CONTRARY to what Mohd Nizar Najib believes, there is no comparison between his disgraced father Najib Razak and the great Nelson Mandela.

Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island for his resistance to an apartheid regime and his subsequent freedom helped South Africa usher in a new era in which he served as the nation’s first black president.

Former prime minister Najib Razak has been jailed for power abuse and money laundering; his sentence was affirmed by both the Court of Appeal and Federal Court with no dissenting judgement. Najib’s guilty verdict was touted by many as a victory for the rule of law and judicial independence. 

The unjust incarceration of Mandela, on the other hand, led the United Nations to adopt the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, commonly known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, which emphasise that the provision of health care for prisoners is a state responsibility.

The imprisonment of Najib has triggered a debate over the rights of a prisoner. The public are entitled to ask: is Najib accorded special treatment and are his constant health complaints a ploy to avoid Kajang prison?

Policymakers and legislators have mostly failed to pay attention to a prisoner’s right to healthcare mainly because of the country’s retributive criminal justice system inherited from the British and the way the public perceive prisoners and former convicts.

After all, we are still a country that largely supports the death penalty and a police state.

Parents and teachers often instil in the next generation the idea of “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”.

There is nothing wrong with these values, but if we combine them with how crime and punishment are often presented in the news and social media, we may fall down a slippery slope whereby prisoners are excessively punished with zero respect and dignity.

Malaysians often expect prison conditions to be nasty, brutish and hard and think that is just treatment for criminals.

This may explain why the public are irritated at the preferential treatment Najib is perceived to have received.

It is reported that he has been in and out of Kajang prison several times for the treatment of his health.

The idea of imprisonment is to take away the freedom and liberty of a criminal, but at the same time, a prisoner still has the right to food and water, legal counsel, health, and most importantly, protection from torture and ill treatment.

While the public has no way to determine whether Najib’s health requires further observation and treatment, there is no denying that he has exercised that right to the fullest.

However “special” we may feel Najib Razak is being treated, we should not deviate from the fact that prisoners do have the right to healthcare services.

What is shocking is not Najib exercising his rights, but that other prisoners often die because of health complications that can be prevented if healthcare services are readily provided to them.

According to an official parliamentary reply, since 2021, there have been 693 deaths in prisons, of which 687 were due to disease and infection.

Some deaths are unavoidable but surely most lives will be saved if the rights of every prisoner are protected.

The Prison Department has cited the Mandela Rules explain its decision to send Najib to Kuala Lumpur Hospital for treatment, but one does wonder whether the those rules are observed all the time when a high number of people continue to die in jail.

If there is anything that we can learn from this, it is that inequality exists even when the prison does have the capacity to care for the health of prisoners.

The judiciary system has proven that a prime minister who breaks the law will have to serve time just like any regular offender.

It is for the prison to ensure that all offenders are treated the same regardless of their status. – September 25, 2022.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.