The Deepavali and Hari Raya public holidays ended officially on Tuesday but since Wednesday, Nov 17, which was a working day until today, not a single commissioner with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) could be located in the office.

This irked a veteran social activist who had led a delegation of complainants to Suhakam headquarters in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.

"Suhakam has 17 commissioners and over the past three days, not even one of them was present in the office. It shouldn't be a problem to station at least one commissioner there a day," said Suaram's S Arutchelvan who is assisting family members of the hunger strikers in Simpang Renggam, Johor.

He slammed the commissioners for not taking their roles seriously.

"They are paid wages and they should be treating their positions full-time. If they can't allocate time for human rights, then they should step down as commissioners," Arutchelvan demanded.

Suhakam commissioners are appointed by the king on the advice of the prime minister. All commissioners appointed since Suhakam was established in 1999 serve part-time.

In July this year, former UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Param Cumaraswamy asked for the body to be run by ' full-time and interest free ' commissioners.

Adnan surprised

When contacted in Sabah today, Suhakam's complaint division chairperson Prof Hamdan Adnan expressed his regret that no commissioner was present on Wednesday to meet the group.

"I don't know what happened. There should be at least a commissioner on duty everyday," he said, adding that he was in East Malaysia to meet with officials from Suhakam office in Kota Kinabalu despite being on leave.

Pressed to respond further on his absent colleagues, Hamdan agreed "that Suhakam does not need many commissioners, just a few full-time ones including a full-time chairperson".

Currently, the organisation is headed by former attorney-general Abu Talib Othman who is also a corporate figure.

When malaysiakini called Suhakam office this afternoon, no commissioner was present but an officer revealed that the memorandum submitted by the delegation on Wednesday has been referred to the appropriate committee.

On the Simpang Renggam case, Hamdan said that Suhakam representatives visited the detention centre three months ago and found that there were no discrepancies in the inmates' living conditions.

"The issue is their continued detention as we have not found evidence of human rights abuses during our earlier visit. The problem is that these detainees are suspected criminals and are said to pose a threat to society."

However, Hamdan was also quick to add that Suhakam does not condone any form of detention without trial and has long been urging the authorities to charge and try the detainees.