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Today is World Human Rights Day. Its been 60 years since the United Nation Declaration of Human Rights was drawn up and Malaysia is also a signatory to it. But then the rights of Malaysians are continously violated by the government and its agencies. Today is also the 8th day of the JERIT Bicycle Campaign. It also the 8th day of police harrasment and arrests of JERIT activists. fed up with this situation , JERIT today went to make a complain in SUHAKAM on the continoues harrasment and torture done by police since the campaign started on 3rd December 2008.
A memo containing the violations of police was submitted. Madhavi from JERIT said that, this programme is a programme endorsed by 4 Chief Ministers and well publicised. So why does the police treat us as if we are terrorists. Cheng from Empower mentioned that after 60 years of the UDHR and 51 years of Independance, Malaysia is becoming a police state. Action need to be taken to stop this violation. Selvam from PSM mentioned that the police are systematically sabotaging this campaign. he mentioned that police are criminals in blue. Selvam also said that te police are acting this way to do the bidding of the political masters. Letchimi from PSM requested to SUHAKAM to be assertive this time in order to safeguard the rights of the people. After all this comments Dato Siva , the commissioner present said that it is very regretful that the police is behaving this way. They have much more important work to do such as fighting crime then just putting road blocks to stop cyclists. He mentioned that other countries will laugh at us for stopping the JERIT activist from cycling and leafletiing. Freedom to move and leaflet is a democratic right. Police should be neutral and do not take political sides. Dato Siva also mentioned that the demands of the JERIT campaign is good for the people of Malaysia as a whole and is in line with the aspirations of SUHAKAM. Lastly Dato Siva said that SUHAKAM will continue to monitor the campaign and situation and congratulated JERIT for coming up with this campaign and putting forward the demands. So far today , we have not had any arrests yet though police harrasment is continuing. JERIT really hopes SUHAKAM will investigate the abuse of power by the police and action is taken to ensure this incidents are not repeated. |
