In reference to AFP's report 'Activists fast in Hong Kong in ISA protests' (June 8), 17 Malaysians began a 24-hour fast to protest against the recent detention of four opposition activists and that according to their spokesperson, Tsui Hon-kwong, a petition had been handed over to Consul Ahmad Ismail at the Malaysian Consulate in Hong Kong calling for the abolition of the country's Internal Security Act (ISA).

I wonder how many amongst the 17 are really 'Malaysians' because their spokesperson Tsui Hon-Kwong is not likely at all to be one.

As confirmed from his own article opposing the University of Hong Kong conferring a honorary doctorate to Lee Kuan Yew, and posted on the [#1] Net [/#], he was one of the six student activists in the student movement in University of Singapore in the early 1970s led by Singaporean in exile Tan Wah Piow.

When the Singaporean government clamped down on the activists, the other five who were Malaysian students were deported back to Malaysia whilst Tsui escaped the dragnet and found his way back to Hong Kong, his country of origin.

An education research officer for the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union, he is involved in various pro-democracy activist causes. (He was committee member of Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China).

I raise the point because if Tsui is not Malaysian, why is he a spokesperson for this group of 17 claiming to be and described as 'Malaysians' to petition the Malaysian government against ISA?

In a larger context who is behind the mobilisation of foreign social activists to fight our cause over here and get involved in our domestic issue like ISA detention etc.?

Against the above background, there are other questions I would like to address.

Whilst there is no doubt that in justice to the four detainees sent to Kamunting, the Home Affairs Ministry has to show proof of police allegations, and it will have the opportunity to do so in their habeas corpus applications, yet there are a few elements inconsistent with the current outrage that the government uses ISA against the detainees by reason only of their opposition political affiliation:

1) Unlike Operasi Lalang, there is no general dragnet against dissenters;

2) If it were to cripple the opposition, the top leaders of PAS, Keadilan, DAP would have been incarcerated but they are not;

3) More specifically, four detainees including Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin, the webmaster of Free Anwar link that contains much anti-government contents, had been released;

4) In the aftermath of Anwar's incarceration, the government has already lost much goodwill and it does not make political sense why it should want to aggravate the alienation further by using the ISA for political purposes (as distinguished from legitimate public safety purposes). If it does use it for political purposes thereby incurring in the process political costs, why not, after incurring these costs, use the ISA across the board against all significant others within the Barisan Alternatif to cripple the opposition once and for all rather than dithering with only three second-echelon leaders in Keadilan and a social activist?; and

5) To use ISA for political purpose is an anomaly inconsistent with the general trend of liberalising that the government appears to be engaged in to recover lost political ground.

Let us not jump to conclusion. Let's wait and see if the government will come out with proof.