How about Dr Munawar Anees?

How about Dr Munawar Anees?

By chance I came upon Dr Munawar Anees. I wonder how many Malaysians heard of him and what has he to do with Malaysia and its politics. He made a Statutory Declaration, but that was on 7 Nov, 1998. It was a chilling declaration (CSI Malaysia Season one?). Here's an excerpt from the Declaration:

144. This `Dato' spoke first in a cold tone. He started by telling me that they were after Anwar and that they wanted him. He said that Anwar had done great damage to the nation and that I could help them a lot by agreeing to admit to a homosexual liaison with Anwar. He added that this would be a service to the nation and would be a sacrifice for which I would be handsomely rewarded, that all my problems would be resolved, that I would be given Malaysian citizenship, that I would be given very well paid jobs and more importantly that I would be a free man and that my family would remain intact.

He assured me that they would liase with the US agents to resolve my US citizenship status satisfactorily. He said that his officers had told him I had agreed to die for the nation but that he had no desire to punish me since I was a victim of Anwar's lust and after all what was 4 to 5 months when compared to death. He concluded by telling me that by helping them to get Anwar I was helping to rid the nation of a traitor and that they were after Anwar and not me.

203. I have done no wrong and I am innocent. I am a happily married man with two lovely children. I was just doing my work and enjoying it. My captors and my interrogators have destroyed all that. They have wrongly made me a criminal and taken away my freedom. They have destroyed my self confidence and embarrassed me. They have shattered the peace, harmony and happiness of my family and my simple home.

204. I have had a long standing world wide reputation of being a respected intellectual individual. It took me years of hard work to achieve this status. The bibliography of my work annexed to this sworn declaration is testimony of my work. My captors for the purposes of their criminal objectives have unjustly destroyed my image.

205. I did no wrong and I am innocent. God knows that.

The details can be read here:

Dr Munawar Anees' Statutory Declaration

I'm not trying to influence anyone with regard to Anwar's sodomy case. I'm asking everyone to read with a calm and open mind. This is his story:

Dr. Munawar Anees' Story

(http://dranees.org/)

Dr. Munawar Anees was one of Anwar's friends who was unjustly treated by Dr. Mahathir. This is his story :

HOSTAGE TO MAHATHIR: Living With Open Wounds

A large inscription on the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington -- "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny upon the mind of man" -- impressed me deeply on my first visit to the United States as a student nearly a quarter of a century ago. Recently, with the tears of experience welling in my eyes, I revisited that site. My arbitrary arrest and torture in Malaysia had engraved Jefferson's inscription on my heart.

As a student I knew of the horrors of the Holocaust and other human tragedies, but merely as a distant thunder: The violation of human rights and crimes against humanity were only an abstract notion.

That was all fated to change with my arrest last year under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) of Malaysia, which allows for indefinite detention without trial. My crime? I had known Anwar Ibrahim, the deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia, as a close personal friend for many years. We shared and strove for a vision of life firmly rooted in human dignity. We struggled for building an intellectual and political milieu for free expression. Together, we subscribed to the idea of economic prosperity, gender and racial equality and a civil society.

Alas, the Malaysian dictator, Mahathir, under the growing burden of corruption and cronyism, conspired to halt the march of freedom. In order to build his fraudulent case against Anwar, Mahathir himself ordered my arrest.

My kidnapping and detention by the infamous Malaysian Special Branch taught me how it feels to be forcibly separated from one's wife and children. How it feels to be searched and seized, disallowed to make phone calls, handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped naked, driven in an animal cage, shaven bald, endlessly interrogated, humiliated, drugged, deprived of sleep, physically abused. What it's like to be threatened, blackmailed, tormented by police lawyers, brutalized to make a totally false confession, hospitalized for a consequent heart ailment, and treated as a psychiatric patient with symptoms of Stockholm syndrome.

Barely surviving on a meager diet of rancid rice and chicken along with 12 medicines a day, I spent nearly four months handcuffed around the clock to my hospital bed, under the watchful eyes of the prison guards.

Thereafter, my ability to speak, read and write took a considerable time to show signs of recovery. Short-term memory lapses were frequent. I existed in a fluid state in which suicidal tendencies, depression and despair were punctuated by fits of rage and indignation.

Weekly visits of less than an hour by my wife, Nadia, with our young children -- Aisha and Omran -- were my only contact with the outside world and the only inspiration to live on.

In collusion with the lawyer appointed on my behalf by the police, the Malaysian authorities refused the legal assistance of my choice, coercing me not to mount an appeal against the court verdict and threatening me with greater punishment under new charges if I didn't co-operate.

Simultaneously, Nadia constantly endured police harassment, wiretapping and disruption of our e-mail and bank accounts. Some of our friends were met with the same fate and were compelled to abandon us when we needed them most.

But, in attempting to scare off and alienate my friends, how terribly mistaken were Malaysian autocrats in aping gross Gestapo tactics. How they underestimated the temper of freedom in so many places around the world, above all among friends in the West.

Floodgates of human compassion were opened when the futurist author Alvin Toffler, who Mahathir asked to advise him on a pet high-technology project, sent a message of protest to the Malaysian leader within 72 hours of my capture. In a major interview with the Western press, Mahathir even felt it necessary to make assurances -- unfulfilled, of course -- about my well being.

With every passing day, the rising tide of concern for my plight seemed to personify the words of Elie Wiesel: "Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor. Never the victim. Never the tormented."

Friends and strangers alike took a stand and support began to mushroom everywhere. Nadia related to me in the hospital how Amnesty International had declared me a "prisoner of conscience," and how Pen International adopted me as a "writer in prison." Against all odds, two prominent Malaysian lawyers, Manjeet Singh Dhillon and Balwant Singh Siddhu, offered their services unconditionally. To top it all, an international coalition -- Friends of Dr. Anees -- came into existence in defence of my rights. The core group of Naseer Ahmad, Baseer Hai, Safir Rammah, Jamal Mubarak, Anees Ahmad and Naeem Siddiqui mounted a media campaign with phenomenal success.

What touched my heart was that the person, Kamal Mubarak, who set up the Web site had never met me in person. From the depths of my confinement, I could see the magic of human compassion had begun to defeat oppression.

The pinnacle was reached after my release in the warm hug laced with watery eyes of an Amnesty friend in Toronto, Margaret John, who witnessed a pledge of solidarity between me and Devan Nair, the former president of Singapore, for we had come to share a similar fate.

My victimization at the hands of Mahathir's "Asian values" has transformed me in another way. All my adult life, like so many in the Muslim world, I have suspected under every nook and cranny some conspiracy by the West to keep us down. Yet, in this seminal experience of my life, my friends in the West succeeded in saving me, while Mahathir, a Muslim, did everything to destroy me. And he is trying to do the same to Anwar again through his obliging courts on totally fabricated charges.

Mahathir has demonstrated that, though a proclaimed Muslim, his heart is blind to compassion. Tyranny is the hallmark of his bankrupt concept of "Asian values."

My tragedy, and that of my friend Anwar, ought to make our fellow Muslims think very hard when they ponder the West and its role in the world. As we set out to shape our collective destiny in the 21st century, will the values of Mahathir or Jefferson serve us best? Mahathir himself made that choice for me. Sic semper tyrannis.

Dr. Munawar A. Anees

Last but not least, A brief Biography of Dr Munawar Anees:

Munawar Anees

Dr. Anees is a writer and a social critic. A biologist by training (Doctorate: Indiana University), his contributions in the monthly Inquiry (London) have played a pioneering role in the Muslim dialog on religion and science. One of his books, Islam and Biological Futures, has brought the Muslim bioethical problems to the forefront of contemporary discourse.

Author of half a dozen books and over 300 articles, book reviews, and bibliographies, he has contributed to the Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, among others . Philosophy of Islamic science and the study of Sira and Hadith are among his perennial interests. His book, Guide to Sira and Hadith Literature in Western Languages is considered a "classic."

He founded the world's premiere journal of current awareness on the Muslim world: Periodica Islamica. It has been recognized as "an invaluable guide" for all multidisciplinary discourses on the world of Islam. He is a founding editor of the International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, and an advisory editor of the Journal of Islamic Science and Islamic Studies. In 2000, he was selected as Religion Editor for the new online encyclopedia, Nupedia.

Dr. Anees is an elected member of the Royal Academy for Islamic Civilization Research, Jordan, and a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion, Cambridge, England.

An American citizen, he is married to Nadia with their children, Aisha and Omran. In February 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.