Malaysia arrests opposition politician, activists

Wed May 6, 2009 6:23am EDT

(Adds arrest of opposition politician)

By Razak Ahmad

KUALA LUMPUR, May 6 (Reuters) - Malaysian police arrested a senior figure from the country's Islamist opposition on Wednesday, bringing the toll of arrests over the past two days to five and fuelling fears of a crackdown on dissent.

The arrests on Tuesday night and Wednesday came ahead of protests in the northwestern state of Perak, where the government is convening the state assembly on Thursday for the first time since ousting an opposition alliance in February.

The takeover in Perak was organised by Najib Razak, who became prime minister on April 3 and took office pledging to review security laws and to free up the press.

"Despite the rhetoric of tolerance by the new PM Najib, he's bent on using tough, draconian measures," former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, who heads a three-party opposition alliance, told Reuters.

The vice president of the Pan Malaysian Islamic party, Mohamad Sabu, was arrested in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Wednesday in a move that a police spokesman said was linked to the situation in Perak.

On Tuesday, a human rights activist was charged with sedition after he urged Malaysians to wear black to protest the Perak takeover while police on Wednesday detained three opposition supporters who tried to deliver a cake to Najib's office to mark the birthday of a murdered Mongolian model.

The opposition has sought to link Najib to the death, for which two policemen assigned to his detail are to hang, but there has been no evidence of his involvement and the prime minister has denounced the talk as "malicious" opposition lies.

FREEING DETAINEES, NEWSPAPERS

When Najib took office last month he freed two political detainees, lifted a ban on two opposition party papers, called for a more open media, and pledged a revamp of a security law allowing detention without trial.

Instead of defusing tensions that have been simmering since the government that has ruled this Southeast Asian country for 51 years stumbled to its worst ever election result in March 2008, Najib has provided the opposition with a rallying point.

Najib himself led the Perak putsch in February, enticing lawmakers to join the National Front coalition, thus overturning the opposition majority in the state assembly.

Unhappiness over the Perak putsch and losses in four out of five state and parliamentary by-elections since last March have kept the pressure on Najib as he grapples with Malaysia's first recession since the Asian financial crisis of a decade ago.

With Anwar facing what he says is a second politically motivated charge of sodomy in July and another state by-election due this month, the opposition looks set to keep up the pressure on Najib.

"That the campaign for people to wear black can be deemed as seditious and a threat to national security, this is ridiculous," said Anwar who was imprisoned on what he says were trumped up corruption and sodomy charges in the late 1990s.

(Reporting by Razak Ahmad; Editing by David Chance and Bill Tarrant)






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