Activist groups have called on US, France and UK leaders to raise human rights concerns with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi when they meet later this month.

Despite recent declarations by the new Abdullah administration in favour of democracy, the International Federation for Human Rights and its Malaysian affiliate Suaram argue that there is still a gap between the official position and reality.

In a open letter from Paris yesterday, the groups said they hope President George W Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac will "exert political and diplomatic pressure" on Malaysia, particularly on issues of democratic rights, media freedom and the Internal Security Act (ISA).

On July 22, Abdullah will meet Bush for the first time since assuming the prime minister's office.

Political repression in Malaysia, they argued, has remained intact with a wide array of draconian legislation employed on "targeted individuals perceived as imperiling the authorities," and the "inculcation of a culture of fear" through intimidation, coercion, and "a slow strangulation of all spaces for free and critical discourse...".

Police investigations into malaysiakini under the Sedition Act 1948 in 2003, is illustrative of this, they said.

"The danger of such a system is that the asphyxiation is never sudden, nor is it immediately visible - hence its efficiency. have over the years created an atmosphere, both within the political arena and within civil society, in which fundamental freedoms are considered as privileges and not rights, and in which the possibilities to advocate for human rights are severely curtailed."

The groups also raised the case of 19 ISA detainees, held for alleged links with regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah and local terror cell KMM, who have claimed ill-treatment and gross abuse of prisoner rights while being held in secret interrogation locations and at the Kamunting detention camp.

Continuous abuse

Criticising the Malaysian government's argument that the ISA is a necessary weapon against terrorism, the groups said the legal provision is in fact a political tool against the opposition and allows for continuous abuse of power, with detainees denied basic rights to legal counsel and open trial, and subjected to various forms of torture in order to extract false confessions.

The human rights groups also asked the leaders to address the 'critical' medical situation of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, "who has been a political prisoner since Sept 1999" and the treatment of human rights defenders such as Irene Fernandez, who are "still subjected to various forms of repression."

"Throughout his detention Anwar has faced systematic obstruction and delay by the present authorities in providing him with medical care, despite the fact that his present problems are largely the result of the assault on him by the Inspector General of Police in a holding cell on the night of his arrest," their letter said.

"In November 2003, the Malaysian Magistrates Court, without adequate explanation, denied Mrs Fernandez right to travel to important human rights and HIV/Aids meetings in the US and Canada, including a meeting with the UN Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights at the Carter Center," they added.