Yesterday's spectacle of the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Mr Anwar Ibrahim, appearing in court with a black eye and bruises after being beaten by police, marks a black day for Malaysia's 41-year-old democracy.
Mr Anwar is respected by the international community as an intellectual sophisticate. A former finance minister, he is the author of reflective books like The Asian Renaissance, and a spokesman for a more tolerant, pluralistic Asia.
A former president of the General Assembly of UNESCO, he is a friend of many world figures, who must now be asking what sort of a country is it where a deputy prime minister and a devout Muslim leader can be locked up for nine days without his lawyers or his family knowing his whereabouts, and where he can be beaten unconscious by policemen and refused medical treatment for his injuries.
Mr Anwar (51) was fired from the government on September 2nd by the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. After a series of mass demonstrations by his supporters, he was arrested on September 20th by members of the elite Special Action Force who broke into his home in Kuala Lumpur wearing balaclavas and bullet-proof vests.
Yesterday he was brought to court to hear what the charges were, and for the first time his lawyers were able to consult him. They were shocked at his appearance - the area around his left eye was blackened and he had bruising to his neck - and asked the judge for an examination by an eye specialist, and permission for Mr Anwar to make a statement about the injury.
The judge agreed but stipulated that the statement would be in the form of brief answers to her questions, and that she would stop him if he went beyond the eye injury. Nevertheless, Dr Anwar managed to give a detailed account of the brutality to which he claimed he was subjected on the night on September 20th after he was taken to police headquarters. One of his seven lawyers, Mr Pawanchik Marican, gave an account in English of what he said. "I was taken to police headquarters," Mr Anwar told the court. "I was handcuffed and blindfolded. At one stage I was asked to stand up. I was boxed very hard on the left part of the temple and the right part of the head. I was hit very hard also on the left part of the neck. I was then slapped very hard on the left and right (cheeks) until blood seeped down my nose. I was half conscious and police helped me to clean up my nose and lips. Then I fell unconscious until next morning.
"Next morning my left eye was badly swollen and I could hardly see. I could not walk steadily for several days. I appealed a few time to see a doctor but for five days I was not given a doctor. I was put in solitary confinement with no light. After five days a lady doctor attended me and after seven days I was treated by two doctors from the general hospital in Kuala Lumpur."
The lawyer was distressed at the treatment Mr Anwar had received. "I was really shocked," he told me after his client had been taken back to prison. "This is a very sad day for Malaysia." Mr Anwar's defence team were not told the charges beforehand, he said, nor were they able to consult their client. The arresting officer had informed Mr Anwar that he was being detained for having unnatural sex acts with two men. Two days after his arrest, Dr Mahathir, ignoring the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty under Malaysian law, announced at a press conference that he had personally interviewed the two persons Mr Anwar was alleged to have sodomised and said that "I cannot accept a man who is a sodomist to become a leader of this country".
The alleged partners in Mr Anwar's sexual acts, his adopted brother, Sukma Darmawan (37) and his former speechwriter, Munawar Anees (51), had already been given six-month jail sentences for "gross indecency" based on their confessions.
If, as Mr Anwar has claimed, the whole thing is a plot by Dr Mahathir to destroy him politically, then it is beginning to unravel. Yesterday the two men retracted their confessions, saying their statements were not made voluntarily, according to their lawyers, and have decided to appeal against conviction and sentence. But a total of nine charges were laid against Mr Anwar in court yesterday.
In addition to four counts involving sex crimes - and a fifth to be laid in a different court today - there were five charges alleging corruption. The sodomy charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years and a whipping with a rattan cane, and the corruption charges 14 years and a fine. Mr Anwar pleaded not guilty to all the charges. This savage twist to the normally-tranquil Malaysian politics came after a public falling out between Dr Mahathir (72) and his one-time favoured successor over the economy. Mr Anwar had begun to speak out against cronyism and had openly challenged his leader, most recently opposing the capital controls imposed by the prime minister some weeks ago to cut off speculators and protect the Malaysian economy from currency fluctuations.
The isolation of Malaysia and the growing chorus of criticism from around the world of the curtailment of human rights is rebounding heavily on Dr Mahathir. It threatens the event which along with the recent Commonwealth Games had been planned to celebrate Malaysia's coming of age. This was the summit in November of the leaders of the Asian Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) countries which include the US, Canada, China and Australia. Such world leaders may not want now to be the guests of a prime minister who allows a respected international figure to be beaten brutally by police.
By his actions Dr Mahathir seems intent on asserting maximum control of the situation in Malaysia. He has assumed the role of finance minister to run the economy and of home affairs minister to control the police. He has shown little care for international opinion and appears to have assumed that the outrage at sodomy charges would destroy Mr Anwar.
Malaysia's opposition leader Lim Kit Siang, head of the Democratic Action Party, said: "When Anwar Ibrahim was produced in court, it should have been a day of vindication of the rule of law but it has turned out to be a day of shame for the rule of law in Malaysia."