Several civil society groups protested today against the proposed reintroduction of preventive detention within the Prevention of Crime Act (PCA), calling it “draconian” and an affront to human rights at a gathering outside Parliament here.
Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, former Bar Council president and co-chair of the Bersih electoral watchdog movement, said Putrajaya should increase the salaries of the police and improve their facilities, instead of relying on preventive detention laws to fight crime.
”We want to help the police, but not with this legislation,” Ambiga told some 50 protesters at the anti-PCA rally outside Parliament house here today.
“In other countries, there is no preventive detention to fight crime,” she pointed out.
The Bill to amend the PCA was tabled in Parliament last week amid an ongoing crackdown by the police against the criminal underworld, after a recent string of shootings and violent crime.
This morning, protesters from various human rights groups like Suaram, Gerakan Mansuhkan ISA (GMI), and Lawyers for Liberty, marched from Lake Gardens to the Parliament House this morning, chanting “Tolak tolak, akta zalim (Reject this draconian Act)”, as they carried placards with the words “Tolak ISA 2.0 (Reject ISA 2.0)”.
Human rights activists contend that the proposed changes to the PCA that would allow a suspect to be detained for up to two years without trial, are, in effect, reviving the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Emergency Ordinance (EO), two colonial era laws that were repealed by the Najib administration in 2011.
Ambiga said today that Malaysians have been “misled” by Putrajaya, which abolished the colonial era laws two years ago but is now seeking to re-introduce detention without trial in the PCA.
“We are going backwards. This is anti-human rights,” the prominent lawyer said.
GMI chairman Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh said at the rally that it makes no difference that the power to issue detention orders would rest with the Prevention of Crime Board, instead of the home minister.
“The principle is that no one should have the absolute power to detain someone without trial,” he said.
The Malaysian Bar, the Sabah Law Association and the Advocates Association of Sarawak have called the proposed amendments to the PCA “objectionable and repugnant to the rule of law”, noting that substantive judicial reviews against preventive detention orders are prohibited in the law.
The professional bodies for lawyers also stressed that the so-called safeguards for preventive detention orders – which are allowing the Board, instead of the home minister, to order detention without trial; and allowing the right to apply for a review to the High Court against the Board’s direction for preventive detention or its renewals – are “insufficient and illusory”.
They noted that the Board is bound by the findings of the Inquiry Officer, who is appointed by the home minister.
Opposition lawmakers like PKR vice-presidents N. Surendran and Nurul Izzah Anwar, as well as the DAP’s Teresa Kok, also attended today’s rally.
The protesters later handed a memorandum to Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who accepted it on behalf of Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, in Parliament after the rally.
When asked by reporters if the Bill would be withdrawn from the second reading, Wan Junaidi said: “The decision is not [mine] alone. I haven’t read the memorandum yet.-themalaymailonline
