What’s in a NAM? This was answered even before the so-called non-aligned countries, which constitute the Non-Aligned Movement, began their summit in Kuala Lumpur on February 24. For many heads of state who attended, it was a short holiday in the tropics.
There are signs that cracks are appearing in the alliance of strange bedfellows in South East Asia. Governments are beginning to realise that they have been negligent of domestic politics; as general elections loom in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia...
One feature of the increasing assertiveness of Indonesia’s Islamic movements is the demand that the Shari’ah be implemented as a solution to its social ills. ABDAR RAHMAN KOYA discusses the implications of this issue.
Recent revelations about Malaysia’s mistreatment of foreign workers (“illegal immigrants” in local media parlance) reveal the extent of the Malaysian regime’s brutalities against people. Kuala Lumpur has for years been suppressing documented evidence of torture and deaths at various ‘deportation’ camps set up as holding centres for refugees.
Both Malaysia’s ruling coalition, led by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and the opposition Islamic Party (PAS) got shocks in by-elections in two constituencies left vacant by the death of Fadzil Noor...
Fadzil Mohammad Noor, president of the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and parliamentary opposition leader, died on June 23, two weeks after undergoing heart-bypass surgery.
Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma’s National League for Democracy, which won the elections annulled by the military junta in 1990, was released unconditionally after years of periods of shortlived and uncertain freedom...
Nur Misuari, chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), was arrested by Malaysian authorities on November 24 on Jampiras island, Sabah, North Borneo...
‘President’ Yasser Arafat found his host cooler towards him when he flew to Kuala Lumpur late in August. In a change from the past, he was given a less-than-friendly welcome by the Malaysian regime, which was caught in the middle of a virtual war against Islamic militants, and had to downplay its reception to the Palestinian delegation.
The beleaguered Mahathir regime in Malaysia appears to have a knack for finding strategies that have unintended effects. In its latest campaign to silence the opposition, ten more people, including Nik Adli Nik Abdul Aziz, the son of PAS chief Nik Abdul Aziz, were abducted in the first week of August under the notorious Internal Security Act (ISA)...
After rounding up scores of people last April under the notorious Internal Security Act (ISA), the Mahathir regime in Malaysia is now targeting the country’s campuses in its attempts to halt the escalating opposition of young people to his government.
Carrying out his promise earlier last month that he would “defy international norms” to ensure the nation’s “security”, Malaysia’s besieged prime minister Mahathir Mohamed continued his crackdown on political dissent with the arrest of individuals under the feared Internal Security Act (ISA).
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has been abandoned by his erstwhile Malay Muslim supporters since the dismissal and arrest of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, suffered yet another blow on November 29.
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed was returned to office in the general elections late last month, as widely predicted, but was severely bruised in the process and faces a difficult and uncertain future...
Indonesia and Malaysia have many similarities. Each has a predominantly Muslim population. Indonesia has been under a dominant political party Golkar for 32 years, while Malaysia’s UMNO has been ruling the country for the past 42 years.
The Malaysian government has bungled anew with the fresh sodomy charges it has brought against the jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.
Politics in Malaysia is at a crossroads. The aftermath, or rather the aftershock of Anwar’s verdict, which virtually all Malaysians have now dismissed as a shameless show-trial, is still felt all over the country. The judgement, as Anwar himself described it, ‘stinks to high heaven’.
Although Anwar Ibrahim’s ‘conviction’ on corruption charges was a foregone conclusion, the April 14 verdict still sent shock waves through Malaysia. The sentence - six years in jail - was even heavier than expected, and Judge Augustine Paul’s decision to have the prison term begin from the day of the conviction...
The Anwar Ibrahim corruption trial ended abruptedly on March 23, when the presiding judge, Justice Augustine Paul, ended proceedings without the defence having completed presented their closing arguments.
About a decade ago, people in Malaysia had little choice but to rely on the tightly-controlled government media. There was no Internet, nor Harakah, the popular bilingual tabloid published by the opposition Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS).
