Members of the public who have any knowledge on the alleged police mistreatment of 18 native villagers from Kundasang, Sabah, are asked to come forward to shed light on the matter.

This request comes from the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) which will be holding a four-day public inquiry beginning Feb 11 into the alleged human rights violations as claimed by the natives.

The public inquiry will be held from 9.30am onwards at the Hotel Perkasa in Kundasang, some 90km from Kota Kinabalu.

"Suhakam welcomes any member of the public with additional information pertaining to these allegations to come forward and give their evidence," said Suhakam secretary Kamaruddin Mohamed Baria in a statement today.

The commission decided to hold the public inquiry as a follow up to a memorandum from the 18 natives which was submitted to the Suhakam office in Sabah on June 18 last year.

Right to pray

The natives, all residents of Kampung Desa Monteki village in Kundasang, claimed in the memorandum that they were mistreated by the police while being detained for 14 days at the Ranau lock-up last year.

Among other things, they claimed that they were denied the right to pray.

They were arrested after they, along with 56 others, staged a protest against their eviction from a 40-hectare land they had occupied since 1985.

Their eviction came about when a company, Desa Highlands Sdn Bhd, which had successfully applied for the land, came to execute the writ of possession of the said land, prompting protests from the villagers.

Kamaruddin said that the public inquiry - to be conducted by commissioners KC Vohrah, Ramon Navaratnam and Abdul Monir Yaacob - will only centre on whether there were any human rights violations as claimed by the villagers.

According the Suhakam deputy chairperson Simon Sipaun, the public inquiry was mooted after the commission had failed to elicit any information from the police on the allegations made by the villagers.

Following the failure of the police to react, Sipaun said the matter was brought to Suhakam's complaint and inquiry working group.

"Here we had a lengthy deliberation on the case and decided to open a public inquiry over the matter," he said.

Total denial

However, it was reported today that the Sabah police will cooperate fully with Suhakam on the public inquiry.

"We have nothing to hide, my men will give their full cooperation," Sabah police commissioner Illyas Ibrahim was reported as saying.

This public inquiry will be the first conducted by Suhakam in Sabah.

The commission's first public inquiry was held in November 2000 on alleged violations of human rights by the police when they stopped a mass political gathering along the Kesas Highway, Shah Alam on Nov 5, 2000.

In August 2001, the commission reported that the police were solely responsible for human rights violations at the aborted gathering and said that "the violations occurred due to the 'total denial and domination' action of the police during crowd dispersal action".

This was soon followed by another inquiry in June 2002 in Kamunting, Taiping, on the conditions of detention under the Internal Security Act.

The commission had always maintained that the draconian act should be repealed.