Crowd at Anwar rally

Chanting

Anwar:  It's time. Malaysia needs a reform movement!

01.00.00.00

Muzaffar

Muzaffar:  At the root of this crisis is Dr. Mahathir's desire to ensure that he remains in power.

00.12

Anwar rally

Chanting

Anwar:  Look at all Mahathir's jewellery - just look at their clothes!

Eng:  All his speeches and all his remarks point to a siege mentality. He feels that whole world is out to get him. The whole world is wrong, only Mahathir is correct.

00.27

Anwar rally

Anwar:  Let us - the people - run the country with justice!

00.38

Hole for Map of  Malaysia

GVs of KL

FX:  Call to prayer

Dr. Mahathir with aides

v/o:  Dr. Mahathir Mohamad - stridently anti-British, anti-Zionist, at times anti-Australian, but never anti-development. The towers of Kuala Lumpur reflect a wealth that until now has more than answered his critics.

01.12

But Mahathir's miracle is beginning to unravel, and he's turned to old methods to reign in dissent.

01.26

Courtis

Courtis:  He has had, as Prime Minister of this country, an extraordinary record over 20 years. He's gone against the odds, and he's won.

01.32

Lester and Courtis

Lester:  Economists like Ken Courtis look with admiration on Mahathir's Malaysia. Beginning in July, 1981, the strong-willed, irritable, unorthodox Prime Minister, began guiding an economic transformation.

01.42

Courtis

Super:

KENNETH COURTIS

Deutsche Bank Chief Economist

Courtis:  This country has made unimaginable progress. Real income has increased annually almost nine percent a year during that period. People's incomes, four to five times higher today than it was but two decades ago.

01.55

Anwar and Azizah at beginning of journey to Malacca

v/o:  Until recent weeks, this man had been the aging Prime Minister's deputy, friend and heir apparent. But on this night, Anwar Ibrahim asks supporters to join an event illegal in Malaysia, and unthinkable during most of the Mahathir era - a rally against the 73 year old leader.

02.14

Anwar in car

Anwar:  They just a give call about ten minutes back, a few thousand already there.

02.32

v/o:  As we begin the one and a half hour drive south from Kuala Lumpur, there's a suggestion the government has just acted to stop the event.

Super:

ANWAR IBRAHIM

Sacked Deputy Prime Minister

Anwar:  The authorities under instruction has now decided to cancel the program and switch off the lights of the hall.

02.44

v/o:  Anwar's security is nervous.

Lester:  An issue of personal safety?

Haji:  Yes, because we are taking him into a situation where they have switched off the lights.

Azizah in car

v/o:  And Anwar, sacked just days earlier, can see the fingerprints of his old boss on everything that goes wrong.

03.01

Anwar in car

Anwar:  That's to deny my right to express my views.

03.09

Mahathir at press conference

Mahathir:  His character does not qualify him to become a leader of a country like Malaysia.

03.12

v/o:  Dr Mahathir was typically decisive when he moved against Anwar Ibrahim, sacking him as Deputy Prime Minister, as Finance Minister, and a day later, leading his dumping from Malaysia's dominant political party UMNO.

Banished, Anwar also took a beating from local press long compliant with the Mahathir government.

03.29

If the stories were right, the Deputy Prime Minister and devout Muslim procured prostitutes, had homosexual affairs, offered bribes, even leaked state secrets.

Anwar at press conference

Anwar denied every charge.

03.52

Anwar:  They are using local media to insult and attack me with the worst kind of charges.  So I have to fight back to defend myself.

Anwar in car

Anwar:  I had never anticipated that the instruments of government would be abused to this extent, where people are threatened, you will be detained, you will be charged for offence purportedly committed five years back if you do not admit to your wrongdoings; bribing Anwar, or having an illicit sexual relationship with him.

04.08

Muzaffar

Muzaffar:  What makes this case particularly disturbing is that the institutions of state have been able to get away with it.

04.34

Muzaffar's office

FX:  Telephone

v/o:  Political scientist, Chandra Muzaffar, sees the Anwar arrest as a crisis; a case where democratic institutions that should defend their independence at all costs have in fact been doing Mahathir's political dirty work.

04.47

Muzaffar

Super:

Prof. CHANDRA MUZAFFAR

Internat. Movement for a Just World

Muzaffar:  The Attorney-General's chambers, the police, and even the judiciary, have been manipulated to serve the interests of the Prime Minister. And this I think is a matter of grave concern for that nation as a whole.

05.03

And this is why there is such a strong reaction from ordinary people.

Mahathir greets airmen

v/o:  Particularly grave if the conspiracy reaches as high in the Malaysian power structure as the professor suggests. And as you'll see, this isn't a claim you make lightly in Malaysia.

05.22

Muzaffar

Muzaffar:  I don't think this would have happened without the support, perhaps the tacit support, of the most powerful man in the land today.

Lester:  Prime Minister Mahathir is implicated in this.

05.43

Muzaffar:  This is the impression that a lot of people have.

Lester:  Your impression?

Muzaffar:  It's also my impression.

05.50

Anwar getting into car

v/o:  And Anwar Ibrahim's impression. The 51 year old says he was set up by some of the government's most senior people including at least one government minister, all working for Prime Minister Mahathir.

05.54

Anwar in car

Anwar:  Certainly he had the knowledge and certainly they perceive that he has given an approval.

06.07

Baba

Super:

GHAFAR BABA

Former Deputy Prime Minister

Baba:  Since the Deputy Prime Minister sacked, we feel relief that we have only one captain, one leader. So much easier for us to overcome our economic slowdown.

Baba in office

v/o:  The man Anwar deposed as Deputy Prime Minister five years ago, Ghafar Baba, is a staunch supporter of Dr. Mahathir and of the judiciary.

06.33

Baba

Baba:  No, the government don't control over our judiciary here. The judiciary is quite independent in this country. We are proud of it. The politician does not bother about that.

06.42

v/o:  When we spoke with the 73 year old a week ago, he was insisting Anwar had been treated fairly.

06.53

Baba:  I mean he's a free man.

06.59

Lester:  He's free, but he's free with an enormous amount of damage done to his career.

Baba:  Well, even in America you can see now how the people squeeze Bill Clinton. He's not proven guilty yet, and the book is already published by the prosecutor.

07.06

Anwar in car

Anwar:  Okay, up, up, up, up...

07.23

v/o:  As Anwar's convoy nears the rally site, a security stop. In fact, Anwar knew he wouldn't be free much longer. His security protected him, managing frantic roadside vehicle changes like this one.

v/o:  But no amount of guards and safety measures could prevent his arrest because Anwar had lost Mahathir's blessing.

07.44

He had spoken with his wife and six children, telling them he was ready for prison.

07.54

Anwar in car

Anwar:  I have no regrets. I have said to Azizah, and the children, Papa is prepared for the worst. This is the sacrifice I have to take and to make, and I have committed myself to the reform movement and will continue.

07.59

Azizah in car

v/o:  And he'd already organised a successor to take over the movement.

08.24

Azizah:  I think I will have to, but whoever is around that also believes in this cause will be my networking people.

v/o:  Anwar's wife, ophthalmologist Dr. Azizah, insists her husband is innocent, and says she is committed to a movement for reform.

08.39

Super:

Dr. AZIZAH ISMAIL

Reform Movement

Azizah:  We have to have a free judiciary, independent. The police not to be taking orders from the top people, and not to - once you get the orders - to make it like a police state, so that people in Malaysia are scared.

08.49

Mahathir

Super:

MAHATHIR MOHAMAD

Prime Minster, Malaysia

Mahathir:  There is no reform movement. It's only a blind; it's a way of diverting attention from the problems, the reasons for his expulsion.

09.05

Eng with supporters

FX:  Cheering

09.19

v/o:  But Anwar can cite other cases where Malaysia's justice system appears to have served government interests in dealing with dissent and maintaining public fear. This was Malaysian MP Lim Guan Eng, just last month. Supporters gathering to recognise him on the eve of a judgment in his court case.

Eng at microphone

The long time government critic was in court for publicly defending a teenage girl, detained after she accused an UMNO Party figure of rape.

09.44

Eng

Super:

LIM GUAN ENG

Malaysian M. P.

Eng:  How can a rape victim be punished by being detained, instead of those who raped her?

09.53

v/o:  His defence of the young girl earned him sedition and prohibited publications charges. The court not only turned down his appeal, but increased the penalty, sending him - for one and a half years - to gaol.

Muzaffar:  It is absurd; it is something that would never happen in a parliamentary democracy. But this has happened, and why was this possible?

10.15

Muzaffar

Super:

Prof. CHANDRA MUZAFFAR

Internat. Movement for a Just World

Partly because the Executive wanted this sort of conviction, because the Attorney-General's chambers pressed for this sort of conviction, and because the judiciary was prepared to go along with what was obviously a travesty of justice.

10.23

v/o:  This, as Lim Guan Eng now knows, is where you finish up if you cross Mahathir's system of dealing with criticism - prison, outside Kuala Lumpur.

10.39

Eng

Eng:  He feels that it's necessary to send a message to the people of Malaysia that this is a price that you may have to pay if you speak out. Even though it's the truth, even though it is for justice.

10.49

Lester in KL to camera

Super:

TIM LESTER

Lester:  But of all Malaysia's measures to deal with government critics, this one is the most feared - the Internal Security Act is a hand-me-down of British colonial rule, originally framed to deal with communists, it's still alive and active after four decades. And it's a breathtaking shortcut to prison.

11.05

Under the ISA, the Minister can send a person to gaol without trial for any period not exceeding two years. And if the government thinks that isn't long enough, the Minister can order as many successive two year gaol terms as he likes. And the accused never even sees the inside of a courtroom.

Wong

Wong:  For us, it's an honour to go into Mahathir's Marriott.

11.42

Lester:  Mahathir's Marriott? The Clink.

v/o:  Elizabeth Wong is co-ordinator of a human rights group that helps families of ISA detainees.

11.53

Super:

ELIZABETH WONG

Human Rights Activist

Wong:  As far as we know there are over 170 people detained under the Internal Security Act. But to date we have had like tens of thousands of people detained since the 1950s.

11.59

Lester on cam

Lester:  So just how bad are the conditions that some ISA detainees face.

12.13

Wong:  This is very typical of what ISA detainees would go through.

12.18

They were forced to swallow their own excrement, violently tortured, abused during round the clock interrogation, causing severe injury and permanent damage.

Lester:  The letter, smuggled out of a detention camp, calls for international intervention to stop abuse of ISA detainees.

12.36

Hussain on motorbike

Hussain:  The worst thing was mental torture, not physical torture. Putting you in a cell, every half an hour throwing water inside. You cannot sleep.

12.44

Super:

GERONIMO HUSSAIN

Lay Preacher

Spit on your food. And then when you eat your rice, they just blow their nose on your rise, and you just have to eat it. There is no other way.

Lester:  Geronimo Hussain says he was locked up for two years in the 1980s for changing his religion.

13.00

Hussain:  Because it is a danger to the security of the country, for an Islam to convert. He was afraid I would convert more Islamic people.

13.07

Lester:  You were preaching the gospel?

Hussain:  Yes.

Lester:  And you were locked away for two years?

Hussain:  Yes.

Mechanic's workshop

Singing

13.25

v/o:  Bob, as he likes to be called, goes to a service this week in a makeshift church two floors above a mechanic's workshop.

Church

Malaysia takes pride in its record of religious tolerance. Yet Mahathir's main tool of fear, the Internal Security Act is present even in church.  Bob insists he and his fellow converts from Islam have to pray at different churches each week to avoid arrest.

13.49

Hussain

Hussain:  They're afraid of being arrested by the government.

14.07

Lester:  For doing what?

Hussain:  For studying the Christian religion.

Muzaffar

Prof. CHANDRA MUZAFFAR

Internat. Movement for a Just World

Muzaffar: How can you have a law of this sort, that allows the state to detain people without trial. Allowing a trial, a fair, just trial, is one of the basic right of a human being in a democracy.

Baba

Super:

GHAFAR BABA

Former Deputy Prime Minister

Baba:  It's not the right time yet to abolish it because still we have bad people in this country. What do we do with this type of man? They are free to kill people.

14.31

Lester:  What about working harder to find the evidence to convict them?

14.43

Baba:  Well of course, the police are working hard. The trouble is that public, the people, dare not go to court, to give evidence. That is a problem.

14.47

Military police

v/o:  In Malaysia fear is a factor whether you argue for or against reform. Among others we interviewed -- Professor Chandra, Anwar Ibrahim and Lim Guan Eng - have all served time under ISA.

15.03

Lester with Wong

Lester:  How would you describe the health of free speech in Malaysia today?

15.18

Super:

ELIZABETH WONG

Human Rights Activist

Wong:  What free speech? It is that bad. Malaysians are so afraid to speak. There's this culture of fear which - you know, there's a psychological barrier that anything that you say, that you discuss at the coffee shop now, for example, if it's anti-government, they think that they can be caught under the ISA.

Marina Mahathir

Marina Mahathir:  It's time to think about ISA, okay. It was something that the British handed down to us, and nobody has sort of really taken it away. It's a colonial relic.

15.45

Lester:  Meet Marina Mahathir, Malaysian newspaper columnist and daughter of the Prime Minister, outspoken on many issues, but on free speech - well Marina's lukewarm.

16.01

Marina Mahathir:  Free speech, as you know, is a double-edged sword. I mean it gave you Pauline Hanson. It could give us all sorts of funny things as well.

16.10

That's free speech too.

Anwar and Mahathir at Marina's wedding

v/o:  And on the man now challenging her father? Anwar Ibrahim went to Marina's wedding. She once worked for him. But they're now pursuing different causes.

16.21

Mahathir

Super:

MARINA MAHATHIR

Malaysian Commentator

Marina Mahathir:  Is he going to reform the Sharia Courts so that it's fairer to women? I want to know about that.

Lester:  He should?

Marina Mahathir:  Is he going to?

Lester:  I'm saying he should?

Marina Mahathir:  Of course he should! But I see that all the people who don't want any reform in the Muslim courts are supporting him. So I worry about that. I'd love to believe him. But all these things worry me.

Lester:  But you don't believe him?

Marina Mahathir:  I don't know. He's got to be more convincing.

Anwar supporters in Malacca

v/o:  But not for the people of Malacca, south of Kuala Lumpur.

16.58

It doesn't matter for the fifteen, maybe twenty thousand Malaysians here that the lights are out and the hall locked, they improvise.

The support for Anwar and for reform is unmistakable.

Supporters:  Reform... reform... reform!

17.12

Muzaffar

Muzaffar:  It is something extraordinary in the Malaysian political landscape, because we don't have expressions of public support of this sort, especially for someone who's standing up against the establishment. The dominant elite and Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in particular, feels threatened, and whenever he feels threatened, you'll find the democratic space shrinks in our society.

17.19

Anwar at rally

Anwar:  I'm no longer the Deputy Prime Minister... but I say thank you. The will of the people is growing.

v/o:  The Prime Minister's backers insist this unprecedented defiance of their leader will quickly pass. That Mahathir alone can lead Malaysia out of a deepening economic crisis.

18.00

Baba

Baba:  He's the man who is really in control of the party in the public, and he understand fully about the economic situation, and he got an idea how to overcome it.

18.12

v/o:  Here to the Mahathir idea is to resurrect old methods of control. Malaysia's new turn away from free markets to strict currency controls has many who've heaped praise on the country's economic achievements shaking their heads.

18.26

Courtis

Courtis:  It certainly took someone of the force of personality of the current Prime Minister of Malaysia to decide to go against the orthodoxy in this manner.

18.42

If this is used to protect a vested interest in the status quo, then much of what's been gained in the last 20 years will disappear like dust, faster than any can understand today.

v/o:  In Malaysia, it's long been clear who's calling the shots. But never clearer than now. For some, that's a comfort.

19.07

Baba

Baba:  At the moment, people just simply trust the Prime Minister.

19.15

v/o:  For others, it's precisely what's wrong with Malaysia.

Muzaffar

Muzaffar:  This is something which disturbs me a great deal as a student of politics. I ask myself, are we living in a feudal society where you have a leader who has got the Louis XIV syndrome. Meaning by which he says, I am satisfied, I am king, I'm the nation; I've decided that this is wrong and this should not be and it must be so.

19.23

Lester and Wong

Lester:  If there's one person you hold most responsible for all of this, who is it?

19.45

Wong:  I'm going to regret saying this, but without a doubt, it's Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. He's - it depresses me; it really does depress me. You know, because... sorry.

Lester:  Why are you going to regret saying it?

20.12

Wong:  Well, because Mahathir has showed he does not take any dissent, and if there's anyone who would dare to come and say that he's the one who's caused all these problems, who's eroded all our fundamental rights, who's made life miserable for hundreds of people, since he was Prime Minister, he would just, you know, he could easily just detain anyone, you know. And it depresses me because we're such a vibrant, dynamic country, community, and it just takes one man to ruin it for a lot of people. I'm really sorry.

20.16

Anwar rally

Chanting

Ends 21.10