Exposing Anti-Islam Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Latest Deception

By Max Blumenthal

AlterNet

March 26, 2015

One of America’s most prominent Islam bashers has a long history of making things up.

While promoting her new book, Heretic, on a March 23 episode of “The Daily Show,” Somali-born author and anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali made a staggering claim: “If you look at 70 percent of the violence in the world today, Muslims are responsible,” she told host Jon Stewart.

Stewart did not demand any evidence and Hirsi Ali provided no citation. However, she made a strikingly similar statement in a March 20 essay previewing her new book for the Wall Street Journal: “According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies,” Hirsi Ali wrote in WSJ’s Saturday Essay, “at least 70% of all the fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims.”

I contacted the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading British foreign policy think tank, to inquire about the source of Hirsi Ali’s statistic. According to IISS Media Relations and Communications Officer Kat Slowe, IISS did not explicitly state such a figure in its research.

“I have spoken to a number of our experts and they cannot identify where this statistic may have come from,” Slowe told me.

“Their best guess is that the journalist in question [Hirsi Ali] may have access/a subscription to the [IISS] Armed Conflict Database and may have calculated this statistic independently. There are some concerns that it could be misleading as, without Syria (near 200,000 total deaths, and almost half of last year’s global conflict deaths) the figure would look massively different (and of course, this conflict did not have its root in religion),” Slowe added.

Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation did not respond to my request for a citation on the statistic, nor did the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute that employs Hirsi Ali as a resident scholar. My email query to Hirsi Ali’s personal account at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where she serves as a fellow, also went unanswered.

Around 24 hours after my initial query, Hirsi Ali publicly backed off her claim that Muslims are “responsible” for most of the violence in the world. “Depressing that 70% of fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims,” she declared on her personal Twitter account.

Hirsi Ali linked to a survey of casualties in global conflicts by IISS’ Hanna Ucko Neill and Jens Wardenaer which made no reference to Muslims or religiously inspired violence. Apparently Hirsi Ali calculated the statistic on her own by using an IISS report that documented fatalities in conflicts in territories from eastern Ukraine to sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East to Mexico, where drug gangs fueled widespread killing. The IISS’s Slowe noted that year’s surge in conflict-related deaths occured thanks to the fighting in Syria, explaining that Hirsi Ali’s claim “could be misleading” because “this conflict did not have its root in religion.”

Instead of responding to my question about her statistic, Hirsi Ali’s AHA Foundation forwarded my email query to the Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing publication with its own history of Islamophobic tall tales and hoaxes. In a currently un-bylined article about the query, the Free Beacon accused me of anti-Semitism.

History of fraud

Hirsi Ali’s highly suspect statistic is only the latest deception by one of the world’s most prominent opponents of Islam. While other anti-Muslim activists like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have marginalized themselves on the fringes of the far-right, Hirsi Ali remains a darling of the American mainstream media. In Heretic, a polemic recycling many of her past arguments against Islam, she calls for the emergence of a Muslim Martin Luther — the authoritarian 16th-century zealot who called for burning down the synagogues of Jews, whom he compared to a gangrenous disease. With the book’s release, Hirsi Ali has been welcomed with open arms by the BBC, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and a relatively accommodating Jon Stewart. ABC News has even run an excerpt from Heretic, while the New York Times Book Review hosted her for an interview filled with hardball questions about her favorite children’s books.

Hirsi Ali’s power to persuade lies in her dramatic personal story and the public persona she has constructed. She has marketed herself as a expert native informant who has emerged out of the dark heart of radical Islam and into the light of Western civilization. Her tale is an uplifting, comforting one that tells many Westerners what they want to hear about themselves and their perceived enemies. With anti-Muslim attitudes at their peak across Europe and the US, her sweeping critique of Islam as an endemically violent faith has enormous cachet. The only problem is that like her writings on Islam, much of what she has told the public about herself is questionable.

In May 2006, the Dutch television program Zembla thoroughly debunked the dramatic story Hirsi Ali had told to advance her career, concluding that Hirsi Ali had sold the Dutch public “a story full of obscurities.”

Born Ayaan Hirsi Magam, she migrated to the Netherlands in 1992, changed her name to Hirsi Ali, and lied to Dutch authorities about her past. Contrary to the story she told the government, she arrived in the Netherlands not from war-torn Somalia, but from Kenya, where she lived in a secure environment and under the protection of the United Nations, which funded her education at a well-regarded Muslim girls’ school. Though she told immigration authorities and the Dutch public she had fled from civil war in Somalia, she left that country before its war broke out. Indeed, she did not live through a war there or anywhere else. Thanks to her fabrications, Hirsi Ali received political asylum in just five weeks.

Hirsi Ali told astonished audiences on Dutch talk shows that her supposedly devout family had forced her to marry a draconian Muslim man, that she had not been present at her own wedding, and that her family had threatened to kill her for offending their religious honor. However, Zembla told a drastically different story. Hirsi Ali’s brother, aunt and former husband each testified that she had indeed been present at her wedding. It turned out that Hirsi Ali’s mother had sent her brother to a Christian school, not exactly an indication of Islamic fanaticism.

“Yeah, I made up the whole thing,” Hirsi Ali admitted on camera to a Zembla reporter who confronted her with her lies. “I said my name was Ayaan Hirsi Ali instead of Ayaan Hirsi Magan. I also said I was born in 1967 while I was actually born in 1969.”

Hirsi Ali’s claim of honor killing threats also appears to be empty; she remained in touch with her father and aunt after she left her husband. In fact, her husband even came to visit her in the Dutch refugee center where she lived after leaving him. Even though he had paid her way to Europe on the grounds that she would join him in Canada, Hirsi Ali’s husband consented to the divorce she sought. (Watch the full Zembla program on Hirsi Ali.)

Fabrications that toppled a government

In 2003, just a decade after gaining political asylum in the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali was elected to the Dutch parliament on the ticket of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. VVD leadership knew that the story Hirsi Ali told on her immigration forms was a gigantic lie — she had told them as much — but covered up the fraud and even advanced it to propel her career.

“She’s witnessed five civil wars in her youth, and has fled with her family many times. She’s made of iron and steel,” the VVD’s Neelie-Smit Kroes said of Hirsi Ali at the time, reciting claims her party knew were false.

A year after joining the Dutch parliament, where she said she attempted to ban Islamic schools in the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali teamed up with Dutch director Theo van Gogh to produce a documentary called Submission. The film portrayed violence against women in Muslim communities as a logical result of Islamic belief, relying on actresses to portray abused women and featuring semi-nude, niqab clad women with Quranic verses scrawled across their torsos. Van Gogh, a filmmaker and columnist who had taken to calling Muslims “goat fuckers,” was gunned down and stabbed to death soon after the film’s release by a Dutch Islamist radical. Before fleeing the scene, the killer pinned a note to van Gogh’s body threatening Hirsi Ali with death. Hirsi Ali’s persistence in the face of the episode helped earn her hero status across the West, particularly in post-9/11 America, where Time magazine named her one of its 100 Most Influential People in 2005.

Zembla’s revelations of Hirsi Ali’s lies in May 2006 interrupted her ascent and threw the Dutch government into chaos. No one was more damaged than her friend and close party ally, Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk. Nicknamed “Iron Rita” for her ruthless anti-migrant crackdowns and her demagogic appeals to xenophobia, Verdonk was shamed by the revelations of Hirsi Ali’s deceptions. When she announced her intention to strip Hirsi Ali of her citizenship, however, she was skewered in parliament and forced to relent.

Days after Zembla aired its exposé, Hirsi Ali announced her plans to leave parliament and take up a position with the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington-based think tank that housed many of the neoconservatives who helped orchestrate the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of the furor she caused, Verdonk introduced the so-called “Law on Integration,” one of Europe’s harshest anti-immigrant bills. Only one member of the Dutch House of Representatives opposed it. However, the governing coalition soon collapsed because of the scandal Hirsi Ali’s deceptions inspired. With a new coalition seated in February 2007, and without Verdonk and Hirsi Ali in power, the government was able to adopt a more tolerant approach to immigrants.

Winning a Harvard fellowship, defending Breivik

Upon her relocation to the US, Hirsi Ali was embraced by a coalition of liberal interventionists, neoconservatives and “New Atheists” like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Bill Maher. With extended appearances on the Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson, who blamed homosexuality for the 9/11 attacks, self-proclaimed feminist Hirsi Ali won droves of fans among the Christian right. Despite her views on Islam, which she called a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death,” or perhaps because of them, she received a fellowship from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

As she rose in prominence among America’s intellectual elite, Hirsi Ali’s history of lying tumbled conveniently down the Orwellian memory hole. In promotional material for her best-selling 2007 memoir, Infidel, Hirsi Ali’s publishers at Simon & Schuster have pushed the discredited claim that “Hirsi Ali survived civil war.” More recently, conservative pundit Peggy Noonan glossed over the reasons behind Hirsi Ali’s flight from the Netherlands, writing, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali got death threats and eventually fled to America.” Few, if any, American outlets have noted that Hirsi Ali left the Netherlands as her public credibility collapsed and her anti-immigrant party fell into crisis.

With support from across the American ideological spectrum, Hirsi Ali sharpened her rhetoric against Muslims. In a candid 2007 exchange with Reason Magazine, she declared that the religion of Islam had to be “defeated.” “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful,” Hirsi Ali stated. “It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now….There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.”

Junketed to Berlin in 2012 to receive the Axel Springer Honorary Award from the right-wing German publisher, Hirsi Ali appeared to blame liberal defenders of multiculturalism for the killing spree committed by the Norwegian extremist Anders Breivik, claiming they left Breivik with “no other choice but to use violence. (Breivik cited Hirsi Ali’s work in his 1,500 page manifesto explaining his plans to commit a series of terrorist attacks across Norway.)

“[T]hat one man who killed 77 people in Norway, because he fears that Europe will be overrun by Islam, may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill. He says very clearly that it was the advocates of silence. Because all outlets to express his views were censored, he says, he had no other choice but to use violence.” (Her words were met with an extended standing ovation.)

When Brandeis University canceled plans to award Hirsi Ali an honorary degree in April 2014, it appeared that her increasingly vitriolic tirades against Islam and its adherents had caught up with her. But then came the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, a seemingly clarifying moment that Hirsi Ali and fellow anti-Islam activists seized on as confirmation of their darkest prophecies. Two months later, she released Heretic.

Having rebranded herself a brave “reformer” following in the footsteps of the Selma marchers, Hirsi Ali has found her way back into the mainstream limelight. While American media demonstrates an endless appetite for her polemics about Islam, holding her to account remains taboo.

Editor’s Note: Cat Slowe’s official title with IISS has been clarified — her official title is Media Relations and Communications Officer.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 April 2015, 12:21 pm and is filed under
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Riding a tiger

Economist

Apr 4th 2015 | KOTA BHARU

A floundering government indulges calls to toughen Islamic law

SEVERING a thief’s hand is the work of seconds, but a campaign to introduce strict Islamic punishments in Kelantan, a state in northern Malaysia, has ground on for 50 years. It could now be reaching a climax. In March state politicians in Kelantan’s capital, Kota Bharu, took a big step towards forcing a vote in the federal parliament that they hope will lead to local judges being allowed to sentence miscreants to whipping, amputations and even death by stoning.

It is hard to imagine hudud, corporal and capital punishments laid down in traditional Islamic law, actually being implemented in Kelantan. But the renewed discussion is harming Malaysia’s reputation as a bastion of moderate Islam. It is worrying Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese and Indians, who make up more than one-third of the population, not to mention a great many ethnic-Malay Muslims. It risks tearing apart the country’s opposition coalition. And it should concern America, which has made Malaysia a key ally.

For decades Malaysia has allowed Islamic courts to operate in parallel with secular ones, handing down rulings on civil matters to Muslims. Federal law limits the sentences such courts may deliver to three years in jail, a moderate fine or six strokes of the cane. But that is not enough for some members of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which has run Kelantan since 1990. At the very least they want fiercer lashings—up to 100 strokes for drinkers and adulterers. But they are also pushing for courts to have the power to order adulterers to be stoned to death. They want national lawmakers to vote on the issue. A private-members’ bill may force them to do so in May.

This is an old debate. What distinguishes the latest row is the ambiguous position of Malaysia’s ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). It has governed the country in coalition since independence but nearly lost at the most recent general election (the opposition won the popular vote but not a majority of seats, thanks to gerrymandering). UMNO has long opposed hudud, but behind the scenes it has lately been encouraging PAS, even though that party forms part of the opposition. Najib Razak, UMNO’s leader and Malaysia’s prime minister, has yet to clarify his stance. If a vote goes ahead he may tell his MPs to decide as they wish.

The UMNO leadership has reason to appear sympathetic to PAS’s hudud demands. It will exacerbate divisions in the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, a fractious alliance that binds PAS with two larger and more mainstream parties: the People’s Justice Party, a liberal, multi-ethnic outfit, and the Democratic Action Party, a secular, ethnic-Chinese one. Both complain that PAS is reneging on an earlier promise to suspend its quest for hudud. Meanwhile, the jailing in February of Pakatan’s charismatic leader, Anwar Ibrahim, on a sodomy charge looks politically motivated. Spinning out a debate about Islamic punishments is one way to widen rifts in Pakatan, which is struggling without Mr Anwar.

The second reason is the terrible performance of UMNO’s coalition at the 2013 election, the result of big defections of ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian voters. It has convinced UMNO to refurbish its former identity as a fierce defender of ethnic Malays and of Islam, the religion to which all Malays are assumed to adhere. The party looks ever less inclined to rein in Malay supremacists and Islamist firebrands incubating on its fringes. Creeping social conservatism has brought more frequent rows over such shockers as pop concerts and dog-petting events.

Compounding all this is the relentless use of the Sedition Act, a vague and noxious law left over from the British colonial era, to harry growing numbers of activists and opposition leaders. Mr Najib’s supporters paint him as a reformer restraining his party’s authoritarian impulses. Yet last year he reversed a promise to do away with the Sedition Act and instead vowed to strengthen it with clauses prohibiting speech that denigrates Islam and other religions. This week five members of a news website were arrested for reports on opposition to hudud.

These dark clouds explain why Malaysia’s ethnic-Chinese and Indian citizens—and many moderate Muslims—are not reassured that hudud is promoted by its advocates only in the conservative north. Some clashes caused by Malaysia’s existing dual-track legal system are still unresolved, such as who should rule in divorces and custody battles when only one spouse is Muslim. Meanwhile, introducing stricter punishments for a particular ethnicity is unlikely to improve Malaysia’s already fraught racial politics.

It remains uncertain whether Parliament will vote on the bills that PAS has introduced. The government could decide its interests are best served by stringing out the public debate. Certainly, the chances of PAS gaining the simple parliamentary majority needed to implement hudud—not to mention the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution, which many experts reckon would be necessary—seem small. PAS may end up asking Parliament to sanction a greatly diluted version of the judicial code that it appears to want.

The longest-lasting consequence of the controversy may be to encourage a redrawing of the two coalitions which will do battle at the next general election. PAS is itself torn by squabbling between liberal and conservative factions over the direction the party should take. Some speculate that the hardliners hope the latest push for hudud will cut short the bickering by encouraging PAS’s coalition partners to kick it out of Pakatan. On March 24th the Democratic Action Party warned that it was no longer willing to work with the PAS leader, Hadi Awang. Tensions within PAS will come to a head in a party leadership election in June. Analysts warn that without a compromise the party could split.

Some observers maintain that a split might be a big step towards reinvigorating Malaysia’s opposition. Shorn of their more extreme colleagues, PAS moderates could recommit themselves to a coalition that could survive even without Mr Anwar. But hiving off a rump of disaffected Islamist politicians could also bring UMNO closer to forming a majoritarian government comprised of ethnic Malays. It could then rule with a deaf ear to the interests of the country’s minorities. That would be a victory so far as UMNO strategists are concerned. But many Malaysians, moderate Malay Muslims among them, would find it a harsh punishment indeed.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 April 2015, 6:48 pm and is filed under
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To Ayaan Hirsi Ali – The Problem is Not with Islam, but with the Author

By Zainab Chaudry

Patheos

March 31, 2015

Authors who publish books generally want to sell them. Well, what sells better then timely, dramatized sensationalism with a personal angle, which reinforces readers’ latent fears and beliefs?

After reading Somali-born author and anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s disturbingly deceptive new book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, I can confidently vouch that this read is exactly that: Dramatized sensationalism with a personal angle that reinforces the larger audience’s fears and suspicions.

The book’s abject flaws begin with the introduction, which doggedly fixates on media reports disproportionately covering slanted stories of terrorist acts involving Muslims in destabilized and conflict-ridden regions of the world — without providing any crucially relevant context or background.

All, of course, to make the case that Islam is not a religion of peace.

Anyone who relies on such reports to draw their conclusions about the world’s second largest religion might agree with that assumption, but they would be wrong.

It goes on to leave the reader with an impression of a woman who has endured hardships in her personal life that continue to haunt her and unfortunately prohibit her from objectively viewing the religion she was born into – one that she, decades later, still clearly holds responsible for her traumas.

In her newest book, Ali, who is not an expert on Islam and has no formal religious training or qualifications, calls for a revolution within Islam similar to the Protestant Reformation that resulted from criticism of the Catholic Church.

She pleads for adherents of the world’s second largest religion to reject core tenets of the Islamic faith, which she has referred to in the past as a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death,” and instead embrace an almost Unitarian Universalist brand of Islam that, among other outlandish modifications, rejects the veracity and validity of the revered Prophet Muhammad.

Ali might as well ask for Earth to stop rotating on its axis, as the chances of that happening are probably equally as unlikely.

Being born and raised in a Muslim family does not make one an expert on Islam. Her Orientalist approach to “reforming Islam” calls for dissociation from, and outright rejection of, its basic, fundamental principles – this, despite the fact that she has yet to exhibit a firm grasp of what these principles actually convey.

As a woman, I empathize that Ali was subjected to female genital mutilation at the tender age of five while her father, who was a politician, was imprisoned. Frankly, it is inconceivable and unacceptable that girls and women are still forced to endure this unethical, abominable practice.

But Ali should stop spreading misinformation and educate herself on the fact that this barbaric practice predates Islam. It is not rooted in Islamic practices and in fact stems from cultural practices deeply rooted in certain segments of religiously diverse African populations.

Islam does not oppress women, as Ms. Ali often and wrongfully asserts. In fact, if practiced as intended, it actually liberates women from patriarchy and objectification.

According to today’s societal standards, modernization has led women to believe that our liberation is directly proportional to the height of our high heels, square inches of skin on display for visual consumption and the sexiness and marketability of our appearance.

Perhaps Ms. Ali can be forgiven for not knowing that Islam was the first religion to grant women rights to property and wealth inheritance; that it banned the horrible practice of female infanticide during a period in history when burying newborn infant girls was considered normative; that it encourages women to keep our family names even after marriage, so as to maintain our own individuality.

But ignorance is never an excuse for willfully perpetuating intolerance towards an already marginalized group of people whose religion is demonized on a daily basis.

Ms. Ali alleges she was forced to flee to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. As a woman myself of South Asian heritage, I know of many cases where Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh women have been pressured into arranged marriages against their will. But, Islam cannot be scapegoated for Ms. Ali’s disturbing circumstances. Religion is not the culprit; cultural traditions are responsible for the pressuring of women and girls to enter into marriages against their will. Islam unmistakably outlines that a woman’s consent is mandatory for marriage. Therefore, coercion is prohibited in our faith.

She has often said that according to her, the problem does not lie with Muslims; it lies within the tenets of the faith practiced by Muslims. I would argue that the problem is not with the tenets of Islam, but rather the way Muslims improperly practice their faith or mix it with cultural practices. If she wishes to salvage any credibility, Ms. Ali must stop erroneously conflating religion with culture to justify her unwarranted criticism of Islam.

The problem that exists is not within Islam; it is among the less than one percent of its adherents who have limited access to resources and jobs, who have been victimized by failed policies and corrupt governments, who misunderstand or misinterpret its teachings, who have granted precedence to their own egos and greed, who prioritize personal and political agendas over its tenets and who have lagged far behind in adapting to the 21st century.

Unfortunately, by virtue of biased reporting and a myriad of other factors, the actions and voices of this minuscule minority have been amplified and provided a platform to wrongly define and misrepresent Islam in Western society. And while failed governmental policies (in the U.S. and abroad), destabilization and multiple invasions coupled with more than a decade of war can never justify acts of terrorism, this context is simply important to help explain the motivation for terrorist groups who have capitalized on these factors in the most recent decade to build their ranks.

During a recent appearance on The Daily Show, Ali baselessly claimed that “Muslims were responsible for 70 percent of violence in the world today.” Later, she amended this unsupported claim to “70 percent of all fatalities in armed conflicts around the world last year were in wars involving Muslims.”

What she still failed to mention is that a bulk of these casualties, mostly Muslim, occurred in Syria, which recently entered its fourth year of a bloody civil war that has exacted a tremendous toll on its people, but still has been largely left ignored by the world’s superpowers.

Any dialogue seeking resolution for conflicts plaguing the Muslim world is incomplete without taking into consideration the many factors that have contributed to destabilization in these regions across the globe. Ali’s approach is also especially problematic because it presumptuously categorizes the followers of the world’s second largest – and fastest growing – religion into restrictive labels and proceeds to dissect and analyze them through a one-dimensional, myopic lens.

Islam is not a monolith. As The Reluctant Fundamentalist author Mohsin Hamid pointed out eloquently, there are more than 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and each individual has unique life experiences and perspectives. It is disingenuous to lump a large group into a single category and paint them all with the same tainted brush.

Ali stresses: “The assumption is that, in Islam, there are a few rotten apples, not the entire basket. I’m saying it’s the entire basket.” But in order to effectively determine whether to direct our focus on the apples or the basket, we must first educate ourselves on the actual scope and source of the problem and also verse ourselves on the proper, contextualized understanding of Islam.

Once again, Ali has demonstrated a failure to do both. But judging by the latest round of media appearances while promoting her most recent, sensationalized book, she will undoubtedly still turn a nice profit.

Dr. Zainab Chaudry is a spokeswoman and Maryland Outreach Manager for the Council on American Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. She is a Board Member of Interfaith Action for Human Rights, and serves on the Taskforce of Bilal Initiative – an initiative designed to expand dialogue on racism and prejudice within American Muslim communities. You can email her at
[email protected]
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                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 April 2015, 11:37 am and is filed under
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Two former Prime Ministers, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah should be sent on a national mission to Australia  to find out from Sirul who gave the order to kill Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu

In my media statement of 21st March 2015, I said: “The mastermind of UMNO’s ‘UG’ (Unity Government between UMNO and PAS) conspiracy achieved an unexpected coup within a year when the Kelantan hudud enactment question completely drowned out all the issues currently haunting UMNO and the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak – the 1MDB scandal; Anwar Ibrahim’s five-year jailing; Mongolian Altantunya Shaariibuu’s 2006 murder and conviction of two former police commandos Azila Hadri and  Sirul Azhar  with motives neither established nor pursued; the new jet for PM; the lavish spending on wedding of Najib’s daughter and above all, Najib’s survival as Prime Minister and UMNO President”.

Yes, the hudud trap and issue has come to the aid of Najib by seemingly drowning out all the grave injustices and scandals in the country, but Najib should realise that these injustices and scandals cannot lay hidden for long or forever, so long as they remained unrectified.

This is why “the ghost of Altantunya rides again” when former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir has finally included it as among the scandals which have caused Najib to lose the trust of Malaysians,  predicting that the ruling UMNO/Barisan Nasional will lose the next polls if the UMNO president remains in power.

The judiciary, the Attorney-General and the Inspector-General of Police have all been guilty of first-degree dereliction of duty when they ignored the “elephant in the room” in the Altantuya murder case when they should have known that the two former police commandos, Azilah Hadri and Sirul Azhar Umar could not have killed the Mongolian whom they did not know, without a motive and a mastermind!

Their dereliction of duty were all the more heinous and inexcusable when they should have known about Sirul’s first statement to the police on 9th November 2006, where he admitted that he was carrying out instructions when he killed  Altantuya.

Now Mahathir has joined  the growing national and international chorus demanding that the whole truth about the cold-blooded  Altantunya murder in 2006 should be uncovered,  with Sirul revealing in an exclusive interview with Malaysiakini last month that he had merely acted under orders and that those with the motive to kill the Mongolian national are still at large.

Mahathir has rightly pointed out the injustice of the Altantuya murder case when he said:

“Apart from (Prime Minister) Najib (Abdul Razak) dismissing the claims as ‘rubbish’, there was no investigation.

“This is a human life. It would be very cruel for Sirul to die for just following orders.”

In fact, Najib’s dismissal of Sirul’s claim that he acted under orders in Altantuya’s murder  by claiming that it was “utter rubbish” and “total rubbish” were  most suspicious, rash and imprudent, as it immediately invited the question as to how Najib could know there were no such orders to Sirul and Azila.

While Najib could claim that he had not personally  issued such an order, how could he be sure that no such order was issued by someone else?

Could Najib explain?

That Sirul and Azila had murdered Altantunya and blow up her body by using C4 explosive was virtually admitted by Sirul when he as good as made a confession from Australia, saying: “If I die today, I would not find peace. I did what I was told and this is what I get in return.”

The good name of Malaysia and international repute of our administration of justice  demand that the motive and mastermind of Altantuya’s murder nine years ago must be pursued and uncovered.

I suggest that the nation send the two former Prime Ministers, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah on a national mission to Australia to find out from Sirul the motive and mastermind for Altantuya’s murder in 2006 and to report to Parliament on their findings, including what should be done to Sirul and Azila, both with death sentences hanging over them although Sirul has absconded to Australia.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 April 2015, 2:52 pm and is filed under
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Vohrah: Whistleblower judge should be compensated

By Hafiz Yatim

Malaysiakini

Apr 2, 2015

The government should compensate whistleblower judge Syed Ahmad Idid Syed Abdullah Idid, said former Court of Appeal judge KC Vohrah.

Syed Ahmad Idid was forced to resign after making revelations of wrongdoing in the judiciary in 1996.

Vohrah, now a consultant with law firm Lee, Hishammuddin, Allen and Gledhill, also commended Malaysiakini for highlighting Syed Ahmad Idid’s plight after so many years.

“Syed Ahmad Idid deserves it (compensation),” he told Malaysiakini recently in response to an interview this news portal had with Syed Ahmad Idid, a former High Court judge last month.

Syed Ahmad Idid in that interview had commended the revelations made by Vohrah in an article for the Court of Appeal, Malaysia, 1994-2014, 20th Anniversary book, published last year.

Syed Ahmad Idid had said he felt vindicated with Vohrah’s exposure.

Vohrah wrote in that article that former chief justice Eusoff Chin had tried to influence one of the judges sitting at the Court of Appeal three-member bench in the controversial Ayer Molek Rubber Company vs Insas Bhd case in 1995.

Eusoff at the time had told the judge in his chambers that the appeal by Ayer Molek had no merit while showing the case files on his desk, although the case had yet to reach him at the Federal Court.

Besides Vohrah, who was at the time a High Court judge co-opted to sit in the Court of Appeal, the other judges who sat on the panel were NH Chan and Siti Norma Yaakob, who later rose to be the first female chief judge of Malaya.

At that time, Insas was represented by senior lawyer VK Lingam, who was revealed to have controversially gone on holiday with Eusoff in New Zealand.

Syed Ahmad Idid wrote an anonymous letter exposing the matter in 1996, which was sent to a select set of high officials.

Among its allegations, it revealed Eusoff had gone on the New Zealand holiday with Lingam, who had appeared before the then chief justice on a number of cases.

Syed Ahmad Idid was told to resign when the letter he sent mysteriously found its way into some government departments and then spread to the media.

‘Nation owes debt’

Besides Vohrah’s call for Syed Ahmad Idid to be compensated, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang has also called for reparations to be made to the former High Court judge.

Following Malaysiakini’s report on Syed Ahmad Idid, former Transparency International president Tunku Abdul Aziz Ibrahim wrote in the New Straits Times on March 15 that whistleblowing may be a mug’s game, but to Syed Ahmad Idid, it was a sacred duty to expose wrongdoing, even if it meant drawing public attention to brother judges.

“The nation owes a debt of gratitude to this honourable man who put aside his bright career prospects and the future of his young family, to stand against corruption in the Palace of Justice.”

“Syed Ahmad Idid lived up to his reputation as a principled public servant when he decided to open a can of judicial worms. The judiciary today is all the better for his highly developed sense of duty,” wrote Tunku Abdul Aziz.

A former colonel and friend of Syed Ahmad Idid who wanted to remain anonymous, also expressed how proud he was with what the former High Court judge had done.

“I am really interested in what Syed Ahmad Idid had written that landed him in hot water.

“I remember asking a judge who was in my district mosque about it. What he said sticks in my mind until today: ‘Every word Syed Ahmad Idid wrote was correct.’.”

A lady who previously worked at the Bar Council who also wanted to remain anonymous, said she prays the government would reward the former judge richly for the agony and pain that his family and he had to endure,

She added she admired Syed Ahmad Idid’s courage and sense of honour in speaking up.

“Everyone knew everything he said was true, but sadly nobody dared to speak up because they all want to be good guys and girls.

“They all just want to fold their arms and not ruffle any feathers.

“Syed Ahmad Idid has long been vindicated, but what I want to see is justice and compensation given for all he had gone through,” she said.

Head held high

A retired British judge who was Syed Ahmad Idid’s colleague at the Inns of Court, London found the Malaysiakini article interesting and uplifting.

“Syed Ahmad Idid’s actions bring great credit on his integrity and courage. It could not have been an easy time for him and his family.

“But you must have been fortified at all times by knowing you are in the right.

“Corruption is such an odious and corrosive thing. The danger is that if it is left unchecked, it becomes endemic and an accepted culture, that is almost impossible to eradicate.

“But a few brave souls can make a difference,” he asserted.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 2 April 2015, 11:40 am and is filed under
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As Parliament’s debate on anti-terrorism bill is also a debate on Islamic State and Islamic extremism in Malaysia, Zahid and Khalid are guilty of gross dereliction of duty in not giving MPs  latest updates on these threats

Nine months after the glowing and laudatory tribute paid by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to Islamic State, even urging UMNO members to emulate  the courage and dedication  of Islamic State (IS) fighters, the nation was yesterday given the most grim and bleak picture about the threats posed by Islamic State and Islamic extremists in the country.

And this “grim and bleak picture” of the threats to Malaysia  posed by IS and Islamic extremists did not come from the Prime Minister himself, or the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi or the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, but by the Bukit Aman’s counter-terrorism director Datuk Ayub Khan Mydin at the first special briefing for civil servants where said that evidence gathered so far of Malaysian involvement in the Islamic State (ISO) has led the police to believe that attacks by the groups on Malaysian soil is imminent.

Ayub said it “was just a matter of time” before an attack is launched.

“It is not a matter of if we will be attacked but when,” he declared.

The counter-terrorism director also revealed that Malaysian IS members have made direct threats to attack Malaysia, including plans to bomb entertainment spots as part of its plan to “punish” Malaysia for being an “apostate” country.

“They view us as apostates. First they deem us bidaah (deviant), then they say we are apostates and then then next thing is to say our blood is halal,” Ayub revealed.

He said one such plan was uncovered by the police last April.

Ayub presented evidence at the briefing to support his claim but the details were barred from public disclosure.

To date, there are an estimated 63 Malaysians in Syria fighting with the IS.

On top of that, as many as 240 Malaysians have been identified and were arrested from 2001 to 2009 for links to Jemaah Islamiyah, a group with an extensive network in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Southern Philippines that has professed support for the IS.

“And these groups have already announced a few times that they will launch an attack on Malaysia and we have so far been lucky that no lives are lost as yet,” the counter-terrorism director said.

Ayub later said Malaysians are drawn to the IS ideology that those who fight with them are guaranteed a place in “jannah” (heaven) and that those who go against them are considered as apostates that Islam ordains to kill.

He added that this has driven them to believe that their own country is a part of an international conspiracy by infidels bent on preventing the rise of the Islamic caliphate as supposedly promised by Prophet Muhammad.

 “They really view us as infidels. And they believe that as infidels, we deserved to be sembelih(decapitated),” he said, pointing to one Facebook threat made by a Malaysian IS member who said that he would not hesitate to murder his own family members if they too supported the government’s fight against the IS.

The question that cries out for answer is why Members of Parliament, whether from Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Rakyat, who had all  taken the oath of an MP to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, had not been briefed on the updates of the threats from Islamic State and Islamic extremism?

When did the threats from Islamic State and Islamic extremism in Malaysia suddenly become so grim and bleak?

A month after Najib’s faux pas of making a glowing and laudatory tribute to Islamic State, the Home Minister gave an assurance to Malaysians that the IS threat was under control.

He said the “militant groups” were trying to band together as a single “terror coalition” but they will not succeed in Malaysia as the authorities will not allow these groups to gain a foothold in Malaysia.

But from the account of the Police Anti-Terrorism Director, it would appear that IS and the auxiliary “militant groups” had succeeded in gaining a foothold in Malaysia.

Parliament and the Malaysian people are entitled to a full explanation why the police counter-terrorism campaign had failed to prevent IS and Islamic extremists from gaining a foothold in Malaysia.

With such a “grim and bleak” account of the threats posed by Islamic State and Islamic extremists to Malaysia, it is all the more regrettable that the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar had been barking up the wrong tree in the past year or so – twittering his attacks on Pakatan Rakyat leaders, NGO and civil society activists who want to bring about political changes through peaceful and democratic means but who completely renounce the tactics and strategy of terrorism.

The IGP should on top of the war against terrorism in Malaysia as represented by IS and Islamist extremists, and not on top of the war against PR leaders, NGO and civil society activists who want to effect peaceful and democratic change.

The battle against Islamic State and Islamic extremists espousing terrorism is not just the presentation and enactment of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill and other terrorism-related bills in Parliament, for as Ayub Khan has rightly pointed out, this is finally an ideological war and equally if not more important are the role and success of the government and all agencies in educating Muslims about the threat of IS and Islamic extremism.

The whole subject of the war against terrorism, not just the anti-terrorism  laws but also  the ideological battle to win the hearts and minds of Muslims for a moderate Malaysia in the face of the threats from Islamic State and Islamist extremists, cannot be won  purely as a police operation but must involve all levels of society, including a bi-partisan Parliamentary Select Committee against terrorism.

The Home Minister, Zahid Hamidi, should defer the seven anti-terrorism bills scheduled for  Parliament debate and enactment next week to the next parliamentary meeting starting on May 18.

In the meantime, a Parliamentary Select Committee on Terrorism should be set up next week to study not only the seven proposed anti-terrorism bills, but to delve into the whole subject of terrorism with greater depth, with assistance from the Police Anti-Terrorism Unit, and submitting a report to Parliament not only  on the seven proposed anti-terrorism bills but the whole subject of the threat of IS and Islamic extremists before the next meeting.

The spate of anti-terrorism bills must  serve two objectives:

•	Firstly, to be an effective instrument in the fight against the threats of Islamic State and Islamic extremists in Malaysia;

•	Secondly, to ensure that dissent which are completely unrelated to terrorist threats of Islamic State or Islamist extremist or any form of terrorism do not fall victim because of the wide ambit and arbitrary powers conferred, which are not open to judicial review or parliamentary scrutiny.

A Parliamentary Select Committee on the seven terrorism laws would also provide opportunity for a fuller study to address the doubts and concerns that non-violent and peaceful dissidents would also be targeted under the new anti-terrorism laws.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 3 April 2015, 2:31 pm and is filed under
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Malaysia’s Mahathir Asks Who Ordered Mongolian Beauty’s Death

By John Berthelsen

Asia Sentinel

April 2, 2015

But why now?

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has opened questions on who was behind the Oct. 18, 2006 murder of the Mongolian translator and party girl Altantuya Shaariibuu by two bodyguards of then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak. The killing is arguably the most notorious murder in recent Malaysian history.

Another question that has to be asked, however, is why Mahathir didn’t ask who killed the Mongolian beauty eight years and six months ago. It is tempting to suspect that Mahathir, who asked the questions on his blog chedet.cc on April 2, knows the answer. In the wake of the killing, top political circles in Malaysia were throbbing with rumors, especially over the fact that Altantuya was pregnant and that her body may have been blown up with military explosives  to destroy the DNA of the person who made her that way. Those rumors have long suggested that someone close to Najib had ordered her killed.

Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar, then members of the elite Police Special Action Force, were convicted in April of 2009 of having dragged the then 28-year-old expectant mother out of a car in a patch of jungle near the suburban city of Shah Alam and shot her in the head twice as she begged for her life, then blew her apart.

It is also tempting to suspect that the 89-year-old Mahathir is asking questions now not out of concern for who killed her but because he has taken off the gloves out of frustration in his drive to rid the country of Najib as prime minister. It was Mahathir, three years after Altantuya’s death, who engineered the ouster of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and installed Najib in his place as the country’s leader.

Mahathir’s blog entry, which apparently was blocked by the amount of traffic it drew, delivered a long laundry list of questions over Najib’s stewardship besides the murder, including his involvement in the disastrous 1MDB state-backed development fund, whose so-far unmet liabilities are threatening the country’s entire financial system; the sources of funds that Najib’s stepson used to purchase enormously expensive properties in the United States; and the state purchase of a luxurious private jet for the use of the prime minister’s office.

Mahathir also cited sensational reports in the New York Times and the Times of London that were generated by the investigative website Sarawak Report detailing the Najib family wealth that the former premier said “are extremely embarrassing for the country.”

Mahathir has been thwarted in his campaign, which began in public last August with his withdrawal of support for the premier. Muhyiddin Yassin, Mahathir’s 67-year-old ally, vice premier and UMNO VP, ended his subterranean campaign to bring down Najib a few weeks ago, defeated by Najib’s ability to direct a river of money to rank and file division chiefs to keep them loyal.

Altantuya was identified by French authorities as a translator in the waning days of the extended purchase of French Scorpene submarines by Najib when he was defense minister. The two are known to have visited Paris at the same time although Najib has sworn on the Quran that he had never met her. According to the French authorities, in documents obtained in 2012 by Asia Sentinel and printed in a series of prizewinning stories, Mahathir was fully aware of the transaction, which allegedly produced  worth of kickbacks routed through a company wholly owned by Najib’s then-close friend, Abdul Razak Baginda – Altantuya’s lover – to the United Malays National Organization.

A beautiful young mother, Altantuya had joined the international jet set party circle, reportedly making her Malaysian connections at a diamond show in Singapore. A now-dead private detective, Perumal Balasubramaniam, added to the mysteries surrounding Altantuya’s relationships by submitting a sworn statement saying that both Razak Baginda, who had jilted her, and Najib had had affairs with the woman. Balasubramaniam was bundled out of the country, reportedly with the help of one of Najib’s brothers on orders of Najib’s wife Rosmah Mansor, and with a wad of ringgit in his pockets.

As an indication of Mahathir’s own approval of the transaction, on June 25, 2012, Asia Sentinel quoted a French investigative document describing a diplomatic cable sent to Foreign Minister Alain Juppe that said: “The company chosen by the government for the submarine project is…Perimekar. This choice is the subject of an official notification from the Malaysian Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Defence… Note that this decision of the Ministry of Finance was taken while the Prime Minister [eds: Mahathir] himself held the post of Minister of Finance, after the departure of Tun Daim [Zainuddin].”

Sirul and Azilah were convicted of the killing in a lengthy trial that appeared designed mainly to construct ways not to ask who had hired the two to kill the woman – despite a sworn confession by Sirul that was never produced in court for reasons that remain unclear. The court’s first act was to clear Razak Baginda without having to answer a case. The former military security analyst almost immediately fled the country for the UK. He has since returned quietly.

Sirul’s confession noted that the two were to be paid RM50,000-100,000 for the job although no one was named. The two were subsequently acquitted by an appellate court that stated, rather oddly, that there was no reason to seek to find out a motive for the killing. Sirul left for Australia some time after the not guilty verdict.

Then, in January, the Federal Court, Malaysia’s highest, reversed the acquittal. Sirul was arrested in Australia. He remains in detention today, having told the independent website Malaysiakini in a telephone interview that he had been “under orders” to commit the murder. Australia refuses to extradite him because Malaysia still has the death penalty.

Dr Mahathir said in his blog such an allegation ought to be investigated because Sirul had worked for Najib.

“This is a human life. It would be cruel if Sirul was subjected to the death penalty for carrying out instructions,” he wrote.

After the Malaysiakini revelations, Najib called the allegation that Sirul had been under orders “utter rubbish.”

                This entry was posted on Friday, 3 April 2015, 6:24 am and is filed under
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The price some of us pay for freedom, democracy

BY Syerleena Abdul Rashid

The Malaysian Insider

3 April 2015

About 158 arrests have been made so far and Malaysians can expect more as our country continues to spiral downwards into an age of iniquity. Racial tension and religious intolerance are at an all-time high, threats and other forms of negative verbal exchanges go on quite frequently with very little consequences and now arrests are being made on a daily basis. As a result, even the more moderate ones who walk among us are now beginning to feel the paranoia and the distrust.

Nelson Mandela once said, “There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.” Having spent half of his lifetime behind bars, his name has become synonymous with valiant values like fortitude and perseverance. Mandela understood what struggle meant and knew the importance of believing in the aforementioned values; he was imprisoned simply because certain individuals were not comfortable with his wisdom. Much like how our brothers and sisters in Malaysia are being imprisoned because of differing political ideologies, daring exposes and unwillingness to succumb to conventionalism or maintaining the status quo.

What triggers our irritation is how the well-off and the well-connected celebrate their lives in the most extravagant ways while we grumble about the 6% tax increment being shoved down our throats and worry if we can ever afford sending our children to good schools, but what really sets it off is when innocent Malaysians are being hauled in for the silliest “crimes” ever imagine, while the murders, rapists and bigots roam free.

So what if every once in a while we need to vent our frustrations? – It’s only healthy to let it out and not keep it bottled up inside. Most of us channel our anger through social media but that too, will get you in trouble these days. Those in power seem very adamant about curtailing any ounce of freedom left in this country and their bravado only confirms that they have been sanctioned to do so. Yes, they can get away with anything at this point while the rest of us lose sleep and our appetites over how chaotic our country is becoming.

I won’t get into the details of what those in power are doing to us – we already know and do not need to be reminded. These arrests are only an affirmation of the socio-political inequality that exists in our society. These arrests are highly oppressive and contradict our democratic system. Those in power use threats as an oppressive tool to hinder our ability to think or act. They use oppressive measures to control our decisions and to make us stop thinking about equality, liberty and justice. The system wants us to experience life without ever going against their ideologies because let’s face it; they just can’t handle criticism well.

We know that speaking up against cruelty and tyranny takes balls of steel in this country. In addition to that, we know that not giving up right now takes a whole lot of strength especially knowing very well how the system has been designed to work in their favour but there is a silver lining to all of this inanity.

Those arrested represent hope for Malaysia and presenting such a thing in a country that is in desperate need of reforms can be a dangerous thing for those in power. Those who are with us – those on the quest for change, must never give up on your hopes nor limit your dreams. Honour the struggle and believe in the cause, it’s time to mature, Malaysia, and wake up. The system isn’t broken unless you believe it to be. – April 3, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Friday, 3 April 2015, 5:58 pm and is filed under
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Khalid will not last long as IGP under a Prime Minister who exacts the highest professional standards from the top cop in the country and who does  not just play with twitter or come out with nonsensical answers to serious questions

Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar will not last long as Inspector-General of Police under a Prime Minister who exacts the highest professional standards from the top cop in the country and  who does not just play with twitter or come out with nonsensical answers to serious questions.

Khalid’s response to the query by former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir as to why there had been no investigation as to who had issued the order to murder Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu is most nonsensical to say the least.

With great magnanimity, Khalid excused Mahathir for his ignorance in raising questions about Altantuya’s murder on the ground that  the former Prime Minister was unaware of details of the police investigations into the matter, including  allegations made by the fugitive police commando Sirul Azhar Umar.

Khalid said yesterday:

“Of course (Mahathir) doesn’t know what actions we have taken (and) what investigations we have conducted.

“What Sirul recently raised has also been probed by us and we are of the view that there is nothing (in his claim) for us to continue (with) the investigation.”

Khalid  said Sirul had many opportunities to raise the claim but he did not.

“My response to Yang Amat Berbahagia Tun Mahathir: this case happened eight years ago.

“Sirul has plenty of opportunities to raise this issue – before the trial, during the police investigation, after the trial, while waiting for the appeal – but why now? This is the big question.”

It is sad that the Inspector-General of Police did not realise that he was making a fool of himself with such a response as Sirul did raise the issue more than once that he was merely carrying out orders in Altantuya’s murder, but the highest police authorities were not prepared to carry out a thorough investigation into Sirul’s allegations.

In fact, Sirul had consistently said during police investigations, the trial and after the appeal that he was merely carrying out  orders to kill Altantuya.

In his first police statement on 19th November 2006 after his arrest for the murder of Altantuya, Sirul confessed he was acting under orders and was offered money to kill Altantuya and destroy all evidence by blowing up her body with C4 military explosives.

On 3rd February 2009, Sirul pleaded in the Kuala Lumpur High Court to not pass the death sentence on him, as he was like “a black sheep that has to be sacrificed” to protect the plans and intentions of those who are not in court to face charges.

Sirul said from the dock: “I have no reason to cause hurt, what’s more to take the life of the victim in such a cruel manner…I appeal to the court, which has the power to determine if I live or die, not to sentence me so as to fulfil other’s plans for me.”

On 9th April 2009, the High Court sentenced the two former police commandos Sirul and Azila Hadri to death for the murder of Altantuya, bringing to a close the 159-day trial.

Sirul and Azila were acquitted by the Court of Appeal on 23rd August 2013. The Federal Court heard the prosecution’s appeal against the duo’s acquittal on 23rd June 2013 and overturned the duo’s acquittal, finding them both guilty of murder and sentenced them to death on 13th January 2015.

But Sirul had absconded to Sydney Australia, and in an interview with Malaysiakini on Tuesday, 17th February, 2015, Sirul said:

 “I was under orders. The important people with motive are still free.

“It is not like I do not love the police (force) or the country, but I acted under orders.”

Sirul has also said: “If I die today, I would not find peace. I did what I was told and this is what I get in return.”

Khalid cannot deny that there is extraordinary consistency in Sirul’s statements in the past nine years from his first police statement on 19th November 2006, his statement from the dock in the Kuala Lumpur High Court on 3rd February 2009 and his latest interview with Malaysiakini after Federal Court decision on 13th January 2015 to convict him of murder of Altantuya and sentenced him to death sentence.

Under these circumstances, Khalid’s explanation has totally collapsed when he sought to reply to Mahathir’s query with the response: “Sirul has plenty of opportunities to raise this issue – before the trial, during the police investigation, after the trial, while waiting for the appeal – but why now? This is the big question.”

He should substantiate his claim that “What Sirul recently raised has also been probed by us and we are of the view that there is nothing (in his claim) for us to continue (with) the investigation”, to give facts and details as to what police investigations had been conducted, when, and by who, as to justify his assertion.

Khalid is back to square one. He has not really answered the question posed by Mahathir and all thinking and justice-loving Malaysians: that  although Sirul and Azila were the executioners but  who was the mastermind who gave the order to kill Altantuya!

It is a black mark on the Malaysian police, the Attorney-General and the Judiciary that although it was as plain as daylight that Sirul and Azila never knew Altantuya and had no motive to murder her, and that the heinous act could only be committed on the orders of someone else,  all the three institutions were in cohorts in not wanting to pursue the matter further.

So the question that Mahathir asked two days ago, “Who ordered killing of Altantuya?” is most pertinent and valid  as it is a question which had been asked umpteenth times in Malaysia in the past eight-and-a-half years since 18th October 2006 and will continue to be asked in the coming years until a convincing answer is given.

For more than eight years, when Sirul and Azila were standing trial for the murder of Altantunya, they were given special police protection, as the duo were the only two accused in the nation’s history who were allowed to hide their identity when entering or leaving court by  covering their faces to avoid being photographed.

This is why despite the fanfare surrounding the trial from High Court to the Federal Court, the media never had  the opportunity to photograph the face of the two men and  members of the public have no idea what they look like.

It was only after Sirul’s absconding to Australia after the Federal Court verdict that the police released Sirul’s photograph.

What was the reason for the special police protection to Sirul and Azila to hide their identity for the past eight-and-a-half years?

Was this an indication that there had been some special understanding with the two accused with regard to their prosecution but which had gone awry?

After the Federal Court’s decision passing the death sentence on Sirul and Azila for the murder of Altantuya, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak dismissed Sirul’s claim that he had acted under orders to murder Altantuya as “utter rubbish” and “total rubbish”.

How does the Prime Minister know whether Sirul’s claim was “utter rubbish” and “total rubbish”?

Did the police question and investigate Najib to find out what the Prime Minister knew about Altantuya’s murder?

The IGP should not continue to hedge and dodge about Sirul’s shocking claims but must act belatedly to conduct a re-investigation into Altantuya’s murder to find out who was the mastermind who ordered the killing of Altantuya.

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 4 April 2015, 8:12 am and is filed under
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Thanks to DAP’s opposition and PKR support, Hadi’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation will not be passed in Parliament next week

Thanks to DAP’s opposition and PKR support, PAS President and MP for Marang, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation will not be passed in Parliament next week.

It is now more than two weeks since the initial  claims of the MCA President, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and Gerakan President, Datuk Mah Siew Keong that the Cabinet had discussed and taken a stand to oppose Hadi’s private member’s bill and that the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak would come out with an unequivocal statement declaring UMNO/BN’s opposition to  Hadi’s private member’s bill.

But these claims have been debunked by two events:

Firstly, Najib’s 15-day silence on the issue, as Liow and Mah had leaked the “exclusive news” that the Prime Minister would be making such an announcement two Fridays ago on 20th March 2015;

Secondly, the denial by three UMNO Ministers, the Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, the International Trade and Industry Minister, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad and the Youth Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin that the Cabinet had discussed, let alone taken a stand on, Hadi’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation.

These three UMNO Ministers are virtually calling Liow a “liar”  with the MCA President insisting today (Sin Chew) that the Cabinet had discussed Hadi’s private member’s bill at its  meetings on March 20 and 27.

MCA and Gerakan nearly brought the nation to a precipice when they betrayed the founding principles not only of their own  respective parties, but of Barisan Nasional (and previously Alliance) coalition when they consented to UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen voting in support of PAS Syariah Criminal Enactment 2015.

But the DAP stood firm, not only opposing the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code 2015 which was enacted with the unanimous vote of PAS and UMNO Assemblymen in Kelantan, but also declared our firm opposition to Hadi’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation.

It is fortunate that despite the Prime Minister’s 15-day silence and the ambivalent and ambiguous position of MCA and Gerakan when they could agree to Kelantan UMNO Assemblymen supporting PAS on hudud implementation, the firm stand of DAP together with the support of PKR opposing Hadi’s private member’s bill, the situation  has clarified  somewhat, as Parliament will not endorse Hadi’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation next week.

But the question remains whether Pakatan Rakyat could be salvaged.

DAP’s differences with the PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang is larger than just on the issue of hudud, as it is  on the fundamental question of trust and honour of political parties and leaders, whether their word is their bond and  they can be trusted with their  promises and commitments.

DAP, PKR and PAS have entered into a solemn pact to establish the Pakatan Rakyat in 2008 based on a Common Policy Framework to be the basis of the common  political struggle to topple UMNO/BN. They also agreed to accept the principle that every policy and decision of PR must be derived from consensus of the three component parties  and no individual party or political leader has a veto power over the others.

When these two principles are repeatedly broken by Hadi  in Pakatan Rakyat, how can trust and co-operation be restored among the three PR component parties?

As the 14th General Elections is still two or three year away, with the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat coalitions both facing a grave crisis, and  if both coalitions cannot be salvaged, Malaysians will have to think the unthinkable of a grand new coalition post-BN, post-PR with a ne	w Prime Minister to “Save Malaysia”.

Critics have hurled a variety of accusations against  me for  proposing a new “unity government” between the DAP and UMNO, of proposing a DAP-PKR-MCA-Gerakan coalition and even insinuating that I am begging to get into Najib’s Cabinet.

Clearly, these critics do not understand what “post-BN, post-PR” means.  I am not advocating any “unity government” between DAP and UMNO or BN, or even more far-fetched, any DAP-PKR-MCA-Gerakan coalition.

I have stressed that the new Post-BN, Post-PR Federal Coalition before the 14th GE should  be fully inclusive of all Malaysian races, religions and regions, in other words, a multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-regional new Malaysian coalition government comprising Muslims and non-Muslims, Malays and non-Malays, and Malaysians from Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak and Sabah.

Its top priority is to defend constitutionalism and the rule of law, but these must not be its only concerns.

I have touched on

•	Five  fundamental principles of defending constitutionalism like Islam as the official religion and freedom of practice for other religions; constitutional monarchy; Bahasa Malaysia as official language and free use and study of other languages and upholding the guarantee and spirit of Federalism in the Malaysia Agreement 1963;

•	Ten-Point Programme for a High-Performance, Sustainable and Equitable Economy;

•	Nine-Point  Agenda to restore the doctrine  of separation of powers among the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary as well as the independence, professionalism and integrity of national institutions;

•	Seven immediate tasks to promote national unity and understanding among the diverse races, religions and cultures in the country; and

•	Six-Point parliamentary and electoral reforms to ensure a clean, free and fair electoral system to restore the sovereignty of the people in a meaningful parliamentary democracy.

These will be the building blocks to establish a post-BN, post-PR grand coalition to ‘Save Malaysia’ before the 14GE.

Is this within the realm of the practical and achievable?

                This entry was posted on Saturday, 4 April 2015, 3:07 pm and is filed under
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Desperate times at 1MDB

By P Gunasegaram

Malaysiakini

Apr 3, 2015

QUESTION TIME
 Recent developments at 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) have raised fresh concerns over the self-styled national strategic development company, on top of the numerous longstanding concerns it already has.

 The changes in decision, flip-flops, contradictory statements and so on indicate an atmosphere of increasing desperation, the overriding reason for the anxiety being money, or more precisely the lack of it.

 That is a rather dangerous situation for 1MDB to be in. At last count, end-March 2014, using figures from its annual report, it had borrowings, including some payables, of a massive RM46 billion, liabilities of RM48 billion and assets of RM51 billion.

With RM46 billion in borrowings and only RM13 billion in solid assets in power generation, why is 1MDB so illiquid? It should be floating in a veritable sea of liquidity instead of scrounging around to pay for loans which are coming due.

 Here are some recent instances which indicate extreme desperation at 1MDB.

 First, there was talk that power assets under Edra Global Energy will be listed to raise money for beleaguered 1MDB. But then with all the negative news coming out, the initial public offer or IPO seemed to be all but jettisoned.

 In a surprise development, it was announced that CIMB Group Bhd had been appointed by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) in a role that would “include identifying potential buyers and running a competitive process for Edra to derive an optimal outcome for MOF.”

And then in an even more surprising development a week later, it was announced that CIMB Group will not serve as advisers to the MOF on the potential sale of Edra after the MOF decided it will no longer consider the sale of Edra to strategic investors.

“CIMB has been informed that MOF has decided not to consider a sale of Edra to strategic investors and as such, CIMB’s services as adviser to the potential sale are no longer required,” said the group in a short statement.

 The MOF said that Edra will proceed instead with an application to list on Bursa Malaysia. In a space of one week, CIMB Group had a mandate and then did not have one to identify potential buyers for Edra. Strange to say the least.

 The MOF also appointed Deutsche Bank and Malayan Banking (Maybank) as advisers for the IPO.

 That in itself raises problems of conflicts of interest because both Deutsche and Maybank have lent money to 1MDB and it may be very likely that the proceeds of the IPO will be used to repay part of this debt.

 It has been widely reported that Deutsche has given 1MDB close to US$1 billion (about RM3.7 billion) in bridging finance while Maybank was reportedly involved in part of a RM2 billion facility which had come up for repayment in February.

A businessman, not an investment banker

 The government in a reply in Parliament said that tycoon T Ananda Krishnan had helped to arrange RM2 billion in loans from private investors to settle the RM2 billion due in February. Strange that Krishnan had to arrange this – as far as we know he is still a businessman and not an investment banker.

The government said that 1MDB still owed local banks RM5 billion. Sources say that Maybank is probably still a lender to 1MDB or its subsidiaries. The government also said that it had extended a standby facility of RM950 million to 1MDB.

 And recently Reuters reported that part of the proceeds of a US$2 billion international sukuk issue will be used to pay off 1MDB’s borrowings, in particular a US$1.25 billion sukuk issue by 1MDB which matures in June.

 That’s a lot of money that various bodies are scrambling to provide for 1MDB.

 Back to the IPO for Edra now. Depending on which report you believe, 1MDB is targeting to raise as much as RM8 billion to RM10 billion from the IPO. That means it has to sell most of its stake in Edra, the company in which the power assets are vested.

 Reports say that 1MDB’s stake would be whittled down to a mere 20 percent after the IPO. And it still would not have been able to pay for all of the power assets which cost some RM13 billion. It becomes a mere one-fifth shareholder in Edra and will still have to service loans resulting from the power assets purchase – a poor state to be in for a strategic development company.

 Basically, the situation is dire. What is needed now from 1MDB is to disclose its detailed balance sheet as of today. How much borrowings does it exactly have? From whom, outstanding amounts, repayment terms.

 What are its assets? Detail all the investments it has to account for its RM46 billion in borrowings. In what form are the assets held and where? Do an audit to ensure what all those assets are.

 From such simple accounting it will be easy to ascertain how much of money is still at risk, how much cannot be accounted for and how much of provisions for loss is necessary. It really is quite easy and fast to do something like that.

 What’s the reason for not doing that? Can we be excused for thinking that 1MDB’s problems are much deeper than what has been disclosed so far?

 P GUNASEGARAM is founding editor of business news and views portal KiniBiz.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 April 2015, 7:30 am and is filed under
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Let Khalid  reveal who were the police officers sent to Sydney to question Sirul and when to prove Sirul was wrong in accusing the IGP of lying

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar is on the losing side in his spat with former police commando, convicted murderer of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu and fugitive in Australia, Sirul Azhar Umar.

Sirul had accused the IGP of lying when the police chief said that he had sent his men to Australia to meet the fugitive.

Sirul, who is currently  held in the  immigration detention centre in Villawood, Sydney, has categorically denied this in his phone interview with Malaysiakini, declaring unequivocally:

“Let me tell you, there were no officers or police personnel who met me in Australia.

“He (IGP) is lying to the police force and lying to the public with his claims, and is trying to protect his boss.”

Accused of lying, the IGP maintained that his officers had questioned Sirul Azhar Umar in Australia, and challenged the former commando to “spill the beans” if he indeed has new information.

Khalid said: “Sirul is a desperate man who is resorting to desperate measures to save his life. He is doing his best not to return to Malaysia where he will be facing the death penalty.

“As such, he is doing his utmost to bring into disrepute and cast doubt on the investigation into the murder case, his involvement therein and the criminal justice system.”

Khalid is right that Sirul is a desperate man who is resorting to desperate measures to save his life, and doing his best not to return to Malaysia where he will be facing the death penalty, but that does not mean that Sirul was not telling the truth that he was acting orders when he and Azila Hadri murdered Altantuya and blew up her body with C4 military explosives.

Furthermore, Khalid has not disproved Sirul that the IGP was lying in claiming that police officers had questioned Sirul in Australia after the former police commando had absconded to Australia as a fugitive.

Why did Khalid leave such a big hole in his argument, when he could have strengthened his case by just naming the police officers and the date or dates when they met Sirul at the Villawood immigration detention centre in Sydney?

It is not too late for the IGP to do so – to reveal who were the police officers who were sent to Sydney to question Sirul and the date or dates, and lets see whether Sirul could still maintain that the IGP was lying?

If  the IGP is unable to do so, public opinion will be on the side of Sirul that he had been lying about the police having met Sirul in the Villawood immigration detention centre in Sydney.  It is for the IGP to explain why he had to resort to such a lie.

This however does not mean that Khalid was wrong when he said that  Sirul is a “desperate man who is resorting to desperate measures to save his life”.

Who would not be in Sirul’s circumstances, especially if his claim that he was acting under orders was correct?

Khalid cannot deny that Sirul struck a sympathetic chord when he said:

“I was under orders. The important people with motive are still free.

“If I die today, I would not find peace. I did what I was told and this is what I get in return.”

It is not that Sirul should not pay his dues to society for his heinous crime of murdering Altantuya whom he did not know and continued to refer to her as the “Chinese woman”, but is it fair to hang Sirul for obeying orders when the mastermind who gave the order is allowed to get off scotfree, without any effort by the authorities to identity who gave the order?

Khalid is right that in his desperation, Sirul is doing his best to avoid the death penalty and his action is tantamount to a  challenge of the integrity of the investigation into the murder case, his involvement therein and the criminal justice system.

But Khalid is not so naïve as not to know even without Sirul’s challenge, many right-thinking Malaysians entertain grave doubts about the integrity of the police investigations into the Altantuya murder case, the involvement of the two ex police commandos and the criminal justice system – and such doubts affect not just  ordinary citizens, but important personalities in society including Tun Mahathir, the fourth Prime Minister who had headed the government for 22 years!

Khalid challenged Sirul to “spill the beans”. This is what Sirul should do if his claim that he was acting under  orders was the truth, and this is also why I had suggested that the two former Prime Ministers, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah should go on a national mission to Villawood immigration detention centre in Sydney to witness Sirul “spilling the beans”.

Would Khalid endorse the proposal for the two former Prime Ministers being despatched to Sydney to allow Sirul to “tell all” about the murder of Altantuya?

May be Khalid can himself accompany the two former Prime Ministers to Sydney for this unprecedented event?

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 April 2015, 9:37 am and is filed under
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Somali Militants Kill 147 at Kenyan University

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH and RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

New York Times

APRIL 2, 2015

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali militants burst into a university in eastern Kenya on Thursday and killed nearly 150 students in the worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy here, laying bare the nation’s continuing vulnerability after years of battling Islamist extremism.

A small group of militants, most likely between four and 10, roved from dorm to dorm, separating Christian from Muslim students and killing the Christians, the authorities said. Students described being awakened before dawn by the sound of gunfire and fleeing for their lives as masked attackers closed in.

Officials said that by the time Kenyan commandos cornered and killed the attackers on an upper floor, 147 people lay dead.

Despite new security laws, significant Western help and a heightened state of vigilance that has already put police officers on almost every major street corner in the capital, Nairobi, Kenya remains squarely in the cross hairs of the Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday.

The Shabab has killed hundreds of Kenyans — on country buses, in churches, in remote coastal towns and inside one of Kenya’s fanciest malls during a devastating siege in 2013 that left 67 people dead and rattled Kenya’s prized image as a cornerstone of stability in this part of Africa. The Kenyan government is so desperate to stop the Shabab, one of the most violent franchises of Al Qaeda, that some officials have even proposed building a 424-mile wall across the entire Somali border.

Kenya’s tourist industry, one of the pillars of its economy, has been badly damaged by the terrorist attacks, and the bloodshed on Thursday is sure to make things worse. There are also fears that the Shabab’s relentless emphasis on singling out Christians could inflame religious strife in a country already wrestling with tensions between a Muslim minority, which has complained about government persecution, and a Christian majority that increasingly feels under attack.

The violence Thursday came just days after President Obama announced that he would visit Kenya in July, his first trip to his father’s homeland since taking office. Mr. Obama had stayed away until now, at least in part out of concerns about Kenya’s public safety.

The White House issued a statement condemning the attack and vowing to continue assisting Kenya in fighting the Shabab — in recent months, the American military has killed the group’s leader and other operatives — but it offered no indication of whether the university siege would change Mr. Obama’s travel plans.

The Kenyan authorities said that around dawn, the attackers stormed Garissa University College in the town of Garissa, about 90 miles from the Somali border. Though the college is in a predominantly ethnic Somali area of Kenya, it attracts students from across the country, many of them non-Muslim.

In a statement early on Thursday, the Shabab said that its fighters had attacked the university early in the morning, separating Muslims from non-Muslims in an “operation against the infidels.”

Continue reading the main story

In an audio message soon after, a Shabab spokesman, Ali Mohamoud Raghe, said the attack had been carried out because “the Christian government of Kenya has invaded our country,” a reference to the Kenyan military’s 2011 incursion into Somalia to oust the Shabab from its strongholds.

He said the university had been targeted because it was educating many Christian students in “a Muslim land under colony,” a reference to the large Somali population in a part of Kenya that Somalia once tried to claim. He called the university part of Kenya’s “plan to spread their Christianity and infidelity.”

President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed to crack down on terrorists, and on Thursday, he abruptly ordered 10,000 police recruits to report to duty despite a court order saying the recruits may have been selected through corrupt practices. Human rights observers have said that Mr. Kenyatta is trying to consolidate control and using the fear of terrorism to quash civil rights.

On Thursday, panicked students streamed out of the besieged university with chilling stories of witnessing their classmates’ being killed. Augustine Alanga, 21, an economics student, said he had been asleep in his dormitory when the shooting began. He said he bolted from his room without stopping to put on his shoes, cutting his feet as he sprinted barefoot across the campus and into a nearby forest.

“When I looked back, I saw them,” Mr. Alanga recalled. “There were five or six of them. They were masked. And they were shooting live rounds.”

Since 2012, more than 600 people have been killed in Kenya by the Shabab, an extremist group based in Somalia and affiliated with Al Qaeda. The group claimed responsibility for an April 2 attack on Garissa University College that killed 147 people.

In 2013, the Shabab mounted an attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that left at least 67 people dead.

The authorities said the attack began when the gunmen killed two guards standing by the main gate of the university.

Police officers nearby “heard the gunshots and responded swiftly, and engaged the gunmen in a fierce shootout; however, the attackers retreated and gained entry into the hostels,” a police statement said. “Security agencies arrived and are currently engaged in an elaborate process of flushing out the gunmen.”

The police surrounded and sealed off the campus, and by 11 a.m., three of the college’s four student dormitories had been evacuated, while “the attackers have been cornered in one hostel,” the Interior Ministry said on Twitter. It was unclear whether any bystanders had been killed by the security forces.

Kenya’s struggles with the Shabab have been going on for years. In late 2011, citing a string of attacks and kidnappings, the Kenyan military charged across the border into Somalia, sending troops, tanks and aircraft to fight the Shabab.

The military later acknowledged that the invasion had been planned well in advance, part of an effort to protect Kenya’s borders from the violence in Somalia and to safeguard Kenya’s economic interests, including a huge port to be built just 60 miles south of Somalia.

The incursion managed to dislodge the Shabab from vital positions, but instead of pushing the Shabab threat farther from Kenya, it did the opposite: It brought more Shabab in.

The Shabab’s attacks on Kenya since 2011 have grown in scope and lethality. Many people thought it could not get worse than the siege on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, a gleaming symbol of Kenya’s modernity, wealth and relative peace. But the attack on Thursday was by far the deadliest in Kenya since agents of Al Qaeda blew up the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, killing more than 200, the vast majority of them Kenyans.

The Shabab began trying to affiliate with Al Qaeda as early as 2009, but Osama bin Laden kept them at arm’s length when he was alive, and internal documents have revealed that he was uneasy about the group’s murderous tactics, including the indiscriminate killing of Muslim civilians. The Shabab did not become an official branch of Al Qaeda until February 2012, almost a year after Bin Laden’s death.

Since then, the group has maintained that it tries to minimize Muslim casualties, though Muslims continue to be targets in many of its operations. During the shopping mall attack, gunmen separated Muslim from non-Muslim civilians by asking religious trivia questions. (“What is the name of the Prophet’s mother?” “What is the name of his first wife?”) The “nonbelievers” were killed on the spot.

In a Shabab document that was found in Mali by The Associated Press, the group tried to justify its tactics, saying that “all Muslims must stay far away from the enemy and their installations so as not to become human shields for them,” and that there was “no excuse for those who live or mingle with the enemies.”

Jeffrey Gettleman and Isma’il Kushkush reported from Nairobi, and Rukmini Callimachi from New York. Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Nairobi, and Peter Baker from Washington.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 April 2015, 11:23 pm and is filed under
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The final stillbirth after 17 days of “labour pains”  of the  Prime Minister’s statement declaring UMNO/BN opposition to Hadi’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation – and the five-step metamorphosis of MCA stand

Has the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s statement declaring UMNO/Barisan Nasional opposition to PAS President and MP for Marang, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang’s private member’s bill on hudud implementation suffered “still birth” after 17 days of prolonged “labour pain”?

Seventeen days ago, the MCA President was so cocksure that the Prime Minister would declare the UMNO/BN stand opposing Hadi’s private member’s bill that the “news” was leaked to a Chinese national daily which published the “exclusive news” on the front page, but which proved to be the  major false news leak in the history of Malaysian journalism.

The MCA President’s cocksure confidence that Najib would be making a statement within 24 hours on UMNO/BN’s opposition to Hadi’s private member’s bill has under gone a five-step metamorphosis in the past 17 days of “labour pains” of the Prime Minister, viz:

(i)	from cocksure confidence that the Prime Minister would be issuing the statement within 24 hours;

(ii)	to a softened one that the Prime Minister’s statement  would be issued in the next few days;

(iii)	five days later, an even softer position announced by the MCA President urging all to give the Prime Minister “more time” to make public UMNO/BN stand on Hadi’s private member’s bill.

(iv)	On the same day (25th March) that I suggested giving the “labour pains” Prime Minister another 48 hours until the next cabinet meeting on 27th March to deliver the public announcement of UMNO/BN opposition to Hadi’s private member’s bill, MCA further changed gear by avoiding any reference to a timeline, merely declaring that MCA is “positive” that the Prime Minister would make “the correct announcement”.

(v)	When the 27th March Cabinet meeting came and went, and still no announcement by the Prime Minister, apart from a fake statement in which Najib purportedly called on UMNO MPs to vote according to their conscience, there was shock  from MCA. A top MCA official dropped his MCA status and used instead  his capacity as a president of a Chinese organization to adopt the DAP argument to remind Najib that the first five Prime Ministers would have no hesitation to reiterate and reaffirm Barisan Nasional (previously Alliance) stand that hudud laws are against the Malaysian Constitution and unsuitable for the multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation like Malaysia.

(vi)	When UMNO Ministers publicly rebutted MCA leaders’ claims that the Cabinet had discussed the hudud issue and that the Prime Minister had agreed to issue a statement declaring UMNO/BN opposition to Hadi’s private member’s bill, MCA position crumbled and further backtracked with  the MCA Youth Leader declaring that  there was “no rush” for the Prime Minister to issue his statement as the BN has already rejected hudud.

This five-step metamorphosis in the MCA stand from “PM’s statement within 24 hours” to “PM’s statement within the next few days”,  “Give PM more time to make statement”, “PM will make correct announcement”, then a period of shocked silence and then  to “No rush for PM to make statement” marks the final still-birth of the Prime Minister’s statement on UMNO/BN opposition to Hadi’s private member’s bill.

What more need one say about MCA’s stand on hudud law and implementation after such a five-step metamorphosis of its stand in a matter 17 days.

This  should be no surprise to anyone when the present generation of MCA national leadership could do what earlier generations of MCA leadership would never have agreed – to tacitly support UMNO Kelantan State Assemblymen supporting PAS Kelantan in the Kelantan Assembly on hudud implementation on March 19, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 April 2015, 2:55 pm and is filed under
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What does the Garissa attack mean for the fight against ISIS?

J.M. Berger

Brookings

April 3, 2015

The horrifying and lethal Al-Shabab attack on Garissa University this week and its Mogadishu hotel siege last week highlight one of the fundamental difficulties that arise when jihadi movements metastasize from terrorism to insurgency and devolve back again.

Purely terrorist groups, such al-Qaeda before 9/11, are typically small. Insurgencies generally require much more manpower. Taking and holding a given town or a province takes hundreds or thousands of fighters. When a terrorist group adopts an insurgent approach with any degree of success, its ranks typically swell. If the insurgency fails but is not definitively crushed, it can free up potentially thousands of experienced fighters for terrorist activities.

And as Garissa shows, killing civilians requires far fewer people than taking and governing territory. It only takes a handful of fighters to create a tragedy of massive proportions. Even a small insurgency, transformed, makes for a huge terrorist capability.

In light of this, it is critically important that we start thinking now about the fall of ISIS, which commands far more fighters than al Shabab and has encouraged those fighters to even wilder excesses of violence under a more explicitly apocalyptic worldview. Should a coalition dislodge ISIS from its territory, tens of thousands of fighters could potentially be cut loose and re-purposed to terrorism.

It’s imperative that we come up with a strategy to track fighters leaving Iraq and Syria. It’s also desperately important that there be some kind of state structures capable of truly securing ISIS prisoners after its insurgency fails, whether that happens sooner or later. Finally, it is vital that we come up with new approaches to the currently intractable problem of deradicalization. Even imperfect deradicalization programs are preferable to none.

If we fail to get out ahead of this challenge, tragedies like Garissa may pale in comparison to what the future holds. Beating ISIS on the battlefield is only the first step.

This piece originally appeared in Intelwire.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 5 April 2015, 11:27 pm and is filed under
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