For the past three years, I have been trying to convince my colleague, Chua Tian Chang, also known as Tian Chua, to participate at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Tian, as he is popularly known, has been an active human rights educator and defender in Malaysia and the region.

In 1999, Tian couldn't be here because he was badly beaten by the police at a peaceful demonstration in Kuala Lumpur on April 14. He was protesting the unjust conviction of the former Malaysian deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.

Despite his injuries, Tian and another reformasi activist, Abdul Malek Hussein, sat in front of a police water cannon truck, laden with acid water, to protect his fellow activists. Both of them were arrested and detained for 'attempted suicide'.

Last year, the Malaysian authorities descended in full force upon Kuala Lumpur to seal it off from potential demonstrators on the first anniversary of Anwar's conviction. Tian was arrested on April 15 after speaking at a press conference.

While he was not physically harmed on this occasion, the police made up for their laxity by pushing him so harshly that his spine was hurt. In the past two years he has been arrested and beaten by police so many times that it is a wonder the man can still walk.

This year, Tian's participation at the commission is absolutely out of the question because he, along with six other people, were arrested under Malaysia's draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) last week.

Torturous tradition

Between April 10 and 11, the following human rights activists were rounded up under the ISA, which effectively allows indefinite detention without trial. They are Mohd Ezam Mohd Noor, N Gobalakrishnan, Tian Chua, Saari Sungib, Hishamuddin Rais, Abdul Ghani Haroon, and Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin.

They have been detained incommunicado for the past week; they have not been allowed to communicate with their families or lawyers. Our grave concern for their safety is justified by the 'tradition' of various forms of torture used against ISA detainees.

These men were detained because they were planning a peaceful rally to present a memorandum to the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) on April 14. However, the national police chief Norian Mai appears to have lifted a script of a Hollywood action movie by making the fantastic claim that they had tried to obtain explosives including rocket launchers and petrol bombs to attack security forces.

Nationalistic Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is overwhelmingly attached to the ISA despite its colonial origins, has publicly supported this particular use of the ISA because there is 'insufficient evidence' to charge them in a court of law.

It is bewildering to see that the Malaysian government, having attained membership of the UN Commission on Human Rights, seems to have increased its abuses of human rights.

I hope that commission will see it fit to remind them that membership does not grant them special dispensation or immunity in this context. Further, I hope that members of this commission will convince the Malaysian government to immediately and unconditionally release these human rights activists.

DEBORAH STOTHARD, a Malaysian, is coordinator of human rights group Altsean-Burma. She delivered the above speech at the 50th session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission held in Geneva, Switzerland earlier this week.