Deputy Home Minister Zainal Abidin Zin today defended the crackdown against an anti-ISA gathering outside a detention camp in Perak, adding that the police had acted in accordance with their duties to prevent an illegal demonstration from taking place.

He said the police arrested 48 people - most of whom were having their meals in nearby coffeshops - because they were believed to be involved in the gathering which had not been issued with a police permit.

Those arrested, including social and political activists, were earlier stopped from proceeding to the Kamunting Detention Camp where people deemed to be a 'national security threat' are being held without trial.

Zainal said police also arrested three journalists and prevented others from covering the incident because they were uncertain of their identities.

"If everyone says they are journalists, how can we be sure they are not part of the illegal demonstrators?" Zainal told malaysiakini at the Parliament lobby today.

"The police did not actually arrest them but merely took them in for questioning," he stressed, further saying that some of the journalists on the scene did not wear their tags.

The 48 detained were released about 12 hours later, but 11 of them have to report to the Taiping police station on Wednesday and the rest on Nov 6.

Road block

About 300 people, many of them women, children and senior citizens, had journeyed to Kamunting on Saturday to submit a memorandum to the detention camp's commandant to express concern over the welfare and health of the current ISA detainees.

The gathering was also to mark the 14th anniversary of Operasi Lallang, an ISA dragnet which saw the arrest of 107 people and the temporary closure of three newspapers in 1987.

However, police blocked the road three kilometres away from the camp, and after several minutes of negotiation with the protesters, allowed three delegates to meet with the camp's commandant.

Nevertheless, the memorandum was not delivered as the delegates objected to the camp officials' insistence that only one delegate be allowed forward.

Zainal Abidin said the incident on Saturday was not a new directive from the Home Ministry.

"It is police discretion to do whatever they think fit at that point of time to safeguard national security," he said.

"Police needed to prevent the situation from getting worse. It is better that they break up a small crowd than allow the numbers to grow. Then it would be too difficult to disperse the crowd," he added.