Anwar slams police

Sunday, November 27, 2005


(AFP) - Former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim on Saturday criticised the police as "shameful" over an incident in which a naked female detainee was forced to perform squats in police custody.

"It is a shameful act. You (the police) have destroyed her life," an angry Anwar told reporters.

The video clip of a naked woman prisoner, apparently of Chinese ethnicity, doing squats while a policewoman with a headscarf watched was in the front page of major newspapers Friday.

Anwar, himself a victim of police brutality in 1998 when he was detained, said he did not think the government was serious about punishing the perpetrators.

"You cannot expect justice from this administration," he said, adding "it is blatantly corrupt and morally decadent."

Anwar is now a visiting professor in the United States and advisor to the opposition Peoples Justice Party led by his wife Wan Azziah Wan Ismail.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also internal security minister, in-charge of the police, vowed there would be no cover-up.

"There should be no cover-up at all. I don't want anybody to hide the bare facts obtained fron the investigations," he was quoted as saying by New Straits Times newspaper.

Deputy Inspector General of Police Musa Hassan said a swift investigation would be carried out and it could be completed by Monday.The video clip surfaced after four Chinese nationals were detained in a local police station early this month for allegedly holding false travel documents.

They had complained that they were made to strip and perform squats during their detention but all have denied being the naked woman in the video.Home Affairs Minister Azmi Khalid said Thursday that he had been instructed by Abdullah to make a visit to China to explain that its nationals are not being targeted by enforcement officials.

A major Malaysian resort in July was forced to apologise to hundreds of Chinese tourists after rude behaviour by its staff. More than 300 China tourists staged a six-hour sit-in in protest over pig drawings that staff had sketched on their room key dockets.