Two social activists – a pastor and a shia muslim – who disappeared more than two years ago are yet to be found.
A Malaysian human rights commission enquiry into the abduction of two people more than two years ago has found the pair was probably disappeared by the intelligence branch of the country’s police.
The three-member panel, which began investigating the cases in October 2017, called on the government to open a new and independent investigation while criticising parts of the official investigation into one of the cases as an “affront to common sense and logic”.
The families “need some closure and answers can only be provided by the state”, Mah Weng Kwai, a retired Court of Appeal judge, told the enquiry on Wednesday.
“It is believed that those who have been put in charge so far are withholding the answers to these questions or are refusing to undertake a diligent exercise to discover them. Hence, a new and separate task force needs to be set up.”
Social activist and pastor Raymond Koh, 62, was kidnapped by masked men as he drove along a suburban Kuala Lumpur street on February 13, 2017.
The abduction, captured on CCTV cameras, shocked the country. Koh’s disappearance led to the revelation that Amri Che Mat, a Muslim shia who, like Koh, worked with the poor and underprivileged, was kidnapped in the northern state of Perlis in November 2016.
A week later, Joshua Hilmy, a pastor, and his Indonesian wife Ruth Sitepu disappeared after leaving their house in Kuala Lumpur.
At the inquiry, Amri’s wife Norhayati Mohd Ariffin, wept as Mah offered the human rights commission’s apologies for the “grief, anxiety and sadness” that she and her children suffered.
“We would like to see the perpetrators, the ones responsible and involved in this, to be brought to book,” said Susanna Liew, Koh’s wife after the commission announced its findings.
“We want to see justice and we want the truth to be revealed. We still don’t know what happened to our husbands,” added Liew, showing the frustration on the families’ part with the lack of progress made by the police.
Repeated allegations that Koh was trying to convert young Muslims have shocked Liew and her children.
Islam is Malaysia’s official religion but other faiths can be practised in “peace and harmony”. About 61 percent of the population is Muslim. Attempting to convert someone out of Islam is a criminal offence.
Norhayati, meanwhile, found herself being asked whether Amri was attempting to spread shia teachings.
“Four is not just a number,” said Mohammad Faizal Musa, an academic at Malaysia’s National University focussing on religious minorities in Malaysia.
“It represents significant religious minorities. There are Christians and there are shias. It goes back to the Malaysia-Saudi Arabia relationship, to Malaysia’s failure to recognise minorities anymore and to investment. It is a serious matter.”
