Outside, police made a frantic effort to prevent photographers from getting a shot of Anwar leaving the courthouse. Then the scene turned really ugly. Thousands of pro-Anwar demonstrators were sprayed with chemical-laced water that burned the skin and caused coughing, similar to the effect of tear gas. Police chased them and beat them with sticks, declaring, with unintended irony: "Get out of here. This is an area of repression." When Tian Chua, a vice president of the political party recently formed by Anwar's wife Wan Azizah Ismail, sat on the road to block the advance of an anti-riot truck mounted with a water cannon, police beat him and dragged him by the shirt, semi-conscious, into a nearby van. (Tian is now formally under investigation for attempting to commit suicide.) Curious onlookers from a local bank branch were attacked by police. Fauzi, a protester who worked as an investment consultant before Malaysia's economic downturn (and who doesn't want his full name reported), put it this way: "This is not Malaysia anymore. This is Mahathir Country."
That it is, as it has been for most of the past 18 years. And though the 73-year-old Prime Minister was recently hospitalized with a serious lung infection, Mahathir Country remains one tough and tightly battened-down place. On government-controlled television, news reports of Anwar's sentencing contained no footage of the police action, but they did show the damage attributed to his supporters. The New Straits Times commented: "Prompt action by the police ensured a smooth flow of traffic and public order." The royal commission investigating Anwar's jailhouse beating by then police commissioner Rahim Noor released its report on the same day--recommending that Rahim be charged over the assault--apparently to temper the public's anger over Anwar's sentence. Government officials were uncharacteristically silent when asked to comment on Anwar's verdict and sentence, including Mahathir himself. Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, Anwar's successor-designate, did go on television to tell the nation: "The judgment was today, and it is a court judgment. So let's just accept it."
Malaysians are used to interpreting such comments as commands from on high. But if you believe the writing on the placards in Kuala Lumpur last week--the people are the judge, read one--some of them may no longer be so quick to comply. "There is a sense that something is terribly wrong with the whole system of government," says Lim Kit Siang, secretary-general of Malaysia's opposition Democratic Action Party. Says Hishamuddin Yahaya, acting secretary-general of the Islamic Party of Malaysia, another opposition group: "In general, Malays tend to forgive and forget very quickly, but I don't think that will happen in this case."
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