The Malaysian government must be prepared to respond to the United States Department report about police brutality in Malaysia in the same way the US government must also answer for its own police brutality.

"The demand for justice for Amadou Diallo cannot be an excuse for denial of justice for Anwar Ibrahim," DAP chairman Lim Kit Siang said today.

Lim was responding to a statement made by Minister in Prime Minister's Department Dr Rais Yatim that the US should stop behaving like the world's policeman in passing judgment on others on human rights abuses when there were rampant human rights violations in the US itself, such as the killing of Diallo in the Bronx area of New York on Feb 4 last year.

Diallo, an African immigrant street vendor, was killed when four New York policemen fired 41 bullets at him. It was reported that 19 shots hit him with one fatally rupturing his lungs and shredding the native Guinean's spinal column.

The 22-year-old was shot in the vestibule of his apartment when he attempted to reach for what the four police officers thought was a gun. It turned out to be his wallet.

A jury of four blacks and eight whites gave the verdict of not guilty last Saturday and acquitted the four police officers. The verdict resulted in hundreds of protestors taking to the streets of Diallo's neighbourhood crying that the trial was a mockery of justice.

In his statement, Lim said that the government should prepare a point-by-point rebuttal to the US report on human rights violations in Malaysia, which was released last Saturday.

The report, among other things, charged that Malaysian police continued to abuse detainees, sometimes subjecting criminal suspects and illegal alien detainees to physical and psychological torture during interrogation and detention.

The report cited the1998 trial of sacked deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, in which senior police officers testified that the police had institutionalised techniques to subject some "national security" detainees to coercive and abusive treatment.

Another charge raised in the report was the "denial of fair public trial" in the cases of Anwar, former Kota Melaka MP Lim Guan Eng, Tenaganita director and KeADILan commitee member Irene Fernandez and Canadian journalist Murray Hiebert. These cases, it said, had raised questions about judicial independence and impartiality.