Unjustified detention prompts Kumar to launch hunger strike

By Aliran executive committee
28 July 2011

Aliran is gravely concerned to hear that MP Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, one of the Parti Sosialis Malaysia 6 who have been unjustly and unjustifiably held in detention under the Emergency Ordinance, has decided to go on hunger strike.

PSM Central Committee member and Kumar’s wife Rani Rasiah, together with party colleagues, announcing today that the detained MP has started a hunger strike

We know Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, a long-standing and outstanding Aliran member, well enough to know that he does NOT engage in such acts for theatrical effect. Rather, given his steadfast and tenacious character in facing threats and intimidation from the police before, there is every reason to expect that Jeyakumar Devaraj conduct his hunger strike with complete seriousness.

At the same time, knowing he has a poor heart condition that has required treatment and hospitalisation during the period of his detention, we can only be alarmed at the potential damage to his health that this action may bring about.

We understand his frustration and impatience with the endless and pointless attempts by his police interrogators to extract confessions of guilt where none exists except in the imagination of the Special Branch officers and the political masters whom they serve, in particular Prime Minister Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak and Minister of Home Affairs Datuk Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

Perhaps our politicians have become so used to believing that all politics is about perceptions and images that can be moulded by lies, distortions and propaganda that they cannot anymore recognise that there can be politics of the highest moral level, such as that exhibited by Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj and his fellow detainees from PSM.

Politicians like Najib and Hishammuddin and the Inspector-General of Police have been issuing irrelevant and self-serving warnings about how Bersih 2.0 was trying to import the Arab Spring into Malaysia. Let them, who try to hoodwink the Malaysian public and frighten others with images of chaos, remember how the uprising in Tunisia began with the needless self-immolation of one protester.

We in Aliran, together with other concerned citizens, non-partisan but admiring and supportive of the courageous stance of Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj and the other members of the PSM 6, demand their immediate release from an unjust imprisonment.

Free Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj!

Release the PSM 6 unconditionally! Now!