Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

The Commission Report

The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the police practice of nude ear-squatting has been made public. The Commission has made numerous bold and telling findings, and several recommendations that are commendable. The report is worthy of praise and support.

The Commission finds that subjecting a detainee to nude ear-squatting is “improper, haram under Syariah principles, and a violation of human rights”. It also finds that, even though this practice is not permitted by any existing legislation and is an affront to existing provisions of the law, it has nevertheless for a long time been indiscriminately performed by PDRM on detainees regardless of the reasons for their arrests. This finding is an indictment of the police, and must serve as a wake-up call to the police not only to immediately cease such practice, but also to promptly re-examine its other practices of the treatment of detainees in order to ensure that they fully comply with all laws and human rights principles.

The call by the Commission for the setting up of an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), repeating the earlier recommendation of the Police Commission, must be promptly heeded. The Bar Council urges the government to implement this suggestion without further delay. The IPCMC is an indispensable way of providing effective checks and balances on the proper exercise of police powers, and a transparent avenue for aggrieved victims of abuse to seek just and adequate redress.

The Commission Report is fair to the police, in recognizing that body searches are not to be completely outlawed but must be adequately and clearly regulated, so that they are performed only in justifiable circumstances and in manners fully respecting decency and the dignity of the detainees.

The observation of the Commission that the PDRM remains resistant to change, despite all the evidence pointing to the need for reform, hits the nail on the head. This resistance is an unnecessary obstacle to actual progress. The Bar Council urges the police to abandon their resistance, and instead embrace change and reform; for this is the only way in which the police force may gradually regain the confidence, trust and respect of the Malaysian public. The lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the police, as pointed out by the Commission, must be quickly addressed.

The Bar Council further calls upon civil society, NGOs and the Malaysian public to voice their support for the recommendations of this Commission, as well as for those of the earlier Police Commission; and to impress upon the government to exercise full resolve and political will to push through comprehensive reform.

Malaysia as a nation must learn from this episode that has shamed the country. The widespread suffering of detainees and contravention of their human rights must be stopped.

Freedom of the Press

In this series of events, there is another important issue that needs to be addressed, namely the freedom of the press.

It was the press that highlighted the videoed episode, which triggered a chain of actions that now leads to suggested reform of a repugnant state of affairs that has gone on unchecked for decades, even though the video clip had been made known to some in the police force for many weeks before the exposé. It is the public outcry that has helped brought about the meaningful actions taken so far. Thus, it is the press (and the individuals who awakened the public) that Malaysian society has to thank, and not punish, for being an invaluable catalyst of change.

Sadly, the paper that first broke the news, namely the China Press, has had to pay a price. In its evening edition that first carried the news, the report appeared to have concluded that the woman in the video was a Chinese national. The edition the following morning, however, had been differently worded. Now that it transpires that the woman is a Malaysian and not a Chinese national, a fact most would agree is totally irrelevant to the act called into question by the exposé, the China Press had (according to reports) been issued a letter of show cause, with an indication that its publication licence might be revoked unless someone was made accountable for that initial error. Two of its senior editors, it is believed, had to resign from their positions as a consequence.

The action taken against that newspaper is unwarranted. More importantly, it is the freedom of the press that ultimately suffers from the implications of such action. First of all, the news that the paper had carried has turned out to be true and accurate except for a small and irrelevant part. The exposé had indeed served public interest. The error relating to a small aspect of it merely shows that the reporting was not perfect. In the absence of deliberate mala fide, a simple correction would have sufficed, as in other cases of factual errors that are from time to time made by various newspapers.

Secondly, it is not correct to blame it all on one newspaper for causing the Malaysian government to apologize to China over the incident. It was established before the Commission of Inquiry that the police knew (or at least strongly suspected) the true identity of the woman victim, as early as the day after the news first broke. That being the case, if the police did not immediately alert the government as to that possible error of identification, surely the blame cannot be placed solely on the press, let alone on one newspaper only. Moreover, it is also established that the practice of nude intimate searches has for a long time been indiscriminately carried out, and thus would in all probability also have been done to many Chinese nationals who were from time to time detained by the police. If that be the case, would an apology still have been totally inappropriate? Five Chinese nationals were initially called to give evidence before the Commission. Though they were subsequently not asked to testify, it is believed that they would have similar tales of abuse to tell.

Thirdly, we should not create an environment in which whistleblowers will be so reluctant to come forward for fear that they have not got all the facts (and each and every detail) perfectly correct. The deterrent caused by the punishment of imperfection is obviously against public interest.

The Government has in the last two years taken positive steps to make our society more open, transparent and accountable, and to allow more space and freedom for expression, thus enabling progress to take place. The action taken against the China Press, as well as the unjustified attacks at one stage on a Member of Parliament for giving the episode wide publicity, are incongruent with the direction of progress. We must at all times avoid taking a step forward only to take two backward.

Related story: Bar Council: Report a wake-up call for cops

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed