Many people associate a Harvard education with a bright future. Some Harvard graduates lead corporations; some win Nobel prizes; some become world leaders.

But for one, the future may lie in a jail cell.

Jeffrey G. Kitingan, a 1981 graduate of the Kennedy School of Government and a 1984 graduate of the Harvard-Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, is currently being held in a Malaysian jail. He is being charged with corruption and sedition by the peninsular Malaysian Kuala Lumpur (KL) government.

The KL government says it had a valid reason to arrest Kitingan, but the free Far East press and human rights groups such as Asia Watch believe he and possibly his brother, the chief minister of their native Sabah, to be political prisoners.

Harvard's John Fairbanks Center is currently working with the KL government to study the country's economic development and related social issues.

Kitingan was attempting to institute broad political and social reforms in his native Malaysian state of Sabah, according to Asia Watch.

Asia Watch is part of Human Rights Watch, an umbrella organization that targets countries known to violate human rights.

The State of Sabah

Sabah, once a British colony, joined with mainland Malaysia in 1963 to form a coalition government known as the National Front.

Sabah joined the coalition under a 20-point agreement that gave it some degree of autonomy over such areas as language, education, religion and finance, according the Far East Economic Review, a magazine which focuses on economic and related issues of that region.

"Sabah understood the guarantees to be in perpetuity," according to the magazine. "Federal leaders saw them as a transitory arrangement which would eventually fade away, leaving Sabah...with the same status as the [12] other states in the federation."

But Sabah's status began to change, culminating in the 1976 rewording of the 20-point agreement. Sabah was demoted from one of three major components of the National Front to just another state among the 13 in the federation.

Located on the island of Borneo, Sabah differs socially and culturally from mainland Malaysia. The state is largely composed of non-Muslim Malays, while the peninsular Malaysian population is 57 percent Muslim Malay.

Sabah went through a number of governments from 1963 to 1985 as its relations with peninsular Malaysia worsened. In 1985, the Berjaya party, composed of Malaysian Muslims sympathetic to the KL, was defeated by the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).

The PBS, until recently part of the National Front, advocates greater autonomy for Sabah, saying the state should have more control over its resources and their development as well as a more democratic form of government. The party is dominated by the Christian Katazans.