KUALA LUMPUR: Five Hindu activists, including one elected to parliament from behind bars, will stay in detention under Malaysia’s harsh internal security laws, the Home Minister said.

An advisory board recommended the five, arrested after organising an illegal rally last November which police used tear gas, water cannon and batons to break up, remain in indefinite detention, Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said on Saturday.

The five members of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) were deemed a threat under the colonial-era Internal Security Act (ISA), Hamid Albar said after visiting three of the detainees at an ISA detention camp outside Taiping in northern Malaysia.One of the activists, lawyer M. Manoharan, was nominated as a candidate by an opposition party in the watershed March 8 general election, and though locked up throughout the election campaign, won his seat with a convincing majority.

The opposition made unprecedented gains in that election, wining control of five of Malaysia’s 13 states and coming within 30 seats of taking control of the 222-member parliament.—Reuters