There are those who have eyes, but are blind.

There are those who have ears, but are deaf.

There are those who have tongues, but are dumb.

The man who penned these words some 20 years ago was a Universiti Malaya student leader from the village of Jemapoh in Negri Sembilan Hishammudin Rais.

Indeed, this has been an enduring theme in Hishammudin's writing, and for that matter, his life. "I questioned everything," he once said.

I knew Hishammudin, or Isham as he is fondly known, from some old documents found in the Students' Union of the University of New South Wales.

Isham had appeared very much larger than life in a tattered poster calling on the Australian government to grant him political asylum.

He was then on the run from 'Operasi Mayang' (yes, Operation Nip-it-in-the-bud) a crippling crackdown on student activism in 1974.

Isham ended up in Melbourne a year later. The Malaysian government wanted him deported back and detained under the Internal Security Act. He failed to get asylum and if he had, life would have perhaps turned out very differently for him today.

Voluntary departure

But Isham's supporters in Australia nevertheless put up a good fight. Bob Hawke then a trade union leader but later prime minister issued a directive that his powerful labour organisation would ban any pilot who dared fly Isham back to Kuala Lumpur.

Eventually, the Australian government caught in between diplomatic pressures from Malaysia and public opinion opted for a face-saving solution. Isham was asked to leave voluntarily, which he did.

And thus he continued his years in exile which began with the crossing of the northern border in Sungai Golok in 1975. His journeys often with only the clothes on his back and sometimes without travel documents took him to Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad and Karachi.

At Moscow airport, en route to Europe, Isham was arrested for travelling with a false Thai passport. The Russians wanted him deported to Bangkok. Knowing that Thailand would be more than happy to send him back to Malaysia, he sneaked out of the transit lounge when the plane made a brief stopover in Bombay.

He was nabbed by Indian authorities and spent three months in jail. When he was released in 1982, Belgium offered him political asylum. After spending six years in Brussels, he went to London to pursue his other passion, film-making.

In 1995, exactly two decades after he left home, Isham returned to Malaysia.

Isham's 'crime'

When he was arrested under the ISA on April 10 last year in his Bangsar Utama apartment which he shared with a dozen cats, Isham had begun writing his autobiography.

He had only completed 19 pages.

With that project aborted, Isham instead published ' Pilihan_raya atau Pilihan_jalanraya ', a collection of his 'Dot Mai' columns which he wrote for malaysiakini .

Today is Isham's 500th day in Taiping's Kamunting detention camp. The authorities have alleged that he, and five other reformasi leaders, were plotting to overthrow the government through 'militant means'.

No evidence was furnished. Surely, Isham is not the type who could even hurt a cat.

More likely, Isham's 'crime' is his refusal to be blind and deaf to injustices. Before he was incarcerated, he helped establish 'University Bangsar Utama' a project where varsity students give tuition to children in squatter colonies.

True, Isham has been unapologetic in his support for street demonstrations. If mass protests can topple governments as in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, so be it. After all, such protests are a legitimate form of dissent in a democracy.

It is even more so, when elections are skewed towards the ruling regime through gerry-mandering, vote-buying, tight control of the media and a ban on public rallies. If election can bring a change in government, argued Isham, they would have it banned too.

Indeed, Isham, now 48, had inspired a generation of students. He remains to be an inspiration for a new generation of students. Which is why the government wants him under ISA.

Then and now.