Agencies  --  Arab News

KUALA LUMPUR, 26 May 2004 — The United States is in no position to criticize Malaysia for alleged abuse of detainees, a Malaysian minister said yesterday, scorning Washington’s standing on human rights in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar was reacting to a call by the Washington-based Human Rights Watch urging Malaysia to grant independent monitors access to alleged Islamic militants who say they have been abused in detention.

“Who wants to talk (about) human rights? The US or UK? They are worse,” Noh told reporters in the Parliament lobby, the Malaysiakini online newspaper reported.

Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi had earlier been urged in Parliament to probe the allegations, with the opposition pointing out that the government had criticized the US for the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Photographs published around the world showed inmates at the prison outside Baghdad who had been stripped naked and forced into humiliating, sexually suggestive poses.

Human Rights Watch on Monday released a 60-page report documenting a pattern of “serious abuses” against detainees in Malaysia, including beatings, burning with lit cigarettes, and psychological abuse. Some prisoners were subjected to sexually humiliating interrogations, with one detainee told to masturbate in front of prison officials and another beaten in the genitals, the report said.