Raising Malaysia’s Hackles

An angry youth protest highlights the Malaysian authorities’ insecurities over international criticism.

Opinion Asia | The Wall Street Journal

The prosecution of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is proceeding apace, but that doesn’t mean international pressure is useless. Witness the government’s reaction to recent international criticism.

A bipartisan group of 56 Australian parliamentarians sent a letter earlier this month to the Malaysian High Commissioner in Canberra, saying the fact that a leading opposition voice has been charged with sodomy a second time “raises serious concerns,” and urging the authorities to drop the charges. The letter cited an op-ed in this newspaper by Munawar A. Anees, who claims he was tortured by the police and forced to confess to sodomy with Mr. Anwar before the first trial in 1998. And it echoes statements by American and Canadian politicians also worried about the impartiality of Malaysia’s rule of law.

The reaction was swift. Some 500 members of the ruling coalition’s youth wing and sympathizers protested in Kuala Lumpur last week, calling the letter a “trampling” on “sovereignty.” Youth leader Khairy Jalamuddin told us in a telephone interview that the trial is a judicial process, not a political one.

Yet the Malaysian response, far from being a deterrent, only shows how sensitive the country is to international pressure. The letter’s coordinator, Labor MP Michael Danby, says Malaysia is one of Southeast Asia’s relative success stories and any threat to its fledgling pluralistic democracy should not be lightly disregarded. “You wouldn’t want us to be quiet on Aung San Suu Kyi, neither should we be quiet on what’s happening to Anwar Ibrahim,” he says.

International attention may not change the course of Mr. Anwar’s trial, but at the very least, it reminds Malaysia’s elites that their actions won’t go unnoticed—or, perhaps, without consequences.