HONG KONG - Political activist Tian Chua, who spent two years in detention under Malaysia's tough Internal Security Act (ISA), says he cannot wait for Friday, when Malaysian Premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad finally retires.

For Tian, a leading Malaysian justice campaigner, Mahathir's departure after 22 years at the helm represents a step forward for human rights in the Southeast Asian nation, and is an event he says was "partially our success".

Although Mahathir had long talked of bowing out and formally announced his retirement months ago, Tian insisted "the pressure was there. People who organised protests against his rule have been successful."

No change

However, speaking Saturday night at a meeting organised by the Hong Kong section of Amnesty International, Tian made it clear he expected no change from Mahathir's anointed successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

"But at the same time he cannot ignore the demand for change and internal problems in the ruling party (which) will force him to change," he said.

"Foreign investors too are looking into these issues," he said. The issues he identified are rule of law with an independent judiciary as well as press freedom.

Tian is vice president of the National Justice Party led by Wan Azizah, wife of the former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who had expected to succeed Mahathir but was jailed on charges of sodomy and corruption.

Anwar has been denied medical treatment abroad for complications arising from severe beatings in the first few days of detention.

Unlike Anwar, however, Tian said he was not ill-treated in detention from April 2001 till June this year. He credits pressure from human rights activists for the lenient treatment he received and for his current freedom.

When Tian and fellow detainees were walking out of prison in June, he received five kilograms (about three pounds) of letters sent by activists around the world seeking his release.

The support encouraged him and others to pursue political activism, Tian said.

"As soon as we come out we see a continuous (flow of) messages, so the next day we continue to make noise against the ISA," he said.

Tian said he was arrested before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and in a climate when terms such as "good governance" were in vogue especially in Asia after the 1997 regional financial crisis.

But after September 2001, "people began to think that issues of human rights can be traded for security," and such talk was heard even in western countries.

"We could immediately sense a change of climate," he said, alluding to a reduced sympathy for human rights causes.

But, he insisted, Malaysia's ISA predates September 2001 by four decades and was initiated to deal with communist insurgency.

Gone out of fashion

"The government made a very clear promise that it (ISA) won't be used against peaceful protests" and the West supported it because it followed debate in a country which was alone in having an elected legislature in a region filled with dictatorships.

That is no longer the case, Tian said: "By 1998 (with the fall of President Suharto of Indonesia), military regimes had gone out of fashion."

Rather than using the security legislation against enemies of the state, it has been used against women's groups, environmental activists and those proposing education in the mother tongue, Tian said.

"We must recommend to the new prime minister that we must change all these things," he said. "We must find other ways of fighting terrorism than using the ISA and suspending human rights."

Currently 90 people are in detention without trial under the ISA. - AFP