I couldn't agree more with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Foreign Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar and PAS secretary-general Kamaruddin Jaafar that Malaysians held by US forces in Guantanamo Bay should be identified and either given a fair trial or released.

And I also concur wholeheartedly with the foreign affairs minister's contention that, in its promotion of a "new world order" the US is "ironically" not adopting the best practices in democracy and human rights that it preaches, and that "fighting terrorism should not be used as an excuse by any state to practise non-adherence to international laws".

I hope the Australian Prime Minister John Howard is listening as, in his role as what many see as a kind of 'deputy sheriff' to US president George W Bush, and in his determination to appear 'tough on terror' at whatever cost to civil liberties, he's done everything in his power to deny justice or release to Australians detained in Guantanamo Bay.

I also trust that the 'irony' of Syed Hamid's criticism of the US wasn't lost on either himself or other members of the current Malaysian government. Because, every year in this country, untold numbers of 'suspects' are arrested and held illegitimately, Guantanamo Bay-style, under the Internal Security Act (ISA) or the 1969 Emergency Ordinance (EO).

A recent report by Human Rights Watch stated that these detainees are beaten and ill-treated, held indefinitely without charge or trial and often re-arrested after their court-ordered release. One man, the report revealed, is in his eighth year of detention in this disgraceful legal limbo.

So, while I decry the hypocrisy of the US in presuming to promote freedom and justice for all while denying human and legal rights to detainees in Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA 'interrogation centres' around the world, and deplore the incumbent Australian government's complicity in this criminal activity, I feel it only fair to make the point that Malaysia

is hardly in a position to occupy the moral high ground in this regard.

Or, for that matter, on many other issues involving international freedom and justice. Refusing to recognise the very existence of Israel, for example, then presuming to perfectly justifiably condemning this 'non-existent' entity's savaging of the people of Lebanon and Gaza, yet

condoning the killing of innocent Israelis by terror gangs like Hezbolah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Inconsistent stand

Equally hypocritical is the Malaysian government's relationship with Burma. Despite the fact that the gangster-generals who run the show there have been waging genocidal war on the Karen and other tribes for more than 40 years, and have kept democracy icon Aung Sang Suu Kyi in a kind of Guantanmo Bay (or ISA or EO) situation since she defeated them in free elections over a

decade ago, the Malaysia government accepts the regime there as a fellow-member of Asean and trades with it through entities like Petronas.

Petronas also has dealings, I see, with some other nations with decidedly dodgy governments, like Chad, which recently tried to extort more money from the company, and Sudan, which is using Muslim militia to murder the helpless population of its Darfur region. So that, even those most hardened in their suspicions that the US is using its "war on terror" as a pretext on which to attack Islam and grab oil reserves, have to agree that it is by no means the only guilty party.

Nor is the Sudan and Darfur situation the only example of the fact that Malaysia's unabashedly Islamist foreign policy can't always be consistent or do the nation credit. Offering peace-keepers to protect the Lebanese against the non-nation of Israel might be all very well and generous.

But where does the Malaysian government stand on the situation in Afghanistan, where a moderate Muslim democracy is, with the help of only forces from the non-Muslim world, fighting for its life against fanatical fundamentalists who fund their nefarious activities by trafficking in heroin, a trade that happens to carry the death penalty if people are caught plying it at Port Klang or the KLIA?

And an even tougher foreign-affairs question, if possible: what's the current Malaysian position on Iraq? With the possible exception of Bush and his claque of fellow fantasists who neo-conned the 'Coalition of the Willing' into this mess, the whole world knows by now that it was a ghastly mistake. So being against the war itself, or at least Bush's motives for it is a no-brainer. But these days that's no longer the issue.

Now it's not so much Muslims vs infidel invaders, as mindless, murderous sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia. Not much prospect of an offer of Malaysian peace-keepers for that situation, I imagine, unless Khairy's merry band of Mat and Minah Rempit are up for it. On second thoughts, however, forget I ever mentioned the thought.

They might very well misbehave in Iraq as badly as they do in Malaysia, and get themselves incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay. Which would be a heck of a lot of grief to go through to get them off our streets, when they could be so easily made to disappear locally under the provisions of the ISA or EO.