For Yong Kai Ping, the editor of the Chinese-language magazine Perspektif Pedas (Spicy-hot Perspective), the last one year has been hotter than usual.

Since July, his independent magazine, whose sales reach some 3,000 copies a month, has received two warning letters from the Home Affairs Ministry about a couple of pictures used in it.

According to Yong, one picture was said to have depicted Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, also president of the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) party, as having had undue influence in resolving a factional dispute within the Malaysian Chinese Association, the second largest party in the ruling coalition that Umno leads.

Government officials found the other visual pornographic, a picture featuring the pop band Dixie Chicks draped only in anti-war political slogans with vital parts hidden from view.

Political statement

Yong argues that the pictures were published to make a political statement. ''The show-cause letters serve as sort of a warning and pressure on the editor to exercise some kind of self-censorship,'' he told IPS.

Undaunted, he has replied to the letters and says he hopes to be left alone doing independent journalism.

Not so fortunate was independent Malay-language publisher Ahmad Lutfi Othman, who was forced to quit in despair last year after a combination of ill health, harassment of vendors selling his opposition publications, and bans on a couple of his more popular magazines took its toll.

The lack of press freedom is just one of the issues that have dogged Malaysia's human rights commission, known by its local acronym Suhakam, as it struggles to repair the country's human rights image three years into its creation by the government.

In recent days, the commission has come under fire from activists for not doing enough to protect the rights of the handicapped, exploited migrant workers, victims of custodial violence and Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees who have been denied the right to trial.

Some accuse the commission of being a sponge to absorb criticism that would otherwise have been directed at the government.

Most recently, activists at a national consultation with Suhakam in early July lamented that nothing much had been done about several complaints submitted to the rights body. Suhakam was in danger of being turned into a "warehouse for collecting reports and memorandums", said one critic.

Still others were unhappy that Suhakam had not made public the government's response to its various recommendations. Part of the problem is that the members of parliament have never had the chance to debate the commission's reports tabled in Parliament.

Major challenge

In its annual report 2002, Suhakam said that as it "continues into its third year, a major challenge that remains unresolved is the slow government response to Suhakam reports on major issues that touch on fundamental liberties".

Among Suhakam's proposals that the government has yet to heed since 2001 is for Malaysia to ratify the International Covenant on Civil And Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention Against Torture.

''Recommendations by Suhakam without the political will to consider and implement them will be a mere public relations exercise,'' said Ramdas Tikamdas, a senior lawyer who heads human rights group Hakam.

"Civil society and public interest groups have a legitimate expectation that Suhakam reports and recommendations will receive the due respect and consideration they deserve,'' he said.

But there are some issues that Suhakam itself has not touched, leaving them for other groups to take up.

For instance, the commission has failed to probe into the six deaths and serious injuries sustained by others during ethnically targeted violence in Kampung Medan near the capital Kuala Lumpur two years ago.

Rights implications

When four ISA detainees gave testimony through video conferencing from Kuala Lumpur on July 3 during the treason trial in Indonesia of Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir, it was left to the Malaysian Bar Council to raise concern about its rights implications.

Abu Bakar Baasyir, the suspected head of the Jemaah Islamiyah group that some governments have classified as terrorist, faces charges about his alleged role in regional terrorist and militant activities.

The Bar Council, which represents the 10,000 lawyers in Malaysia, warned that those held under the ISA are wrongfully detained and are at the captors' mercy and control.

That means that confessions and adverse testimonies by detainees under such conditions ''must be viewed with extreme caution, since they can be easily tainted by the possibility of duress, coercion or inducement when safeguards are absent'', the council stated.

Their testimonies, it noted, cannot be accepted at face value without independent verification -- more so if the right of cross-examination is denied.

Suhakam has actually called for the repeal of the ISA, which allows for indefinite detention. In its place, it recommended ''new comprehensive legislation that takes a tough stand on threats to national security (including terrorism) but which at the same time is in line with human rights principles''.

Not all activists are happy with the commission's proposal for a new law to allow up to 29 days detention without charge, even though it allows a judicial review of the detention every seven days.

Benchmark

The worst complaints of abuse under the ISA occur during the initial 60-day interrogation period, critics add.

"I don't see why it should take so long for these treaties to be ratified,'' an irate Penang-based human rights activist told Suhakam commissioners as an audience of 200 applauded his remarks. ''They could be ratified tomorrow if we are serious about protecting human rights.""

For many activists, the benchmark for Suhakam's performance is whether it succeeds in getting the ISA repealed without it being replaced by other oppressive laws.

Suhakam's first annual report, for 2000, showed 40 persons detained under the ISA, the second reported 78 and the latest shows 112. Since then, the number of ISA detainees has fallen below 100, the majority of them alleged Muslim "militants".

But according to a report by the human rights group Suaram, 400 other persons being detained under the Emergency (Public Order and Prevention of Crime) Ordinance 1969 and about 1,000 detained under the Dangerous Drugs (Special Preventive Measures) Act, 1985.

Four emergency proclamations over the last few decades have not yet been lifted. - IPS