (p. 242)

Moreover, Adnan also opined that during the 32 years of Suharto's rule, "ordinary Indonesians" had no control over what happened to them, and as a result, people were afraid of the police or "any figure of authorities" as they thought that anyone who disagrees with the government is automatically considered an opponent of the state. (p.246)

The ruling elite of Indonesia under Suharto was also psychologically feudal and paternal.

Adnan was quoted by Schwarz as saying that it was considered "insulting" when people opposed or even questioned government actions. He added: "Opposition (was) interpreted as a distrust of the good faith of the ruler; just as it would be inconceivable that children demand that their father account for his act, it (was) inconceivable that the people demand that their ruler be accountable for his deeds". (p.235)

Legal defender

Although a pious Muslim and a legal defender of many Indonesian Muslim opposition leaders and activists, Adnan believes that, ultimately, no one can "unify the country based on religion" and national unity "must be based on sameness of citizenship, regardless of religion". (quoted in Dounglas E. Ramage, Politics in Indonesia Democracy, Islam and the ideology of tolerance ( London, Routledge, 1995; p.156)

However, Adnan also observed that because Indonesians found it difficult to participate effectively in the restrictive political system of Suharto, they often turned to religious and ethnic issues for political mobilisation. (ibid: p.160)

Moreover, despite his consistent and vocal rejection of theocracy in Indonesia, Adnan also warned that the exaggeration of the "hypothetical choice" of only between an Islamic state and secular autocracy backed by the armed forces, could frighten people away from democracy. (ibid: p.193)

In his view, although Suharto and the Indonesian Armed Forces were opposed to the establishment of an Islamic state, they were also not "religiously neutral" vis--vis other religions because all they wanted was no challenge to their undemocratic rule from any quarters (see Ramage, ibid: p.193)

In the final analysis, Adnan is a genuinely moderate Muslim whose idea of universal human rights and democracy threatened "Suhartoism" in Indonesia before 1998 as well as Malaysia until now.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.