I nearly choked the other night when I overheard you say that those people really deserved it. "A security threat ..." you said with glee to our friends while I was talking to some others across the room.

It suddenly came to me that I would find it difficult to sustain our friendship from now on. I felt saddened that even the faintest notion of justice and fair play had completely deserted you, that you could allow a most terrible injustice be perpetrated on someone whom you were proud to introduce to me as your friend in those happier times.

I am appalled that you could say those words without the slightest hint of a troubled conscience. You are too willing to pay any price for all that you have been chasing, even if it means selling your humanity and even your faith, except in its most outward pronouncements to the devil. Tell me, is it really worth it? How far do you think this can take you?

Deep within, I have always known that you would secretly approve those detentions without trial if they could serve your purpose. But I least expected you to express it unreservedly and with such exuberance; for I have always thought that would be beneath you.

And without any sense of contradiction in your voice and in your eyes, you parroted these reasons spewed forth by your party leaders in government: 'They are nothing but trouble makers out to destabilise the country.'

'They sell their souls to foreign elements out to recolonise us. And those weapons they are stockpiling' I did not need to tell you that no one would believe those stories and I know you would not believe them either.

You are too intelligent for that, only that you had to. You have always boasted that pragmatism is your only principle in life and it has taken you where you are.

Ten years ago when you told me that you were going into politics, you unashamedly stated that it was with the intention of making it big in the corporate world. That's the only way to get into the big league, you used to tell our friends.

Materialistic favours

But when you campaigned for your party position, you told our village folks that the time has come for you for serve our people, to continue the noble struggle of those before us, kerana bangsa, agama dan negara (for race, religion and country).

How could they not choose you, with your intelligence, your education and the material favours you showered on them? As you moved up the party ranks, you used to tell me with a wink that those party delegates are too happy to sell their votes to the highest bidder.

When you were at the pinnacle of your success you had very little time for me and our old friends. But I often saw you on the news and in the papers, trailing around cabinet ministers, signing memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with your African counterparts.

In the rare times that we met, you would dominate our conservation with your corporate exploits, your expensive new cars and foreign trips with those minister friends of yours. I did not know what the others thought, but I felt sickened by it all.

From our school days, I have always been impressed by your ability to dominate conversations. Lately you seemed to display a deep concern about our people. You began to worry about the future of our children. That's very remarkable.

Believe me, I too dream of progress and prosperity for our people. But this is where we begin to diverge. Yours is based on a dangerous notion of supremacy that negates the idea of our common humanity.

No, I will never go along with that, and that's why you say my friends and I are indifferent to the fate of our people. In truth, you only care for your own survival, just like the leaders that you slavishly emulate so long as they are in power.

That's why you are disturbed at the ungratefulness of our people when they criticise the way our leaders are ruining institutions of government and pillaging the nation's wealth to enrich themselves, their families and friends.

New politics

You seemed unable to understand why many of your former friends left the party to defend the man you and your party-stalwarts love to hate, the very man whose name you used to drop not long ago.

You called your former friends traitors to their race for daring to dream and fight for the new politics which is completely alien to you. You never really understood the terms justice or democracy in your politics. I knew you were worried that our people were listening to them, and now even the other communities are beginning to take notice.

I remember how you scorned them for exposing the abuses and improprieties of our leaders. I knew it was painful for you that your great visionary leader, the Third world warrior once adored by his people, is today a forlorn figure who no longer commands respect.

Typical of your dominating ways, you would not listen to our arguments. But for all that I know, you were none too concerned with the plight of our people nor of our nation. Truth is, you were too comfortable with your wealth and power, and you could not imagine living without them.

Shame for that you are willing to sell your soul and condone the vilest of evils. You could not care less that your friend and his friends are denied their most fundamental rights and their human dignity.

Shame is this what you learnt in your sojourn in the west in the prime of your youth? You surely must know that to detain your political opponents under that archaic law is inhumane and barbaric.

You must surely know that it is an affront to civilised norms. In case you have not read the newspapers, even the colonial architect of that piece of legislation, who is now in his 80s, is horrified to learn that you are using it to crush your political opponents.

Despite your anti-imperialist posturing, not only have you retained this colonial legacy, you have perfected it as a brutal instrument of repression. That is pure cunning and cowardice.

Necessary detention

You say this preventive detention is necessary because those people are not averse to using violence to achieve their ambitions, that you have to nip them in the bud. It would be too late if we only act after it happens, you say.

We must not scare those foreign investors and tourists. Don't we all want peace and stability? How ridiculous it is for you to echo your leaders' assertion that to charge them in a normal court is too difficult. How to get the evidence? And furthermore how can we discuss issues of national security in an open court?

By now, I have read many accounts of those innocent people who have been victims of that barbaric law. But I won't bother asking you to read them. You have insulated your heart against anything that would threaten your power and your wealth.

Your heart has become too hardened that the anguish of their wives of not knowing where their loved ones are, that they know with certainty that they would be submitted to a torment most cruel, does not matter to you.

Strange that you can sleep at night knowing that those children would be asking their mothers, why are you sad, mother, and when is daddy going to come home? Why do my friends say that daddy is a bad man?

If you think this could save you, you are badly mistaken. Do you remember when we were children, the confessions on television of those men accused of being communist agents detained under the same law? .

As children we believed them, and so did our parents. If I were you, I wouldn't take comfort that two of them actually support the action of the authorities today in using the very same law to crush their new opponents. Knowing them, I am not much surprised. But the world is vastly different today and I would suggest that you don't use that tactic again.

Miscalculated again

You have miscalculated yet again. Just the other day I listened to a wife of one of the detainees. She choked and stumbled as she chose her words, her voice trembled as she tried to force back the tears. But soon the tears were gone.

She found her composure and spoke with such clarity and resolve that would make those tormentors squirm. You had the people on your side then, but today they are against you. You have the state security apparatus and your propaganda machine, they have the moral conviction that their struggle for truth and liberty is the just struggle, that it is worth paying at any price.

I know it is beyond your comprehension that moral strength and courage born of a conviction in truth and justice can defeat brute force and violence because you were never willing to learn from history.

I am not ashamed to admit to you that I am fearful, and so are many others like me. I am not accustomed to violence and cruelty. There is so much to lose, and each night as I see my little daughter sleeping contentedly with a fixed, gentle smile on her face, I have this terrible fear that our peace will be shattered.

But those people you have detained, and now their spouses and families, have crossed the threshold of fear. And that is the beginning of your defeat. Soon, you will have no place to run and no place to hide. Your greed and lust which know no limits will be your ultimate undoing.

Let me finish by quoting from Camus, 'It is a great deal to fight while despising war, to accept losing everything while still preferring happiness, to face destruction while cherishing the idea of a higher civilisation. That is how we do more than you because we have to draw on ourselves. You had nothing to conquer in your heart and in your intelligence.'

He wrote that in his 'letters to a German friend' ( lettres un ami allemand ) during the Nazi occupation of France. Forgive me if you think that I am comparing you with the Nazis. That is not my intention, but your capacity for cruelty and violence, even if by proxy, alarms me. Come, let us be on the right side of history while it is still not too late.